Drawing from the wider literature and our experience in the Mingei project, we set out a series of ten steps that highlight tips, tricks, good practice and Heritage Crafts-specific challenges. The advice is structured based on the 2003 ICH definition of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage but starts with an extra preparatory step: introspection. From introspection we take you on a journey of working with Heritage Crafts Communities, through research and preservation to promotion and revitalisation. To explore each of the ten steps, we illustrate it with good practice drawn from case studies from Mingei and from our research.

1. Introspection

Before reaching out to craft communities, it is important to understand the role and position of your institution, now and in the past. Take a moment to examine the way your organisation has represented and engaged with crafts in the past up until today. If you are an organisation that looks after tangible cultural heritage related to Heritage Crafts, look at your collections. Where are crafts present in your collections and how are they described or labelled? For example, does your organisation refer to them as applied arts or folklife? Understanding the lens through which the organisation you work for has collected, studied and interpreted crafts will help you see what perspectives might be missing. Through introspection, you can better understand the relationship your organisation had with craftspeople in the past, while also anticipating how you might be viewed by Heritage Crafts communities today.

Mingei case study, Haus der Seidenkultur (Germany). The Haus der Seidenkultur is founded at the site of the last silk weaving workshop. The original tools to create point paper designs, punch cards for Jacquard looms and the looms themselves were present at the site before the museum existed. The museum was founded in response to the workshop ceasing production and in close collaboration with silk weavers that had worked at other local silk factories.

2. Identification

Do you have a clear understanding of the diversity within or among the communities related to the Heritage Crafts you are working with? Try to list all the people involved in the craft and differentiate between Heritage Crafts communities and stakeholders.

Once you have done this, do some desk research to find out who the key people might be who could introduce you to the community. Always make sure if a person you consider to be a representative of the community is indeed capable of representing it. Try to understand what this person’s motivation might be to take on this role of representative. Do they have an alternate agenda? Ask for introductions to other community members and make clear you find it important to better understand the diversity within the community. If a person is unwilling or unable to make these introductions, it is probably important to better understand why this is the case. Stay aware of potential alternative stories or diversity within the community while you conduct your work. 

In most cases, it will be impossible to meet with all the members of a Heritage Crafts community, but when deciding how to invest your time, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Do you have a clear overview of all the different Communities related to this Heritage Craft? Think about practitioners of the various stages of the craft, formal or informal students, and others who are directly affected by, though not participating in the craft. 
2. Who are the key representatives of these different communities? 
3. What are events or places where you could informally meet a wide range of community members, as an opportunity to identify more relevant partners?

External case study, Shetland Museum (Scotland). Shetland textiles are part of Shetland culture and visitors to Shetland Wool Week are known to want to engage in all aspects of the islands and their traditions. The relatively small scale of the event and the connection with the local community are part of the success of Shetland Wool Week. To make this possible, locals had to be willing to participate. The organising committee first invested in relationships with experienced knitters, who were hired to teach several classes at the event. This meant these knitters could both make money from their finished product and also by teaching others how to knit in the Shetland tradition. Younger knitters are trained to become teachers themselves, to make sure this skill does not disappear either. As well as teachers, the organisation works with farmers and crofters, asking them to give tours of their farms and talk about their work. The organising committee advises farmers on creating an event that will match the expectations of participants and provide an opportunity for farmers to explain their role in the production process.

3. Research

Most Heritage Crafts can be researched through desk-based research to a point. Historic and contemporary descriptions, videos, photographs and other physical materials related to the craft might help you get a sense of it. But because Heritage Crafts consist of tangible and intangible heritage, a lot of the research can only take place in collaboration with Heritage Craft Communities. Firstly, it is important to understand the status of the craft among these communities. Does their view of and valuing of the craft match that of the documentation you have studied? Or do you see differences that need to be further explored? 

For the Mingei project, we are exploring how to digitise both the tangible and intangible elements of Heritage crafts. To do this, the technical and heritage partners on the team have identified the many different elements that could be studied to create a good understanding of each craft. Physical items are materials, artefacts, manufacturing tools or machines, protective or traditional clothing relevant to the craft, as well as the workspace(s). Craft practices encompass actions of the practitioner(s), which means our research should not be limited to ‘things’, but should also include the bodies of the practitioners, as well as their motions. It is clear that this research cannot be done in any other way other than in collaboration with practitioners. Craft understanding involves the identification of craft processes, separating them into activities and actions, the spatial and physical expression of craft processes, their temporal organisation, as well as the identification of the involved objects and actors.

Mingei case study, Musée des Arts et Métiers (France). Once the glassblowing project in the Musée des Arts et Métiers started, museum staff decided to move forward with an ethnographic study. One of the curators joined the glass blowers in their laboratory in an attempt to replicate one of the chosen objects of the collection so as to understand connections with the old crafts techniques, differences and breakthroughs in glass-blowing both in the past and in the present. The ethnographic study involved participatory observation, taking photos, fieldwork notes, cognitive walkthroughs (taking videos and revisiting the videos with the craftspeople), interviews, and common work sessions with the technology partners who were there to digitise the crafts.

When it comes to understanding the craft fully, we also have to identify points where decisions are being made in the process, alternative techniques, and the correction of mistakes. We have to understand if the craft is changing, and if so, how. If you want to describe a craft, you would need to collaborate with Heritage Craft Communities to develop a vocabulary of terms, verbal definitions, and visual descriptions that should include the materials, tools, and products of a craft. Holistically approaching a Heritage Craft creates a lot of data. These data need to be organised in terms of craft roles and steps, the materials and the actions used. This organisation of data needs to work with the tools or machines that you will use to map the craft tasks and processes. 

Working with Heritage Craft Communities in your research phase can take many different forms. Depending on the situation, you might choose or be able to use techniques that allow for more or less active engagement. Techniques you could use include co-creation, ethnography, participant observation and interviews. 

4. Documentation

The output of the research phase is documentation. As research methods vary, so too will the type of documentation you produce. The primary output may be in the form of notes, images, audio-visual recordings, reports, etc., that describe the operational part of the process or stories relating to the socio-historical context of the craft. We propose the use of storyboards to organise the output of this process as a useful tool for (a) illustrated scripts that separate actions into simpler ones and (b) validating this transmitted information with the craft community, collecting feedback, and identifying parts of the process that may be underrepresented. Storyboards can contain temporal arrangement, visualisations, verbal description of actions and activities, and identify the involved objects and actors.

Mingei case study, The Mastic Museum of the PIOP Museum Network (Greece). During a visit to the island of Chios, we found ourselves interviewing local Mastic growers on the town square of a local village, collecting audio recordings of our conversations and taking pictures with our smartphones while a drone flew overhead, capturing footage that would allow us to create a 3D model of the entire village.

5. Preservation

To understand how a Heritage Craft can or should be protected it is important to understand the past, current and future threats facing the craft. Heritage Craft Communities are best placed to understand these threats. Is there a limit to the source materials needed for the craft? Are certain tools or instruments no longer in production? When the craft relies on selling the end product, maybe the market for this product has dried up or demand has changed. Perhaps there is less interest in maintaining the craft among younger generations. If so, why is this the case? Only when we have mapped the threats facing a craft, we can start thinking about potential ways of protecting it. What protective measures are acceptable needs to be decided together with the Heritage Craft Communities. Is it possible to start using other source materials or instruments, or is this unacceptable? To what extent can the outcomes of the Heritage Craft be monetised, or patterns and products altered? These questions have no one-size-fits-all answers but need to be explored through intensive, collaborative work with Heritage Craft Communities. 

