| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/K015850/1 |
| Title: |
The SHARC Project: Investigating Technology Support for the Shared Curation of Local History in a Rural Community |
| Principal Investigator: |
Cheverst, Dr K |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Computing & Communications |
| Organisation: |
Lancaster University |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research |
| Starts: |
22 April 2013 |
Ends: |
04 August 2017 |
Value (£): |
284,378
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Human-Computer Interactions |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
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| Panel History: |
| Panel Date | Panel Name | Outcome |
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09 Oct 2012
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EPSRC ICT Responsive Mode - Oct 2012
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Announced
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
Shared sense of history is one of the keystones of sense of community (McMillan & Chavis, 1986) and supporting sense of community is a key societal challenge.
In 2006, began work with the rural Wray village community to co-design and then deploy the Wray Photo display (Taylor and Cheverst, 2009). The Photo display proved very popular with residents who uploaded over 1500 photos to the system across a range of categories, with the most popular being hitoric photos. Over the last six years the photo displays have been situated in key settings within the village including: the post-office; the village hall, the village pub (called the George and Dragon) and the village cafe. Feedback from design workshops (and a comments book placed next to the displays) have demonstrated the potential of situated displays and community generated content for supporting sense of community. However, feedback from the community also highlighted the need for tools to provide both greater inclusivity (e.g. for some of the more elderly members of the community) and also for enabling the community to share and co-curate digital narratives (the delightful "The first chips in Wray" story for example) and accounts/collections of local history relating to the village from a range of sources and perspectives.
The central aim of the proposed research is to co-design these tools with the community and, through longitudinal study, to explore their adoption and appropriation by the community.
It is important that the design of these tools is done in a participatory fashion to help ensure both their appropriateness to the requirements posed by the broad community (given the range of technical abilities for example) and also to foster a greater sense of ownership on behalf of the community.
Furthermore, a 'one-size-fits-all' tool is unlikely to be appropriate given the range of contexts of use, e.g. curating content for consumption by established members of the village community vs. curating content for consumption by residents new to the village vs. curating content for consumption by visitors. Some tools may be mobile applications that support the capture of content in-situ, whilst others may involve the tailoring of existing technologies within the village, for example modifying the colour photocopier in the village Post Office in order to support the simple scanning of historic village newspaper articles.
In terms of tools to support the consumption of these narratives we envisage that situated displays provide suitable properties and affordances (based on our positive experiences with the Wray Photo Displays). Our experiences with situated displays have taught us that their placement is crucial (e.g. siting the display where the audience has due time to interact) and again needs to be done in collaboration with the community in order to promote sense of ownership and avoid inappropriate placements. But we also consider mobile tools as candidate technologies for supporting the consumption of locative media, e.g. enabling a member of the village, out on a ramble, to learn about the historic places she approaches. This could be through a push or pull based approach and involve viewing or listening to the narratives relating to the place. It is anticipated that while consuming such narratives, users will also wish to be able to respond, e.g. contributing stories/narratives of their own or by suggesting links with another related place or narrative.
McMillan, D. and Chavis, D. (1986) Sense of community: A Definition and Theory, Journal of Community Psychology, Special Issue: Psychological Sense of Community, I: Theory and Concepts. Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 6-23.
Taylor, N. and Cheverst, K. (2009). Social Interaction around a Rural Community Photo Display. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 67(12), pp. 1037-1047.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.lancs.ac.uk |