RLUK’s Digital Shift Forum brings together colleagues from across the information, research, cultural and heritage communities, and third and commercial sectors, to discuss the future of the digital shift in collections, services, and audiences.
The series aims to promote cross-sector discussion and debate, to enable knowledge exchange, and inspire collaborative endeavour across sectors and communities, for the benefit of RLUK members and the wider research and information management communities.
The Digital Shift Forum is open to all, and you do not need to belong to an RLUK member institution to attend or participate.
Building Digital Confidence Through Action Research
Ross Parry, Professor of Museum Technology, University of Leicester
8 June 2022, 14.00-15.00 BST
This seminar will share the approaches of an international consortium (funded by the UK’s AHRC and the US’s National Endowment for the Arts) of university partners, cultural organisations and professional bodies who over the last five years have been leveraging action research to help build the digital confidence of cultural and heritage institutions.
The ‘One by One’ initiative (starting in the UK, then the US, and now on-going now in Canada, funded by the Canadian Council for the Arts) has not only influenced government policy and standards around digital literacy within the sector, but has helped to frame new ways of reflecting upon (and acting upon) digital work in cultural institutions.
The session will also share early sight of how this distinctive approach to partnership, practice-led research, and activity centred on sector strategic priorities will, later this year, form the basis for a major new research institute of digital culture.
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Ross Parry is Professor of Museum Technology, at the University of Leicester
A Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, former Tate Research Fellow and previously chair of the UK’s national Museums Computer Group, Ross is also one of the founding Trustees of the Jodi Mattes Trust – for accessible digital culture. In 2018 he was listed in the Education Foundation’s ‘EdTech50’ – the fifty most influential people in the UK education and technology sectors.
From 2017 to 2021 he served on the International Advisory Board for the €6mn ‘Our Museum’ project. Today he is Steering Committee member for UKRI’s £18mn digital cultural heritage initiative ‘Towards a National Collection’.
Ross’ recent books include: ‘Museum Thresholds’, edited with Ruth Page and Alex Moseley (Routledge, 2018); and ‘The Routledge Handbook of Media and Museums’ (2019), edited with Kirsten Drotner, Vince Dziekan, and Kim Schrøder. Ross is also co-editor of a new book series, ‘Critical Perspectives on Museums and Digital Technology’ (also with Routledge).