Mingei case study, The Mastic Museum of the PIOP Museum Network (Greece). Mastic growers are actively involved in creating new and innovative products, such as skin care products and supplements using the mastic they collect. This innovation does not negatively impact their Heritage Craft, because they, as a community, are the undisputed owners of their craft and have the power to set boundaries. They can identify which elements of their tradition they want to maintain as they are, and where there is space for innovation. This shows how innovation and tradition are not opposing forces, but can exist alongside each other, as long as the Heritage Craft Community has the autonomy to set boundaries. In contrast, although the looms at the Haus der Seidenkultur could produce all kinds of fabrics, the fact that they were traditionally used to create ecclesiastical vestments and altar hangings is integral to the story of the workshop and the specific Heritage Craft that was practised there.

6. Protection

To understand how a Heritage Craft can or should be protected it is important to understand the past, current and future threats facing the craft. Heritage Craft Communities are best placed to understand these threats. Is there a limit to the source materials needed for the craft? Are certain tools or instruments no longer in production? When the craft relies on selling the end product, maybe the market for this product has dried up or demand has changed. Perhaps there is less interest in maintaining the craft among younger generations. If so, why is this the case? Only when we have mapped the threats facing a craft, we can start thinking about potential ways of protecting it. What protective measures are acceptable needs to be decided together with the Heritage Craft Communities. Is it possible to start using other source materials or instruments, or is this unacceptable? To what extent can the outcomes of the Heritage Craft be monetised, or patterns and products altered? These questions have no one-size-fits-all answers but need to be explored through intensive, collaborative work with Heritage Craft Communities.

External case study, Heritage Weaving Communities  (India). Both Europe and India face the same biggest challenge in terms of Heritage Crafts. The numbers of Heritage Craft practitioners are dwindling, and the population is aging, as young people move to cities or find employment elsewhere. The big difference between Europe and India, however, is the context within which this challenge takes place. In India, this context consists of more significant rural isolation, greater socio-economic differences and cultural differences between rural communities and city dwellers. Where in Europe often local communities can maintain a craft as a hobby, or for example develop a heritage site that can facilitate the safeguarding of a Heritage Craft, this is not an option in most rural communities in India due to poverty, a lack of infrastructure and other socio-political structures. The solution surfacing in India is also different from that in most of Europe; it is commercial. For the case study at hand, ensuring weavers receive fair and regular pay for their heritage products is the best way to safeguard this particular Heritage Craft. A good example of a company working in this model is Jaipur Rugs, a company specialising in producing heritage rugs for a global market.

7. Promotion

In theory, anyone can promote a Heritage Craft. From opening a shop, either brick and mortar or online, to sharing products on an Instagram page, promotion can take many forms. However, as the example of the Shetland Wool Week shows, involving Heritage Craft Communities can be crucial for enhancing the impact of the promotion activities, both for the Communities involved and other interested parties, such as researchers and customers.

External case study, Shetland Museum (Scotland). The unique qualities of Shetland wool and woollen products have drawn outsiders to the islands for decades. They come to do research, often with the intention to share the outcomes, be it knowledge or patterns, with a wider audience. The local community did not necessarily support these outside researchers and would be reluctant to share their information. Still today, some are very protective of their patterns and techniques. There is a sense of wanting to protect the craft, not wanting outsiders to ‘steal’ a local tradition. Yet Shetland Wool Week was set up in 2009 with the specific intention to draw outsiders to Shetland and create awareness of Shetland wool and woollen products outside of the islands. Initially, locals did not engage much with Shetland Wool Week: they considered it something for tourists. What made and continues to make Shetland Wool Week a success is a combination of two approaches. First, a good marketing strategy and secondly, a continuing commitment to engage locals who are involved in the wool industry in some way, from farmers to knitters. Once the local community started to see the event’s value, its impact started to grow locally, nationally and internationally. The Shetland Wool Week meant that the tourist season was extended into September. It enhanced international interest in Shetland’s knitting heritage, even resulting in #fairislefriday on Instagram.

8. Enhancement

If you are used to working in a more traditional heritage field and deal primarily with tangible heritage, the idea of ‘enhancing’ heritage might seem a contradictory term. But since intangible cultural heritage is a living and evolving kind of heritage, a decision can be made to enhance it, or in other words, to further improve its quality, value, or reach. Our case studies of the Chios Gum Mastic Growers Association, Shetland Wool Week and Jaipur Rugs show that stakeholders like external parties, a research lab, an organising committee or a commercial company can help enhance a Heritage Craft by introducing new uses and products, a new market, new patterns or ways of working. However, in all of these cases, the Heritage Craft Community had to be involved in the process.

External case study, Heritage Weaving Communities (India). The Jaipur Rugs company had created an international market for traditional rugs created in various Indian regions. One way to enhance the production of the rugs was to create workshops where weavers can come together to work on their looms. While this approach was successful in some places, in most cases the weavers did not want to move their work to a workshop. Traditionally, weaving rugs had always been a cottage industry, done at home alongside many other activities, related to taking care of the family, but also farming. Weaving was not the only source of income and making it so, for many weavers, did not weigh up to the flexibility they enjoyed or needed when weaving at home and combining it with other tasks. In order to honour the Heritage Craft tradition, the community’s interest came before that of the rug company. In this case, what might have seemed an enhancement from a business perspective was not an enhancement from the point of view of the Heritage Craft Community.

9. Transmission 

How are the knowledge and skills related to a Heritage Craft transmitted? How does a Heritage Craft Community train the next generation? And who is allowed to hold certain knowledge or skills? When thinking about safeguarding a Heritage Craft, either by analogue or digital means, these are crucial questions. Firstly, these questions come back to ownership and respecting community knowledge and skills. But secondly, there is usually a very good reason why a Heritage Craft is being shared or taught the way it is. The process of teaching or training is inherent to the craft itself and therefore should be taken into consideration when developing any kind of educational resource about the craft. This does not mean an understanding of the craft can only be transmitted traditionally, but it does challenge us to find a middle ground that respects the traditional learning trajectory. 

Mingei case study, Musée des Arts et Métiers (France). Each month, an artisan was invited to design, in collaboration with the public department, the content of a workshop according to his/her crafts activities (jewellery, mosaic, clockmaking, silk painting). Once the activity was decided, the craftsperson trained the museum mediator in charge of this public activity to his/her craft and taught them their skills. Then, the mediator connected with the public and transmitted to them the craft he/she learned from the craftsman/woman. The mini-workshops reached thousands of people. Due to this success, the museum decided to perpetuate the project and to create the “Fabricateurs” (Makers) as a permanent workshop space where the public is invited to do things with their hands in the museum. This is important because as a museum of the history of technology, the public needs to understand the value of making in knowledge production and what it means to “know by doing”.

10. Revitalisation

Just as Heritage Crafts change and adapt, they can also fade or lose meaning and relevance for a Heritage Craft Community. It might not mean the community is no longer interested in the craft; in fact, they might still want to preserve it as a Heritage Craft. But at the same time, they might not have the time and energy to invest in maintaining the craft as it is, or once was. Freezing a Heritage Craft is a sure way for it to lose its meaning over time. For the same reasons, it is not necessarily useful to look back in time, through books and images, for example, and try to find the moment in time when the craft was most ‘authentic’. This is the opposite of revitalising. To revitalise a Heritage Craft, the Heritage Craft Community should be involved in a conversation about what the craft once meant to them, what it means now and what it could mean in the future. Which techniques must be kept or brought back? Where could machines be used to create a faster process, while maintaining the important heritage qualities of the craft?

