digital thinking: rethink, reimagine, rebuild
reimagine: seeing your role, assets and resources with new eyes
rethink: sharing new voices and perspectives, using new approaches, with new people in new places
rebuild: supporting new and unexpected creative and commercial partnerships
At times of risk and crisis, it’s an innate human tendency to look to the past for guidance. What do culture and history tell us about similar situations, how people responded before, how events played out? How did we individually and collectively rebuild our understanding of the world? HOW CAN WE Integrate new stories and ways of thinking and acting into our lives?
Our museums, heritage collections and archives are a huge resource for this kind of reflection and learning. They contain an unimaginable variety of life, fragments of the real past connecting us to the events, people and ideas that help form our sense of identity and inform our choices.
Now more than ever, these collections and the stories they can tell – about where we’ve come from, who we are, what we value, how we’ve changed and where we’re trying to go – could be reimagined as vital for our navigation of the current social, political and cultural climate.
Around 75% of heritage organisations are currently reporting serious concerns about their long term viability. What strategies can help them respond to the immediate crisis while also achieving a long term, sustainable transformation? How can they be supported explore and discover new ways of collaborating and sharing their collections – powerfully and with relevance - with the public?
There has been a sector wide drive to digitise parts or entire archives and collections. This gets material out of the store cupboard, but where does it go then? ‘Digital’ collections are only as good as the stories and voices they connect us to. Museums and heritage organisations, in collaboration with storytellers and creative technologists, are in a unique position – to share knowledge and expertise, rapidly develop and test new platforms to curate and share their collections. Vital to this process is the exploration of different roles and locations, new ways of listening and speaking.
By engaging in emergent conversation and collaboration, developing and integrating new strategies and rethinking how and where they share content – interpreted with new voices, perspectives and interactivity – museums and cultural organisations can adapt and evolve, becoming key co-operators and partners that inform and support the important conversations and debates of our time.
However, when you digitise an item it’s not a like for like translation. You create a new object in its own right with different qualities and potential. You can use and share it in ways that would never be possible with the original thing. This means our thinking needs to adapt, to expand to include digital thinking. For us, this is essentially a narrative-driven process focused around answering the question, why? Unpacking and articulating your core narrative helps individuals within grasp and embody the reason and purpose behind their decision making, to always be able to answer the question, why? This emergent process is essential for developing meaningful digital projects, “…because it’s cool” isn’t good a enough reason (99% of the time – unless that is your stated goal, in which case it’s probably marketing and not interpretation). Telling stories in a meaningful way with digital assets and mixed technologies requires interdisciplinary support and collaboration. Through this we can explore new ways of speaking, sharing and engaging with audiences, onsite and online.
At This Great Adventure, we explore ‘narrative’ as both as a process and an outcome. The process can be a challenging act of self-reflection and catharsis, thinking differently about who you are, your purpose, what you have and who you serve.
narrative as outcome manifests through the stories we rediscover, reframe and tell anew – stories that shape our understandings of ourselves and the past, guiding our actions in the present, and inspiring us to imagine and strive for a better future.
Digital thinking is arguably more about the thinking than it is about the digital - directing what development is needed based on core aims and principles, rather than getting caught up with one or other piece of technology. It is a holistic approach that takes traditional interpretive/communication practices and concepts – of what an asset is, what you can do with it and where, for example – and expands on them with new options and means of delivery, it is an evolution and integration of new and old, experience and experimentation, that opens new doors of possibility from end to end of a visitor experience, as well as across the whole spectrum of an organisation’s activities.
For museums, community and cultural organisations, digital thinking is an opportunity to see your role, your collections and resources, spheres of influence and action with new eyes. Digitisation is not a destination, but a waypoint on the journey.
Digital thinking is a resource you collect along the way that adapts and informs the act of storymaking and -telling. in times of uncertainty and rapid change, using digital tools in good faith can help articulate and plot our shared journey into the unknown.
