SPICE

Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion to promote Cultural Engagement, SPICE

SPICE – Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion to promote Cultural Engagement – was a Horizon H2020 research project carried on during the years 2020 – 2023. The project brought together partners from research universities, museum institutions, and industry with the objective of developing a Citizen Curation process to further promote dialogue, social cohesion, and cultural reciprocity between diverse communities.
At Aalto University’s Department of Art and Media, the Systems of Representation research group created a Pop-up VR Museum in the form of a mobile interactive 3D installation displaying a selection of digital cultural heritage artifacts from the collection of Design Museum Helsinki. The Pop-up VR Museum is a concept developed at Aalto University and co-designed in collaboration with Design Museum Helsinki. It brings together communication strategies, co-design practices and application design to deliver a virtual reality environment that using semantic technologies, including linked data hubs and ontologies, provides an engaging and immersive experience of the museum and the heritage. The application enables museum visitors to carry on Citizen Curation activities such as selecting and sharing of stories about the different artifacts. It also seeks to bridge accessibility gaps for communities including senior citizens, immigrants and rural dwellers who might encounter challenges in accessing heritage institutions.
In addition to the Pop-up VR Museum and following the Citizen Curation approach, researchers at Aalto University led by Professor Lily Díaz-Kommonen, were responsible for design and evaluation of (5) five case studies in which advanced information processing tools were created for different museum institutions. In addition to Design Museum Helsinki (DMH) the participating institutions included: Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAM) in Torino, Italy; Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) Ireland; Hecht Museum in Haifa, Israel, and the Museo de Ciencias Naturales Madrid, Spain.

SPICE H2020 project received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement N. 870811).