Mingei case study, Haus der Seidenkultur (Germany). When the Haus der Seidenkultur  opened in 2000, the workshop had not been in operation for nearly twenty years and the last weaver who had worked there had passed away sometime before that. To make the workshop operational once more, the Association of Friends had to rely on the knowledge and expertise of its volunteers. Due to their old age, many still had some experience using more traditional methods, although they had spent their working life in more modern factories. One could say that by working at the museum, they became part of the Heritage Craft Community of that particular workshop. Through action research, this Heritage Craft Community expanded its knowledge and skills, safeguarding a Heritage Craft which had been on the brink of becoming extinct.

Mingei partners worked widely with diverse stakeholders in heritage crafts communities over the course of the project, through co-creation, research, documentation, digitalisation and much much more. Here we share good practice guidelines we have developed to guide engagement with heritage crafts communities in digital projects. This guidance is published in tandem with our ten safe-guarding steps.

1. Do your homework

Before engaging with a Heritage  Craft Community, do your homework. Gathering as much information as possible about who they are, what their background is, and what the cultural and socio-economical context in which they operate is. This information will not only save time and help in the preparation of the appropriate material for the activity but also may prevent possible awkward social interactions or even faux pas from happening (i.e., doing something that is against local traditions and customs or asking an inappropriate question). This aligns with the ‘Introspection’ section presented in the ten safe-guarding steps. 

2. Communicate clearly

Clear communication of activity goals, processes, and expectations is an important factor for a successful activity outcome. All parties involved should be on the same page as to who, why, how, and where the activity is going to be executed. Share this information well ahead of time so that enough time is allowed for the parties involved to ask for clarifications or express any concerns.

3. Be empathetic

Heritage Craft practitioners are highly skilled and understand their craft in a holistic, sometimes visceral way. However, the world of digitisation might be new to them and an engineer’s or programmer’s approach to their craft might be very different from how they view it themselves. Also, their age or (cultural) background might mean certain requirements need to be met that might not be commonly encountered by technologists. Sessions should be adapted to participants’ requirements and not the other way around. 

4. Be flexible

This refers to all aspects of planning and executing any collaborative activity with Heritage Crafts Communities or individual members. It means to be prepared to face unforeseen challenges and react accordingly. No matter how well prepared for the activity the team is, things can go different than expected. It is important to deal with such challenges promptly and accommodate changes to the original plans without compromising the value of the activity. 

5. Ease the fear of technology

In digital cultural heritage projects, not all partners involved are familiar with state-of-the-art technologies and applications. Terms like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Avatars, etc., may be foreign to most people involved.  Moreover, their lack of technical expertise may make them reluctant to get involved in any technology-related decision making from fear that they have nothing of value to contribute to this aspect. To avoid such a situation from happening and encourage cultural heritage partners to engage fully in all stages of the project, the technical partners need to ease their fear of technology. Some of the ways to do that are to build technology or application demonstrators, build working or non-working prototypes that showcase the possibilities available, and to showcase existing examples of technologies that have been used in similar situations.

6. Establish a widely understood reporting medium

Craft understanding is an iterative process and alignment of all participants should take place prior to each new technology development iteration. A commonly understood reporting medium will provide insights on the outcomes of an iteration and allow further elaboration. For example, storyboards are useful for (a) illustrated scripts that decompose actions into simpler ones and (b) validating this transmitted information with the craft community, collecting feedback, and identifying parts of the process that may be underrepresented. 

7. Be considerate towards the needs of older participants

It is often the case that craft practitioners who represent an endangered craft are older people. When involving them in any type of project-related activity such as interviews, demonstrations, or co-creation workshops, there are a few points that the team needs to take into consideration to ensure a positive experience for them. These are:

• Duration of activity: keep the duration of the activity as short as possible and provide frequent breaks for refreshments, use of bathroom facilities, etc.
• Pace: people learn and think at different paces. Keep that in mind when planning and scheduling the activity and always include some buffer time to avoid rushing through the activity or running out of time.
• Envisioning abstract concepts: bear in mind that some people have no or limited prior experience in modern technologies. For example, it would be unrealistic to ask a group of people unfamiliar with digital technology to design or sketch an application/system from scratch without having a point of reference. We have found that it works best to start such activities by showing prototypes or other examples of technologies in similar contexts of use before asking for any type of input from them. Once people understand how a type of technology works and see examples of it in use, then they can then start envisioning how they can be of use for presenting the storyline of the craft they represent.

This is the second blog of a series dedicated to how Team-Based Inquiry (TBI) is being used in the Mingei project and what we are learning from it. In Mingei, each heritage partner and Waag have completed several TBI cycles, setting out a different research question, collecting and analysing the data, and implementing improvements each time. Each TBI cycle has examined different topics and led to new insights. Having introduced TBI already, we now explore some of the insights generated and what this means for organisational impact, as well as setting out recommendations to help you use TBI in your work. 

Using TBI to improve the museum visitor experience

The Mingei partners at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) wanted to know why, of the many exhibitions that are part of the materials gallery (one of seven thematic galleries in the museum), the glass exhibitions were attracting so few visitors and how they could focus the visiting public’s attention more on the materials gallery. The question stemmed from the perception that the Mingei project’s focus on the digitisation of the intangible aspects of the craft of glassmaking would help to bring in more visitors, but that the layout of the museum itself, or something else, might be getting in the way.

They collected data through a series of interviews with mediators and demonstrators from the museum’s Public Department. These professionals had in-depth and direct knowledge about the visitors’ experiences that they could share. They also organised a visit with the person in the museum tasked with making changes to the museum layout. The data they collected led to practical changes being proposed: for example, a plan for renovating the flooring, improving audio-guide systems, and adding labelling and signals around the gallery. 

Asking TBI questions to help improve the visitor experience with museum digital applications

The Chios Mastic Museum investigated how instructions for three newly-installed digital applications could be improved for museum visitors. The TBI cycle was launched at the same time as these installations were being formally evaluated. One of the biggest challenges was how not to over-survey the audience. It was agreed to conduct the TBI survey once the preliminary evaluation data had been collected. Gathering data through three sessions of staff observation and surveys of museum visitors, they identified a number of areas where they could improve the instructions for the applications, including, for example, guidance on where to stand to activate a certain type of app. They also identified a clear need for museum professionals to remain on hand to answer questions and to guide visitors in how to use the apps. This is important, as it was observed that visitors often do not spend much time trying to learn how an app works. 

Colleagues at the Chios Mastic Museum also asked the question of ‘To what extent do the museum professionals understand how the digital applications work, feel comfortable using them and can explain their use to visitors and new colleagues?’. Danae Kaplanidi, scientific consultant at the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP), reports on what they learned in a special blog post where she identifies that the question addresses a gap in the existing research literature, as well as helping the museum better train and supports its professionals in the use and demonstration of digital applications in the museum exhibition setting. 

Using TBI to harness good practice in communications and dissemination more effective

While Waag colleagues are coaching the heritage partners through the TBI cycles, we also undertook our own TBI cycles. Finding ourselves at a critical point in the project – our need to create impact through dissemination and communication – we dedicated ourselves to precisely that topic. We asked the question: what makes impactful and effective communication and dissemination in EU-funded projects?

We found eight problems with the current state of play with European funding projects communications, dissemination and exploitation, ranging from the short-term nature of project funding to project outputs (e.g. reports) not being designed appropriately for their audiences. We identified three solutions: 

• Know your target audience: talk to and with them
• Tell open, impactful, people-centred stories with substance 
• Plan long-term project legacy in a practical way

Each solution is presented alongside a series of tips and recommendations. You can read these in more detail in our blogs exploring what makes impactful communications and dissemination and how to measure the impact of communications, dissemination and exploitation in EU-funded projects. The findings are being widely shared across project and partner communication channels as well as on those channels where the original survey was published. 

Turning a challenge into an opportunity in data collection 

Data collection is an inevitable part of a TBI cycle, but what happens if you haven’t collected data from your audiences before? 

