Community engagement with cultural heritage

Unforeseeable events that restrict physical or in-person interaction pose a significant risk to cultural heritage organisations. These events can trigger a loss of revenue, limit information gathering, halt collection management — and consequently, severely reduce community engagement.

Where a collection is located geographically can also be an obstacle for engagement: people may not be able to (or even have the means to) travel to your organisation’s location to view and access your collections. This can negatively impact academic circles because researchers, students, and cultural heritage professionals require access to a range of material to discover and collate information.

The reduction of available physical premises, shifting visitor demographics, widening funding expectations, and new technology are some reasons for organisations to move their collections online, pivoting their community engagement strategy to reenergise interaction with their collections.

Encouraging engagement from diverse members of your community can be a challenging task, but it is important to consider. Ensuring your engagement strategy is inclusive will mean your collections can benefit everyone your community, not just the largest groups.

Collections are always accessible

Your digitised collections become more accessible once they are moved online and you can reach a wider audience, i.e., people with tight schedules and time constraints can engage with your collections from home. It provides sustained participation with your collections because people can return to your collections as often as they like and at any time.

Expand your visitor reach and grow your community

Moving your collections online means that people can engage with them even when they live on the other side of the world. It allows for better inclusivity: there are no geographical limitations, opening hours, or social constraints. It can bring diverse groups of people together, allowing for richer and more inclusive insights about your collections and what they mean to different communities.

Establishing a dedicated online engagement platform like Recollect ensures your community can make meaningful contributions to your collections. Recollect is a safe space for organisations to encourage engagement because it is without the distractions or security concerns encountered on popular social media websites. People who engage with your online collections can be afforded anonymity and their focus can remain purely on your collections. They can leave comments and tag assets that will become part of your collection’s knowledge.

Inclusive to your whole community

Recollect can help you bring your collections directly into the homes of the people who make up your community. Groups who might have otherwise felt reluctant to engage with your collections can contribute more comfortably and this encourages marginalised or neglected perspectives to be brought into the conversation. Traditional face-to-face engagement is frequently dominated by more confident or assertive groups of people and other voices can be missing all together.

People who feel nervous expressing their thoughts or offering knowledge might feel more comfortable doing so with the anonymity afforded online. Recollect encourages diversity and a wider range of perspectives.

A successful community promotes inclusivity and looks after the wellbeing of its members. Wellbeing is centred around participating meaningfully in all aspects of life, and community engagement is a key factor. Recollect can help you make sure that your members have access to valued activities and encourages social interaction.

Capture knowledge

People want to feel that they can offer something worthwhile to their community and that their contribution is appreciated. You can secure this level of engagement by providing online access to your collections and by empowering members to share their thoughts and knowledge.

Recollect enables crowd-sourcing and the collection of new material — perhaps you can reach out to your community to collect items portraying contemporary challenges and life.

Platforms encouraging participatory engagement and user contributions, like Recollect, create exciting opportunities for cultural heritage organisations. Both experts and enthusiasts alike, who have knowledge about your collections, can work together to enrich information, actively contribute knowledge, and uncover new understandings.

Recollect allows your community to share ideas and discoveries with their peers and it gives them the space to make valuable contributions to your collection. They can leave comments or “recollections”, suggest corrections, provide metadata, tag geolocations, and even donate images. Recollect enhances the level of active engagement your community can have with your collections. You can gather vast amounts of material about your collection from numerous sources: uncovering narratives about events, places, and people, while also drawing important connections to personal stories and other artefacts.

Grow digital literacy

Platforms, like Recollect, give your community members the opportunity to learn more about working online and develop new skills. Any generation can learn how to search and discover collections online — and Recollect makes this possible. Your members can browse your collections, discover new things about their community, and learn how to find information and research online.

Storytelling uncovers your community’s roots

Digital exhibitions can be curated online with Recollect to make your collections come alive. Your online collection can be just as engaging as those experienced in-person, e.g., in an art gallery or museum. Craft stories, timelines, and narratives relating to your collections and inspire your community with Recollect’s digital storytelling tools.

 Help your community grow and stimulate engagement by moving away from a static or presentational configurations of online collections. This means creating more dynamic, participatory, and interactive user experiences. Collections that are accessible online and encourage user contributions extend their impact, reach, and value for the public. Recollect allows for the possibility of real-time engagement and editing of your collection’s metadata and associated information.

Preserve the integrity of original artefacts

Digitisation protects rare or fragile objects from damage that can occur during handling or display. In the past, these fragile objects might have only been accessible to an exclusive number of experts —those who have extensive handling knowledge or training. Now, digital copies of objects can serve as surrogates to the original, allowing them to be made available online to generate engagement on a much larger scale. Collections can be made accessible, via digitisation, so your community can discover items they otherwise would not have had access to.