Waag is developing a toolkit for cultural heritage professionals to assist them in working with co-creation. The aim of this toolkit is to inspire cultural heritage professionals to revisit their existing co-creation practice or to set up a new practice.
Why use co-creation?
At its core, co-creation is about involving people outside of your company or organisation (whether you call them visitors, users, constituents, or stakeholders) to jointly create (cultural) value. The goal might be innovation, empowerment, or looking at heritage from a dynamic societal perspective, and the result is a multitude of perspectives and useful inspiration. But the process of co-creation also is a bit of a black box: what exactly do you do? Which methods are effective? How do you create an open environment? How do you move from creating something together to transformation and structural change?
Prototyping
The toolkit will be made available online after a round of tests with heritage professionals. The first test was done with a group of graduate students from Reinwardt Academy, which offered a lot of input on how users will use the toolkit. The toolkit is part of the RICHES project deliverables, and will be presented at several heritage conferences later this year and early next year.
During these presentations, we will share our findings and tools with heritage professionals and a general audience, and will invite their input to further the discussion on the co-creation practices. We can't wait to show you the final result!