This was one challenge for the Haus der Seidencultur (HdS). Run entirely by volunteers, all of whom are retired, the museum lacks many of the resources other museums might enjoy. They asked the question of how to improve the experience of the non-guided museum visitor experience. Since re-opening after the first Covid lockdowns, they had been trying to informally collect more feedback from visitors, benefitting from the thoughts shared in the visitor book as well as the great personal connections made by guides with tour groups. Everything that was shared, however informally, was fed into the TBI cycle. The findings led the team to propose to capture and share more information about each museum exhibit with guests by creating QR codes as part of the Mingei pilot installation.

What was the organisational and professional impact of the Mingei TBI cycles? 

As a method of generating new knowledge and creating practical improvements, the TBI cycle has been a great asset in the Mingei project. We found three relevant themes that emerged as a result of the TBI cycles, no matter how different the context of the other heritage partners might be. 

The first was around informal data collection opportunities. The second was on the security of the digital devices that are being used in the exhibition pilots in the three museums. How can a museum ensure that its technology remains safely in place while creating the best and most enjoyable experience for visitors? The third was around how to train museum professionals on how to use the applications and new digital technologies. 

In addition to these very positive shared learnings, we can summarise some of the outcomes that have resulted from the Mingei TBI cycles as follows: 

• Attracting new users and those interested in heritage craft.
• Improved communication within the museum settings.
• Improved communication in the Mingei project setting.
• Potential future impact as a result of the wider awareness of the Mingei project’s developed resources.
• Better communications, dissemination and exploitation planning and delivery in future projects.
• New solutions to tricky problems (because the TBI cycles are a new tool in the professionals’ ‘toolbox’).
• Improved user experience for museum visitors using the digital applications and exploring the museum setting.

How can we improve the use and impact of TBI cycles in processes of digital transformation? 

‘The whole TBI process was not a procedure that we had implemented before. Nevertheless, it proved to be very useful when it comes to providing answers in a participative – bottom up approach and it has helped us in defining improvements in our decision making processes.’ heritage partner feedback

The cyclical and iterative nature of TBI, as well as its focus on answering the research question as a team, makes it suitable in a context of proactive partnership and skills development in processes of digital transformation, where the focus is not only on the results but the impact created through the process. TBI is a tool that can answer, in a simple way, much bigger questions relating to key stakeholders and key questions facing heritage crafts organisations in the contemporary, digital, context.

Tips and recommendations for the effective use of the TBI methodology 

• – Present clear instructions and an overview of the process from the beginning for all involved. 
• – Get people involved who have the agency to implement the changes that will be recommended through the TBI cycle.
• – Involve as many colleagues as possible in the introduction to and delivery of TBI cycles, so that everyone feels comfortable to take part. 
• – Start small and progress to bigger questions over time. 
• – Keep it lean and light-touch (this is a key attribute of the TBI cycle over other processes). 

Read more about team-based inquiry in the Mingei Hands-on Guide!

Team-Based Inquiry is a light-touch evaluation and research methodology specifically for teams that produce audience-facing and/or informal learning products. In this first of three articles about Team-Based Inquiry, we introduce the methodology and how we are using it in Mingei. In our follow-up article, we share what the heritage partners and Waag have learned from the process, and, in the final article, we’ll evaluate its use in the project and set out recommendations for others who wish to use it as a learning and impact methodology. 

The background to Team-Based Inquiry 

Team-Based Inquiry (TBI) has been around for more than a decade. It was created by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), who have also produced a guide for museum educators on how to use the methodology. Much of how we apply the methodology in Mingei has been drawn from this guide, though we have also adapted it for our own use and published our own guide to support the use of TBI in heritage crafts contexts. 

TBI can be used for research and evaluation and improving processes and outputs in a focussed, low risk, light-touch, iterative and team-based setting. We decided to use TBI in Mingei in order to facilitate organisational learning and to give heritage partners control over the process of making impact for themselves (in terms of their digital transformation and involvement in the project) and for their audiences, the ultimate beneficiaries of their participation in the project. One of the key assets of the methodology is that it was designed to be light-touch and effective in bringing about tangible improvements, which is important if you’re already involved in a busy schedule of building apps and exhibitions, as is the case for the partners in Mingei.  

An overview to TBI: Question, Investigate, Analyse, Improve

As a method for evaluation and improvement, TBI makes use of a cycle of inquiry. This cycle of inquiry consists of four stages: Question, Investigate, Reflect, and Improve. 

Moving through these stages is a team effort. Some stages could be carried out by a smaller number of people; for other stages all team members should be involved. For digital heritage projects like Mingei, it’s great also to have technology partners involved where possible. TBI cycles can be conducted at any point in a project cycle but you should remember that the goal is to find actionable improvements. Be ready to make some changes!

We go through the four steps below, but encourage you to download the full guide (below) to find out more detail about the methodology.

1. Identify your question

We recommend kicking off by brainstorming around this prompt: What piece of information will really help us improve (the impact of) our project? If you can answer this, formulate a question that can help you find this information. According to NISE Net, your question should have at least three qualities: 

• You don’t know the answer
• It focuses on actionable and useful information
• It can be realistically investigated in the time and with the resources available

Once you have identified your question, it’s now time to get the data that could help you answer it. 

2. Investigate: find the answer to your question

As we already mentioned, TBI is a light-touch methodology. You might already have the data you need or you might be able to collect it in a very easy way. You should think about how much information (your sample) you need to collect to be able to answer your question. You should also think about the ethics of collecting this information and how to treat the data, and the participants from whom you collect the data, legally, ethically and respectfully. 

3. Reflect: analyse your information to answer your question

There are three steps to this stage: organise your data so that it’s easy to analyse, analyse the data for what they tell you about the research question, and interpret the patterns you have found in terms of what this means for your research question. You should also ask yourself: did you find anything unexpected, or did you find everything you thought you would? 

4. Improve

This is the point at which you should draw out some recommended improvements for your project. You might have to plan how to implement them as well as communicate the recommended improvements to your colleagues. 

Remember, you don’t need to make big changes to have a big impact. The beauty of TBI, as we’ve seen it in Mingei, is where some small changes can be made to really improve the experience of audiences using the digital applications in the exhibitions. 

How we use TBI in Mingei

In Mingei, each heritage partner has led between two to three TBI cycles. Each TBI cycle has taken on different topics, including how to find and work with volunteers; how to improve the experience of non-guided visitors to exhibitions; how to understand the levels of interest of museum visitors; and how to understand visitor movements in the museum. The Waag Mingei team has also conducted its own TBI cycle focussing on impactful and effective project communications and dissemination. 

Every three weeks, the three heritage partners, technology partners and Waag have met to discuss broader developments in the pilot exhibitions and to discuss and share what they have been learning in their TBI cycle. This moment of sharing what has been learned is like action research, even though this was not an original objective. We learned that however different the partners are, what they are learning is relevant to everyone. We share more about this in our next blog!

Read more about Team-Based Inquiry in our Hands-on Guide!

Waag and the Mingei partners have been collaborating intensely to optimise the project’s impact for the participating organisations and in wider heritage, crafts and technical communities (and beyond). In our previous blog, we shared key barriers and strategies to delivering impactful communication and dissemination. To move us forward, we now share ways for you to measure the impact of your communication, dissemination and exploitation (CDE), based on research conducted in the early months of Mingei and a more recent survey of professionals with experience in EU-funded projects. 

1. The impact of your communication 

To measure the success of online communication, the Mingei consortium followed the models and methods developed as part of the Let’s Get Real research project. In particular Let’s Get Real 1: How to evaluate online success, and Let’s Get Real 2: Measuring digital engagement. 

