Resources

This toolkit contains resources and guides for creating and working with spherical media. This will enable you to create virtual tours for web, mobile and installations, which provide an immersive and engaging experience.

The collection of artefacts and material culture lies at the heart of many museums work in promoting cultural heritage. Yet any physical object can only be in one place at a time. This is where the digital domain offers so much. Through digitising objects, the digital representation can be easily copied, transferred, edited and manipulated.

The Irish partner Donegal County Museum has many years of experience working with communities and was responsible for that part of the work package. An expert in the field was hired to write a comprehensive manual for cultural heritage co-production based on CINE case studies. The manual was completed and is available in two formats – as a pdf for download and on-line at coproductionguide.com/. The manual can also be viewed at www.cinecommunities.org where all the resources developed by the partners in this work package are accessible.

Can we have fun with our cultural heritage? Why shouldn’t we “play around” with the cultural heritage if it increases understanding and interest? A cultural heritage which is inaccessible and no one can enjoy does not lead to new knowledge or innovation. The current global epidemic has shown us the importance of approaching cultural heritage in new and different ways. One way is through games and gamification.

A Wiki is a web resource that allows user to edit through an easy to use web based interface. The CINE GATE wiki contains information about the things contained with in the CINE Gate database. When a new item is uploaded a wiki page is created for it. These wiki pages can then be edited by users of the website to include additional information and corrector change the existing information.

The CINE GATE virtual museum infrastructure enables the creation and use of digital assets for the promotion and preservation of cultural and natural heritage. To enable these digital resources to be created, located and used metadata which describes the assets in a standardised and clear way is required. This toolkit enables users to create meta data, to link it with digital resources and to enable these resources to be stored in CINE GATES digital archive system.

Trail Apps provide a way that museums and other heritage organisations can connect with visitors who are travelling through their hinterlands. However, commissioning a trail app may be a mystical and expensive option involving engagement with technical specialists. The Smart Spheres platform consists of three parts the package creation system, package management system and the app framework. The parts of this system can all have multiple implementations with the app framework currently having three.  The live Unreal Selector system allows the user to access the reconstructions online with other online users. The Unreal Selector system is available from here. Once the system is installed and the user has logged in they then download the reconstruction and then connect to the server to interact with it with other people.

The Icelandic partner Locatify is a pioneer SME in building cloud-based CMS that makes it easy for anyone to create and manage location-based app projects such as indoor and outdoor tour guides and treasure hunt games. In the process of the CINE project they worked with other partners on testing and developing their system for different needs and goals in relation to communicating and co-producing cultural and natural heritage. Based on this work the CMS was updated and improved. The CMS is available on locatify.com/login/ and can be used to build apps for both Android and iOs. On the website there are also tutorials to teach beginners to use the CMS.

With our Smart 360° Tours App creator, you can quickly and easily transform your content into a 360° virtual tour app for Android or iPhone.

Ulster University in Northern Ireland managed the technical tasks in the work package in collaboration with the University of St. Andrews. Based on the case studies in Ireland and Iceland guidelines for mapping and for digital documentation were created and lists made of data sources and open source tools or interfaces that can be used by communities to valorise their cultural heritage to a wide audience and stakeholders. All this is presented on the website cinecommunities.org.

Virtual time travel is increasingly becoming accessible to heritage organisations and museums as a way of presenting the past. Commodity hardware is now capable of presenting a high fidelity experience, and it is possible to design walk up and use exhibits that leverage now established digital literacies.

The Virtual Museum Infrastructure and Toolkit, makes it easy to create virtual museums, provides an exemplar virtual museum, CINEGATE and provides a public location for CINE’s digital outputs. The VMI supports the creation of virtual museums. It helps build capacity for the promotion of natural and cultural heritage and removes barriers to digital curation empowering communities to promote their cultural and natural heritage in installations, on the web, and through mobile platforms. The VMI provides support for content creation, ingestion, archival and curation. In doing so enables the curation of augmented, cross and mixed reality applications. An instance of the VMW2 CINEGATE provides a platform that helped the creation and dissemination of digital outputs across workpackages. The toolkit links technology developed in all the workpackages to create a cohesive output that addressed the projects aims and challenges.

Going Live on social media during lockdown has been one of the most effective ways of engaging with audiences and communicating heritage. From a simple tour live beamed live from a phone, through video conferences to more complex studio broadcasts. Here we will look at webinars, Live tours and broadcasting.

Communities have access to digital multimedia tools and platforms that can be utilised to help preserve their natural and cultural heritage. The CINE Communities website provides a series of ‘getting started’, guides for a range of digital tools we believe can provide value to community heritage projects.

Virtual Tours offer virtual travel in time and space. A virtual traveller can explore historic buildings, dramatic landscapes of the discoveries of archaeology without leaving their home. Creating a virtual tour enables audiences to connect with heritage during lockdown and provides a valuable permanent resource.

Artefacts lie at the heart of museums, they provide gateways to imagine how people lived in the past, to the stories and lives associated with the object. Yet at the best of times an artefact can only be in one place and at the worst we are locked out from that place. Digitisation offers the potential for representations of artefacts to be accessed from anywhere.

Millions of people use social media everyday, it’s the easiest way to connect with existing and new audiences. In this session we look at how to communicate heritage through social media whilst maximising impact.

