Summary of the impact

Research led by Paul Basu at UCL has explored cultural heritage in post-conflict development in Sierra Leone. The 2009-12 Reanimating Cultural Heritage project (RCH) has engaged in a sustained programme of outreach, advocacy, and capacity building in Sierra Leone's cultural and educational sectors. With partners in the UK and Sierra Leone, it has developed an innovative digital resource connecting diasporas of museum objects, images and sounds with diasporas of people, and provides new access to collections. RCH has contributed to the reanimation of Sierra Leone's National Museum and has mobilised cultural heritage as a wider social resource.

Summary of the impact

Research in UCL Information Studies enables innovative forms of cultural interaction which encourages a deeper, more personal experience for the public. Our crowd-sourcing transcription project, Transcribe Bentham, has enabled a worldwide audience to participate in the transcription of previously unstudied manuscripts. Our QRator project has empowered museum visitors to think of exhibits as social objects, discussing them with other visitors and curators in three important museums via social media. Both have been recognised and imitated as ground-breaking methods of creating partnerships between the public, the academy and cultural heritage institutions.

Summary of the impact

Through digital cultural heritage research the Brighton-led EPOCH project changed professional practice in the museums sector and shaped public discourse. Working with 609 researchers and 97 partner organisations it created new digital cultural heritage communities, produced a research agenda and a trust network of ten centres of expertise over 3 continents. Developed from EPOCH, the 3D-COFORM project, with >100 technologists and heritage professionals, co-created unique technologies and innovative cultural heritage research methods. The project produced innovative ICT tools combined with `ground breaking' methodologies to evaluate socio-economic impact and strategies for sustainable enterprises that have been deployed by major heritage institutions in Belgium, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy and the UK.

Summary of the impact

2The European funded ISAAC Project aimed to enhance the relationship between heritage and tourism in urban destinations through a novel Information Communication Technology (ICT) environment. The platform provided integrated and user-friendly tourism e-services facilitating an advanced access to European cultural heritage assets. Within this project the Sunderland team worked with a wide community of stakeholders to identify intangible aspects and stories worthwhile to be told within a destination. These stories were integrated in an interpretative strategy independent of, but aligned with destinations' current marketing and positioning strategies. The specific impact focuses on three destinations, Leipzig, Amsterdam and Genoa.

Summary of the impact

Research by Simon Tanner has had a significant effect on open access policy in the museum sector. His research demonstrated that the cost of managing intellectual property and maintaining payment structures in cultural heritage collections almost always outweighs actual revenue. Museums, galleries and archives internationally have embraced unmediated, open access to digitised assets and Tanner's work is frequently acknowledged as a catalyst for this change in policy. Since 2008, the number of high quality digital images freely available from art museums has risen to more than 2 million. The key beneficiaries have been the general public, schools and life- long learners.

Summary of the impact

Five historic Blackfoot First Nations hide shirts held in the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) since 1893 were lent to two museums in Alberta, Canada, to promote cross-cultural exchange of knowledge. Under historic assimilation policies (1885-1970), most heritage objects had been removed from Blackfoot communities to museums, contributing to the destabilization of Blackfoot cultural identity and poor mental and physical health typical of indigenous populations. For the first time in a century over 500 Blackfoot people were able to handle objects made before the assimilation era. This provoked the sharing of cultural knowledge within the Blackfoot community, led to improved self-esteem, and intensified interest and pride in cultural identity. In exchange, Blackfoot people shared cultural knowledge about the shirts with museum professionals from all UK museums with significant Blackfoot collections, trained them in new approaches to museology, and co-curated exhibitions sharing Blackfoot perspectives in Alberta and Oxford reaching over 50,000 people.

Summary of the impact

Research by the University of Reading's Kate Allen has led to innovative strategies to enable access to, and enhance the experience of, museum and heritage sites for people with learning disabilities. Uniquely, this research has involved working with this user group as co-researchers in on-site museum workshops, to develop interactive electronics that activate objects from the collections as an alternative to conventional interpretation for all visitors. As well as the development of interactive exhibits and displays, the impact of this pioneering work includes the direct experience of researchers and museum staff participating in workshops and the dissemination of these new ideas and methods to a range of practitioners.

Summary of the impact

The case study demonstrates how research conducted by staff in the Centre for Museology has informed the development of innovative display and interpretation practices in public museums in the UK and overseas. It shows how applied critical and reflexive museology has been used in a range of curatorial contexts, thereby directly affecting institutional practice and, in turn, providing visitors and volunteers with new opportunities for engagement. The impact is evident in the curatorial process, involving both staff and stakeholders, and in critical responses from practitioners and policy-makers.

Summary of the impact

Marcus Waithe has carried out research that has resulted in a web-based `reconstruction' of the St George's Museum, a gallery and library for artisans founded in Sheffield in 1875 by the art and social critic, John Ruskin. Impact can be demonstrated in four areas:

1. Influence on the work of museum curators at Museums Sheffield.
2. Recognition as an original concept and practical model by institutions, educators and charities.
3. Influence on the methods of charity professionals working in the area of public engagement.
4. Connecting local people with local history, and raising awareness of Sheffield's Ruskin- related heritage among national and international audiences.

Summary of the impact

`Social Interpretation' is focused on developing new systems to enable the interpretation, discussion, collection and sharing of cultural experiences with, and between, museum visitors, demonstrating the following impact:

• Understanding the factors which engage more diverse audiences with museums and galleries by;
• Supporting mechanisms for visitors to develop personal and cultural memories and biographies, and to practice forms of reminiscence through using social media technologies; and
• Enhancing the capacity of museums to facilitate social interpretation, increasing audience engagement and reach, and developing models for re-balancing the audience/authority relationship.