The list below presents a summary of some of these tips for you, alongside suggestions shared in our survey. 

• Analyse growth and interaction on social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram. The image above shows some specific indicators on some of these platforms. 
• Explore online analytics to get insight into who is engaging with your website content and how. Google analytics can help you collect data about the geographic locations of your visitors; how people find your content (e.g. through searching or social media); what people explore most often and for how long they stay; how your content is accessed (e.g. mobile or laptop); and the differences between the reach of organic and paid content, if you use this feature. 
• Assess if you have been mentioned on or by platforms that are key to your project: e.g. for Mingei, have we been featured on any crafts channels? 
• Assess to what extent your project hashtag(s) have been used across different channels (though it’s easier if this hashtag is only used in relation to your project, which might not always be the case). 
• What is your reach through your newsletters? Consider growth (and what encouraged growth) and compare interaction (through open and click-through rates) against other benchmarks, as well as your past results.
• Set a Google alert to track how often your project, activities or partners are discussed (and therefore contributing to sector or policy debates). Tools like Mention provide more extended versions of this functionality.
• If you have a platform people can sign-up to, assess how many users have signed up and when, and analyse how many of these users are active (e.g. regular users).

2. The impact of your dissemination

In Mingei, the consortium endeavours to offer open access to its scientific results reported in publications, to the relevant scientific data and to data generated throughout the project lifetime. 

Open access publishing can have more impact in terms of citations than publishing in closed-access journals. Where possible, we aim for “gold” open access. Gold means that the output is published in a fully open online archive for free and immediately. Wherever “gold” is not possible, “green” open access is pursued. This is when initial publishing may not be open, but free alternative access is provided by the author (e.g. in an institutional repository). The target is to maximise the impact on scientific excellence in ways that include publication in open access yet highly appreciated journals as well as blogs and publicly available White Papers. 

The impact of your publication relies to a great extent on the reputation of the journal in which you publish. Taylor and Francis suggest that you should consider the reputation of the editorial board in your community, the readership of the journal, and its traction with policymakers. 

When reporting on the impact of your dissemination activities, you might mention the impact factor of the journals in which you have published; the number of downloads or views of the research; and the number of citations. For the citation analysis, you might have to check several databases to review how often you have been cited. 

Mingei’s measurable outputs include:

1. Scientific impact:
   The consortium contributed with more than 35 scientific publications in prestigious journals and conferences in the area of Cultural Heritage. All the papers are in Gold or Green Open Access.
   All publications have been uploaded on OpenAir Zenodo. Furthermore, community pages were created in Zenodo and ResearchGate for the Mingei project and all publications are listed on these pages (besides the Mingei project website).
2. Tool adoptions by stakeholders: 10
3. Digital assets integrated: 10000
4. New digitisations: 2000
5. Heritage crafts digitised: 7
6. Adopted or curated content and digital assets in international repositories: 10 (but many in backlog)
7. Contribution to public knowledge (i.e. number of Wikipedia entries or edits): 3

You should also report how many conferences or events you are presenting at, whether physical or in person. You should be able to track how many people were in the (digital or physical) room when you presented and how many might now have awareness of your results by reading the conference programme (that is, the total conference sign-up). 

3. The impact of exploitation: look at impact in terms of outcomes and not just outputs

All the usual metrics (likes, comments […]) can be quite meaningless. Tell a story using some of those, but focus on impact and outcomes. 

A common theme in the responses to our survey was that the impact of CDE is not just about numbers (the outputs). Rather, impact can – where possible and where capacity exists – be measured more qualitatively, looking to quality metrics over quantity. It is generally thought that an impact narrative is strongest when you can ‘make a story out of it’ and when qualitative indicators are presented together with more quantitative results. 

Some more qualitative indicators that were suggested to us relating to exploitation include: 

• Assessing for how long, by whom and for what purposes the project resources are being used after the project ends.
• The number and type of project/research collaborations that begin as a result of the project.
• Measuring understanding and satisfaction of the users of the project resources.

Survey respondents also suggested indicators that could help you to think about the impact of the project’s resources and the exploitation of these, including, any changes in practice as a result of using the project resources and professional development amongst partners and participants. It is challenging to measure influence on projects on policy change as this sort of change takes time. Nonetheless, some examples were shared where materials published openly and for broad audiences were picked up and used by policy makers as well as in education. 

Was it useful for someone in the end? How many people have used it, quoted it, got inspired by it? 

Interestingly, one survey respondent reported project outputs being politicised and misused, but most commonly, we heard that it was usually difficult to discern usage and influence after the project ends – perhaps because people are already moving on to the next project and lack the capacity to reflect and measure change. 

Measuring the potential impact of exploitation in Mingei

‘Having [crafts] knowledge on the [Mingei] Platform is not the goal, but the goal is also to exploit it, meaning that the presentation modalities that we build can help automate the process of creating educational materials, creating demonstrations, and so on’. Xenophon Zabulis (FORTH) at the Mingei Day online seminar

In the Mingei project, we are focusing on measuring impact for the partners involved in the project. At the same time, we have also reported on the potential impact through exploitation in the following areas: 

• Capacity building for heritage professionals (where 83 professionals have already benefited from a curriculum developed for the DigiTraining project)
• Creative industries exploitation and impact (where we have seen how technology and crafts combine in this example of a digitally enhanced woven handbag)
• Future research projects and closer research collaboration (including two Greek crafts projects, close working with Europeana and the CRAFTED project, and plans to further extend the technology)
• The possibility to bring crafts to previously less-catered for audiences (including creating technology that can be reused for the benefit of those who are hearing disabled or blind, e.g. in the sign-language narration in the mastic pilot in Chios)
• Future heritage crafts education (where training materials was captured for apprentices in each of the Mingei crafts contexts)
• Immersive learning experiences for museum visitors (with the open-source technology in terms of crafts representation and its gamification being made available for further development)
• The reuse of the crafts content for any number of uses (because the content is now published in several open source platforms, including, for example, the Mingei Open Platform, Europeana and Zenodo). 

Such reuse has the potential to support sustainable tourism and destination management, and a stronger, more competitive Europe. 

Figure 3. Design pattern game (left) and punch card game (right), part of the silk pilot at HdS, Krefeld, Germany. 

Final impact measurement tips

We have learned that people are striving to tell more meaningful stories about the impact of their CDE activities and the project’s outputs and learnings. We finish this article with five top tips to help you measure and report on your project’s impact right from the start to the very end. 

1. Start off with a benchmark – that is to say, know where you started from and when! Capture change on a regular basis (e.g. every six months) or as often as you are required to report on your progress. 
2. Do your research right at the start. For example, what channels should you engage with? What hashtags can you use? What hashtag could you make for your project to assess its relevance?
3. Use a tool like the Europeana Impact Playbook to help you think about who you will have impact for and how you can measure this. 
4. Report to your funders in a standardised way – set out how you will report at the beginning of the project and follow-through with this so that they can easily see the progress in your communications and dissemination. 
5. Maintain a log of direct and indirect impact that all project partners can contribute to. This could be as simple as a Google document where you share examples of tweets, publications or citations related to your project outputs. 