Maps provide a great way to look at the world and to organise heritage information. Digital maps are better still because they let us link engaging media to relevant locations and take people on virtual journeys. People use digital maps like Google Maps every day, making it easy for them to join virtual heritage journeys we make.

There is something special about live. Whether it be sporting events, music or theatre. Repeated or recorded versions all have something missing. With social media it is now possible to do our own ‘Do It Yourself live broadcasting’.

Through digital reconstructions of historic, places scenes and artefacts visitor can travel through time and space to experience and explore both natural and cultural heritage. Walking the streets of pre reformation Edinburgh, climbing to a Pictish hill fort or sampling the wonder of a medieval Cathedral all become possible with virtual reality.

Working in the digital domain, it is easy to make copies and for these to be shared. The Creative Commons provides a framework which can be used for licensing the way digitised heritage is used. Wikipedia uses creative commons licensing to provides a global repository of knowledge. We will look at the advantages and methods of connecting heritage into this repository.

A virtual museum can provide a framework for organising digital content and for putting on exhibits and exhibitions. Done right it should help connect communities with their heritage and provide a platform for projecting that heritage to wider communities and audiences. It should provide resources which empower volunteers and professionals to create digital exhibits and exhibitions.

How can we use digital technologies to provide resilience and enhance user experience? Whether it be immersive virtual reality, taking the museum into the home, creating museums without walls or providing digital interpretation in the museum how can we make safe resilient solutions that engage audiences. We will look at how creating virtual museums that stream media to visitors phones in the museum and in their home may provide the resilient engaging solutions appropriate for today.

This session is all about working with images to create digital galleries which can be accessed from home or within the museum. We will show how working with standards International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and the Dublin Core Meta Data initiative (DCMI) we can make stunning galleries of images which can be accessed within the museum.

Whether it be creating an aural history archive, broadcasting a podcast or recording a soundscape, audio enriches and informs our engagement with heritage. In this session we look at how to record and capture audio, how to post process audio recordings to improve quality, edit content and introduce effects. We also look at how and when to use audio on Social Archive sights, through social media and through podcasts. This session features a case study of how podcasts have been used to communicate heritage in the “Highland Objects” project.

In this session will focus on the essentials of recording, editing and broadcasting videos for promoting heritage. This will include how to guides for recording and streaming video. We will look at freely available software such as Avidemux, Blender, Kdenlive and Open Broadcaster Studio. WE will investigate how video is used to highlight digital artefacts. We will also look at using Open Broadcaster Software to make recordings with your computer and to stream content to social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Twitch. There will be an exciting case study of how live broadcasts have been used to communicate Heritage at Home.

COVID 19 has seen Live streaming of events and participation in online workshops become core activities in engaging with heritage both natural and cultural. In this workshop we will look at how to set up a live stream, strategies for organising a workshop and ways to ensure audiences and participants are engaged with.

In this year of Coasts and Waters, making digital models of our coasts, above and below water enables us to explore both natural and cultural heritage. The capabilities of game engines mean we can now make and explore digital models of landscapes hundreds of square kilometres in size and what is more we can explore them with an average gaming laptop or computer.

Creating models of digital artefacts, making a digital gallery, or doing a full-scale reconstruction of a castle can either stand on their own as heritage resources or be placed with a wider landscape. In this workshop we will look both at the resources, modelling and workflows that will enable us to create compelling digital reconstructions of historic scenes, places and artefacts. We will also look at adding animations and characters, to breathe life into your reconstructions and to add interactive interpretation.

In this workshop we will look at how to design and make virtual reality exhibits and exhibitions. We will share experience in designing, creating and using virtual reality exhibits. The workshop will showcase case studies from the CINE Northern Peripheries project and the CUPIDO North Sea Region projects as well as Virtual Reality Exhibits in the Highlands and Islands.

Smartphones come with their own touch screen, audio and computation and when somebody walks into a museum there is a good chance they will have one in their pocket! This enables us to think about the museum as a starting point for exploring and curating the local area. Downloading content in the museum at home will set visitors up for following trails, finding geo caches or cross reality time travel. In this workshop we will look at examples of mobile apps and frameworks that make it possible for making your own. We will ask the question; is 5G a gamechanger and will it be near you any time soon?

In this work shop we will take a holistic look at digital strategies in the light of responses to the COVID 19 crises. There has been a huge boost to digital engagement with heritage through live events, video uploads and social media posts. In this workshop we will look at what we can learn from this digital engagement and how that might be incorporated into strategies for resilience. We discuss how to conduct a digital audit both in terms of skills, existing digital heritage assets and also opportunities and strategies for digitisation. We will then look at how to develop goals, ambitions and a road map for achieving those goals.

“It is great to come up with ideas for lots of great heritage things we can do, but sooner or later we need to think about how to fund this great stuff. To help with that we will discuss some of the different routes that are available for getting finance and how they might be appropriate for different types of work. Different available funding models include: commercial partnerships, patronage, crowd sourcing, charging, “pay as you like” and project funding. 

Today we’re looking at how and why to evaluate your digital heritage projects. With ‘Museums at Home’ and ‘Heritage at Home’ offering new opportunities to reach audiences, find out the best ways to evaluate and manage your digital projects.