Bibliography

Malde, S., Finnis, J., Kennedy, A., Ridge, M., Villaespesa, E. & Chan, S. (2013), Let’s Get Real 2. ‘A journey towards understanding and measuring digital engagement’. Report from the second Culture24 Action Research Project.

https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6593572/lets-get-real-2-colour-pdf-11-2-meg?da=y (date accessed: 18/05/2020)

Finnis, J., Chan, S. & Clements, R. (2011), Let’s Get Real. ‘How to Evaluate Online Success?’ Report from the Culture24 Action Research Project.

https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/3148918/culture24-howtoevaluateonlinesuccess-2-pdf-september-19-2011-11-15-am-2-5-meg?da=y&dnad=y (date accessed: 18/05/2020)

Finne, H., Day, A., Piccaluga, A., Spithoven, A., Walter, P. & Wellen, D. (2011), A Composite Indicator for Knowledge Transfer. Report from the European Commission’s Expert Group on Knowledge Transfer Indicators. European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/kti-report-final.pdf (date accessed: 18/05/2020)

As part of the Mingei project, we researched this important question by using a Teams-Based Inquiry (TBI) methodology. By looking at the available literature and collecting thoughts from our peers and partners on what works and what does not, we wanted to pull together recommendations on how we can create the most impact through communication and dissemination and, importantly, strengthen the final months of the Mingei project and its legacy.

In this post, we set out the problems we found, followed by some solutions with key tips on how and what to improve. Though we focus mostly on EU-funded culture, heritage and society-related projects, much (if not all) of what we learn can be taken on board by projects of any size and focus. In a second post, we share how you can best plan and measure the impact of your communication, dissemination and exploitation (CDE) activities – after all, this is a requirement for most European-funded projects!

Eight problems with the current state of play

I worked in 20+ projects but I wasn’t impressed by any of them in terms of communication or dissemination. Survey respondent.

1. Three or four year funding cycles are sometimes a risk for knowledge retention and knowledge sharing, limiting the project impact. 
2. Funding and capacity are not (always) available after the end of the project to promote the project outputs and project partners see the activities as finished once the planned activities stop. 
3. There is little reflection or evaluation of CDE, which means that improvements are not implemented and good practice is rarely shared.
4. Communication and dissemination are sometimes considered to be add-ons to the project. Public communication and wider dissemination were noted as some of seven key challenges in the interim evaluation of Horizon 2020 (European Commission, 2017). 
5. Responsibility for CDE might be left to the communications coordinator, who, being a communications professional, might have little insight into the research underway. 
6. On the other hand, responsibility might be left to a researcher with little to no experience of identifying and communicating to target audiences and who is unlikely to have time or the opportunity to stay up-to-date with trends and good practice in CDE, or have a network upon which they can draw. 
7. Projects often don’t identify target audiences at an early project stage. As a result, they don’t know how and when to create impact by sharing project updates and outputs with their audiences. How can you talk to your audience in the language that resonates with them if you don’t know who they are? 
8. Project outputs are often not designed for their audience. They might use internal language (‘why would any audience care about this?’) and be ‘inward-looking’. Materials may be badly designed and too complex, the language might be too ‘clinical’ or ‘corporate’ and the text too long. The media chosen might not be suitable for the audience they are trying to reach. 

Solution 1. Know your target audience: talk to and with them

All project partners should get involved in communication and dissemination activities. Each of them should identify a list of contacts from the target group of the project that they could engage from the beginning of the project. Survey respondent

From the very start, you should be leading a project that addresses a ‘real need’. When this is the case, CDE is very simple. In some cases, it might be that the need is technical innovation which is harder to pinpoint to one specific stakeholder beyond the scientific or tech sector. 

In either case, you need to think far beyond a social media plan. A comprehensive and successful CDE strategy is much more than Twitter! 

Tips for planning and strategy (before or at the beginning of the project)

• Ensure that you have wide project buy-in for your CDE strategy: get everyone involved right at the beginning to co-create the strategy and list of target stakeholders.
• Clearly set out the responsibilities and expectations regarding CDE for all partners.
• Ensure that your CDE strategy or plan is clear and easily understood.
• Brainstorm and plan moments and ways in which you can reach your target audiences during the project. 
• Invest in your branding and visual identity, including your project logo. 

Solution 2. Tell open, impactful, people-centred stories with substance 

Be down-to-earth when it comes to project description, precise with language and format, and include palpable results, not just perceived benefit to the final, end-customers. Survey respondent

Storytelling and narrative-building is key to communicating and disseminating your project outputs. This helps make what you share memorable. How you frame these stories is also important. We need to show ‘the human side of a project, organisation, brand’. Outputs should be open and reflective (sharing, for example, ‘learnings and little failures’). Don’t go ‘grandiose’ – keep your language simple and humble. 

Try to connect emotionally with your audience. You can start with telling the stories of those involved in the project and those benefiting from your work, for example. When talking about impact, ensure that you are really talking about impact. Share the data but also draw on testimonials and real-life experiences. What matters is that you share content with ‘substance’. We learned from our survey that there have been cases where projects got the visuals right but lacked the depth of content behind them. 

Tips for engaging with your stakeholders during the project

• Don’t expect good relationships with your audiences at the end of the project if they are not nurtured throughout. You need to plan regular communication throughout the project lifespan. 
• Take your project to your audiences. 
  • Plan demonstrations of your work and design these for the specific audiences. Think about how these could be delivered by ‘users who had their problems solved thanks to these results’. 
  • Plan get-togethers, online or onsite, where you can demonstrate and discuss project outputs. 
  • Consider how to safely bring people together in a room, where possible.
• Don’t only project your content to your audiences: get their perspectives and make it meaningful and a genuine conversation.
• Collect and share other relevant content, not just that related to your project. 
• Consider how you can avoid the ‘deliverables format and publish in documents that people like to read and share’.
• Encourage partners to act as ‘ambassadors’ and ensure that they remain active in communications through the project. 
• Invest in paid social media opportunities. 
• Connect with local stakeholders at a local level. 

Solution 3. Plan long-term project legacy in a practical way

There is a virtual graveyard of thousands of these websites of finished projects, not used because no one is taking care of them as project periods have ended. Survey respondent. 

All partners should be involved in discussions and planning for your project impact at the start of your project. You should already know for whom and how you’ll create impact but now you need to focus on practical ways to create impact as your project is finishing and then after the project finishes. The recommendations below cover these four stages. 

Create momentum at the close of a project

• Think personal. Send personal emails to those for whom the project is likely to have a big impact, e.g. specific contacts in cultural communities or policy-makers. They’re also more likely to take notice if the content is ‘transferable’.  
• Share your results in ways that make them scalable or adaptable. Publish your outputs using open licences (e.g. Creative Commons) so that they can be exploited and used by others. Being open alone isn’t enough – you must also think about how others will find the content (Campos and Codina, 2021). 
• Revamp your project website as the project archive. Bring the most important content to the fore and make it easy for the main outputs and ‘success stories’ to be found. 
• Think about your audience when designing your outputs, e.g. keep it short and concise for policy-makers. 
• Actively promote the project outputs via partner dissemination channels and not just through the project website and social media. 
• Consider if you’ll need an external mediator between you and policy makers – they could help ‘interpret’ your results and then make sure they are ‘appealing to the recipient’ (Rodari et al, 2012). 
• Consider how you can connect or include your final event (if one is planned) to an existing conference, where you might reach an even bigger audience and save time and money in terms of event planning. 
• Peer and sector dissemination channels can act as multipliers: harness your relationships and share your project outputs with them. 

If it is difficult to have partners commit to communication and dissemination during the project lifecycle, it is even more difficult after. Survey respondent. 

Create legacy and impact after the project finishes

• Actively target policy-makers on a longer-term basis if your recommendations include policy-change. Don’t just expect change to happen without some effort on your side.
• Make your outputs available on open repositories (e.g. Zenodo) and in particular, in those related to your field, if these exist. 
• Keep the website and social media alive. Consider sharing responsibility for managing these between partners in short chunks of time (e.g. three or six months). 
• Openly share your future project ideas or recommendations so that others can take these forward, even if you won’t be involved. 
• Consider drawing the good practice from related projects into one resource or add your results or resources into another project. One example of this is the Waag Co-Creation Navigator, which draws together content from multiple projects.

Bibliography

• Accelopment (n.d). Make an impact. Available from: https://accelopment.com/services/comm-diss-ex/ Accessed 4 April 2022.
• EIT Raw Materials, Project Communication and Dissemination Guideline (considers storytelling, asks good questions regarding dissemination, etc; print, online and events as the pre-Covid trio of dissemination activities). Available from: https://eitrawmaterials.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/EIT-RawMaterials_Project-Communication-and-Dissemination-Guideline.pdf Accessed 4 April 2022.
• European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Key findings from the Horizon 2020 interim evaluation, Publications Office, 2017, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/708544 
• European Commission (2021), Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation. Why they all matter and what is the difference. Available from: https://rea.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-11/Communication%2C%20Dissemination%20and%20%20Exploitation-2021.pdf Accessed 4 April 2022.
• LEITAT (2019a). What makes a good communication, dissemination and exploitation plan of a research project? Part 1 – Communication. Available from: https://projects.leitat.org/what-makes-a-good-communication-dissemination-and-exploitation-plan-of-a-research-project-part-1-2/ Accessed 4 April 2022.
• LEITAT (2019b). What makes a good communication, dissemination and exploitation plan of a research project? Part 2 – Dissemination. Available from: https://projects.leitat.org/what-makes-a-good-communication-dissemination-and-exploitation-plan-of-a-research-project-part-2-dissemination/ Accessed 4 April 2022.
• LEITAT (2019c). What makes a good communication, dissemination and exploitation plan of a research project? Part 3 – Exploitation. Available from: https://projects.leitat.org/what-makes-a-good-communication-dissemination-and-exploitation-plan-of-a-research-project-part-3-exploitation/ Accessed 4 April 2022.
• Campos, A. and Codina, L. (2021) Communication, dissemination and exploitation strategy analysis in Horizon 2020: keys to multiply the impact of european projects. Prisma Social. 2021;32(1):293-319. Accessed on 12 January 2021. Available at https://repositori.upf.edu/bitstream/handle/10230/47027/Campos_PSJ_comm.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
• Rodari, P., Bultitude, K. and Desborough, K. (2017). Science communication between researchers and policy makers. Reflections from a European project, Jcom 11(03) (2012) C07. Accessed 12 January 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/2.11030307
• Eureka (2021). Beste verfügbare Praktiken und Kanäle für die Kommunikation und Verbreitung in Projekten mit mehreren Akteuren. Available from: https://h2020eureka.eu/de//news/best-available-practices-and-channels-for-communication-and-dissemination-in-maps. Accessed on 5 April 2022.

‘The RISE IMET conference gathered researchers, academics and practitioners working on emerging technologies applied in museums and cultural heritage. In the presentation, I discussed the approach for evaluation and impact assessment of digital heritage projects, which we introduced in the project Mingei, together with Merel van der Vaart, on behalf of Waag.

Evaluation of technology-mediated experiences of users qualifies as one of the most important challenges in digital heritage. Most often, evaluation approaches focus on the final product or outcome of a project. Within Mingei, Waag advocated for an approach that monitors and examines what is being learned during the project. The process of collaborative learning that takes place in working with different partners, is complex and merits to be monitored and documented as well. It is for this reason that within Mingei we introduced the concept of institutional and organisational learning.

‘Within Mingei, Waag advocated for an approach that monitors and examines what is being learned during the project.’

This means that Waag will examine, monitor and document the institutional and organisational learning that take place in the project, in addition to monitoring all utility, usability and user experience (UX) studies. We put forward an approach that draws inspiration by the Generic Learning Outcomes framework (as applied in museums and heritage sites) and the method of Team Based Inquiry. The Generic Learning Outcomes model advocates that learning can manifest itself as enjoyment, inspiration, and creativity. At the same time, Team-Based Inquiry cycles carried out by heritage and technology partners, allow to identify a pertinent question, and investigate how a program, project or activity can be readily improved.

Our work was at the origin of various questions from the session participants around articulating, combining and presenting evidence from findings around learning. Learning which occurs both as a result of using Mingei project digital outcomes, as well as learning as a multidimensional and multi-experiential outcome from getting involved in a complex, multi-disciplinary digital heritage project. You can read the abstracts of other presentations and keynote speeches of the conference here.

What is next?

Mingei plans for reaching out to like-minded digital heritage and digital media, learning and education practitioners during the annual CECA (Committee for Cultural Education and Cultural Action) Conference. This event will be hybrid and take place in Belgium and online in October 2021. The conference theme is ‘Co-creation inside and outside the museum’.’

Written by Areti Damala, freelance academic heritage researcher for Waag.

The history of craft goes back almost to the history of man: sharpening stone, carving wood, weaving fabric were amongst the first things human beings had to master to make their way up to our days. Most of the objects that we use in our life today are still the results of highly-skilled craftsmanship. Even those objects that are made with the help of sophisticated machines, would not be possible without the masterful skills of people who designed the machines and their usage in the process.

Preserving crafts, even those that are no longer in use today, is paramount to preserve our history and the many wonderful techniques that we have invented to tame matter and make the world a pleasant and comfortable place to live in. Preserving and representing crafts is the mission of Mingei. One of the major challenges that the Mingei project is facing, is to use computer-based technologies to represent an exquisitely, intrinsically human activity. How do we digitize something that is so intangible and dynamic?

Representing crafts using state-of-the-art technology

To achieve this ambitious goal, we use a three-step approach at Mingei: we collect, we connect and we open up. In each step, we put Information Technology at the service of the step’s goals, employing a wide range of techniques to maximize the quality of the result.

We collect

Humans are the primary sources of the knowledge about craft that Mingei collects. We talk with craftsmen and craftswomen to hear their stories. What needs to be done in the craft they master, and when, and where, and how? People knowledgeable about the crafts are our primary source of knowledge. We run co-creation sessions with them, in which we all interact to obtain from them all they know about the craft they master. And we record what the people we work with say, using digital audio-visual tools and techniques to obtain the most from our interaction with them. But we also track their movements, placing sensors on key parts of their bodies. This way we are able to document the most minute details of their actions during crafting, both verbally and physically.

The secondary sources of knowledge that we look at are books, articles, images, movies, web sites and so on, that report knowledge relevant to Mingei. Our humanist scholars, including anthropologists, historians and sociologists, all with an expertise in craft, study and research to learn what are the most relevant of those sources. They then explore them, to extract the relevant stories and notions which they then encode in digital form. All this knowledge, gathered from primary and secondary sources in digital form is imported into the Mingei knowledge base, which is the digital repository where the project stores the knowledge that it needs to preserve crafts.

During the knowledge collection phase, the pilots first provided pre-existing digital content, such as photographic documentation of museum exhibits, video documentaries and curated literature. Next, we created new digitisations by photographic documentation of each pilot sites, including the museums, machines, pre-existing photographs, catalogues, workshops, etc. All kinds of objects, such as weaving looms, garments, mastic trees, mastic villages, tools, traditional clothing, and glass instruments were digitized with 3D reconstruction technology. With use of motion capture technology, we recorded the meticulous and skilled movements of crafts practitioners. This collection of knowledge on the three pilot crafts of Mingei is supplemented with the knowledge from open repositories and online resources.

The video above is an example of 3D reconstruction. Here we see a handheld machine that is used for the cultivation of mastic on Chios. The image at the top of this article shows another 3D reconstruction, featuring a woman during the process of cleaning mastic on Chios.

We connect

The knowledge collected in the first step is formed by many elements of diverse nature, each addressing some particular aspect of some particular craft. Precious as it is, this knowledge does form yet a set of stories that can be used to document crafts: the elements it consists of need to be connected into coherent wholes that convey meaningful messages to the Mingei user audience. Performing this connection is the objective of the second step. This step uses semantic information as a medium and narratives as the tool to connect the knowledge elements. That is, we use stories as coherent wholes that convey the knowledge about crafts, and in particular stories shaped as semantic networks, to make them as readable and as easy to understand as possible using today’s information technology.  Examples are stories about the Jacquard’s loom, the Krefeld textile industry, the history of Bontemps’ life, the construction of Crystal Palace, the narrative of Isidore of Chios, the story of mastic chewing gum, and many more.

Every story created by Mingei is a rich network, consisting of two basic elements: the schema of the craft, and a set of executions of the schema. The schema is a description of the activities needed to make that craft, and of the order in which these activities must be done, that is, which activities need to be done before, or after, or in parallel to which activity. Like a blueprint or a manual of a craft.

An execution of the schema represents an actual performance of the craft, as a set of real actions carried out by some craft master in a certain place and at a certain time, in the order prescribed by the schema. Both schema and executions are represented as semantic networks, that is set of RDF (Resource Description Framework) triples. Some of these triples link activities and events to the knowledge elements that document them. These networks are then lent to the third step of the Mingei approach.

We open up

The RDF triples produced in the second step encode knowledge in a way that is known only to the people which created them. To communicate this knowledge to the different types of users Mingei addresses, a non-negligible effort is required. This effort is done in the third step of the Mingei approach. Here again, we resort to co-creation: we run sessions with museum experts to design apps that will allow users to discover, access, understand and enjoy the knowledge about crafts we have mustered. This is the way Mingei opens knowledge about crafts to the outside world. At the moment, we are co-designing immersive digital experiences, such as an app that enables the virtual creation of patterns and textiles, a digital city exploration of Krefeld, a mastic cultivation training app, and a digital glass experience.

At the same time, we make sure our semantic networks will be safely preserved for long-term access in the future by applying digital preservation techniques to them. In essence, we add further knowledge to our network and we archive them in special archives, so that they will be accessible and usable for a long time after the Mingei project is over.

This video shows an example of the digital experiences that Mingei is currently developing. The game is set up in the past, in the physical landscape of Chios created through satellite depth maps and exploits the aerial 3D scans of Chios villages created by Mingei.

Timeline

In order to maximize its performance, Mingei is running the three steps in parallel, with the beginning of the steps scaled in time, so that each step is able to receive its input from the previous one. At present, Mingei has completed the first two steps on all three pilots, and has begun the third one. The first finalized digital experience will be launched soon, so stay tuned to hear the news!

Written by Carlo Meghini (CNR)

How do you know what impact the product you are developing will have? Your initial answer to this question might be: You don’t know and, unless you are clairvoyant, you can’t know. If you consider impact something that can only occur once a product is finished, you would be right to say this.

However, the Mingei team believes that a product, or to be more precise, the project delivering the product, can have significant impact during its development phase. We use the same definition of impact as Europeana uses in their Impact Playbook for Museums, Libraries, Archives and Galleries. Impact consists of “the changes that occur for stakeholders or in society as a result of activities (for which the organisation is accountable.” In this context, we focus on impact that might occur as a result of growing awareness amongst our target audiences, the impact of our scientific publications on the academic community, and the organisational learning that happens as a result of Mingei collaborations.

We decided to measure and work to optimise impact throughout the lifecycle of the project, rather than merely measuring the end result. While developing our tools, our understanding of their capabilities will shift and grow, making it possible to better understand the potential impact and to take action to optimise this potential as part of our development process. So, how are we doing this?

Work as a team

Rather than appointing one or two people in charge of monitoring impact, we decided to take a more proactive approach and work in several small teams to actively improve the impact our work may have on our key stakeholders. Our heritage partners are particularly important in this process, as they are most closely in contact with (some of) the potential future users of our tools.

To make sure we progress in pace with the project, keeping our research relevant for whatever phase we are in, we are using a method called Team Based Inquiry, or TBI. TBI was developed by the Nanoscience Informal Science Education Network and was initially used to continuously assess and improve (nano)science education projects. It makes use of a cyclical process, consisting of four steps: question, investigate, analyse and improve. This allows you to be topical and progress in your research, while also aiming for continuous improvements.

We will use the TBI cycle throughout the project, where our heritage partners will each be leading their own cyclical processes, with input and contributions from technical partners when needed. During the first phases of the Mingei project, we will focus on developing relationships with our key stakeholders, as well as better understanding their needs. Later on, the same approach will be used to focus on skills development. What skills do key players have, or need, that can help make the Mingei tools a success? By better understanding key stakeholders and their skills, we can together work towards improving the tools we will offer them.

Monitoring impact

Finally, we will also be monitoring the impact the Mingei project will have on our heritage partners. Not only because they will be important users of the Mingei tools in their own right, but also because by better understanding the impact the project has on them, we will be able to optimise our tools for use by other heritage professionals. Each heritage partner has finished their first TBI cycle, delving into a question they deemed relevant to their situation at that time. Although these first cycles were seen as a test run of sorts, the results were very promising.

Written by Merel van der Vaart from Waag

To digitise and transfer knowledge about the (in)tangible aspects of crafts; that is the goal of our European project Mingei. Already from that single sentence, a lot of questions arise.

How do we define the term ‘craft’? What is considered a craft, compared to art or industry? Who has the knowledge and expertise on a craft, and who do we need to transfer this knowledge to? How do you identify and capture intangible aspects of crafts? How can you digitise knowledge and expertise that is so inherently physical? And what is the best way to transfer knowledge to specific audiences, in specific contexts?

Silk weaving, mastic harvesting and glass blowing

We have to understand that these questions can be answered in many different ways, because they can all be influenced by the context in which they are asked. For that reason, Mingei is an interesting project. It is based on three pilots, each connected to a different craft, to research these questions.

Early July, I got to go to Paris for a day to visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers, that is hosting the pilot on glass blowing. My main objective; to get to know the context and scope of their research and design questions in the Mingei project, so that we can find the best way to support them in their process.

The challenge of co-creation

In the context of each pilot, we will introduce a co-creation process to help research the questions. Waag is responsible for that introduction and will support and coach these craft partners in that process. The craft partner will host activities with local craftsmen, museum staff, stakeholders, visitors and other people with relevant knowledge and expertise that will contribute to shaping the content for digitalisation, and the conceptualisation of solutions for knowledge transfer.

Co-creation is a new approach for most of the project partners, which means it requires some changes in their regular practice. Change is always difficult, especially when you are working in a big institution, where you have to deal with many factors outside of your control. So, the best way for me to support the partner, is to better understand their context. And since there is a direct and quick train from Amsterdam to Paris, it was an easy decision to go visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers and see for myself.

Eye for context

During my visit in Paris, I got to see the set-up of the museum and the way a variety of crafts we’re already displayed. This helped me understand the possibilities and limitations the museum had to deal with. I also got a bit of insight into the day-to-day practice of the museum staff and the type of visitors they would cater to. I was able to do some small exercises with both the curators and the educational staff, so that we would better understand the ambitions that were floating around in the museum, in relation to the Mingei project. All these things are important to know when setting up a co-creation process. The more aware you are of your ‘limiting’ factors and scope, the better you are able to find the space for experimentation.

It was a fruitful visit, both for me, representing Waag, and for the museum – since we both have a better understanding of what we might be able to achieve in the project. In December, we will visit the museum again. By that time, they should have some nice co-creation sessions under their belt, and I am looking forward to their new insights and ideas.

Written by Meia Wippoo, Waag