This project will uncover how collecting practices reflected and informed wider discourses about the study of textiles in Britain and Spain’s national museums and institutes, by tracing specific textiles before and after their acquisition. Whilst fashion and textile studies are now recognised fields of academic research, we still know little about the role of museums in helping to facilitate this change. Cabrera will build on her extensive research to date at the National Museum of Decorative Arts (MNAD), to undertake new comparative studies of UK and Spanish approaches to the study of textiles. This will be achieved via case studies of some of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) earliest acquisitions, which have direct connections with Spain. The project will focus on the period 1852-1951, during which many key national museums were born. It will assess the collections and impact of the V&A, which was the model for the MNAD. The V&A will undertake a major redevelopment of its Textile and Fashion Galleries commencing after 2017, which makes re-examination of its historic collections very timely. Cabrera will study textiles held at the V&A from a multidisciplinary perspective, to develop specific object histories and shed light on the formation of European museums and the use of their objects by the creative industries. Case studies will employ approaches from art and design history and engage with new ideas about the transfer of technologies, including the characterisation of raw materials and analysis of fabrics. Key sources will include unpublished archival files, reports and photographs, object labels and the textiles themselves. Cabrera’s training programme would develop her expertise through sustained engagement with museum collections and curatorial and research staff, working across a range of contexts and disciplines. As well as scholarly outcomes, wide public dissemination of the research will be achieved via online blogposts and catalogue entries.

The popularisation of digitisation techniques has boosted the generation of digital cultural heritage assets in recent years. However, such techniques should not be regarded as an end in and of themselves, but as a means for enabling European citizens to engage with cultural heritage more closely and in different ways. ARCHES aims to create more inclusive cultural environments particularly for those with differences and difficulties associated with perception, memory, cognition and communication. It will achieve this through in-depth research analysis and the development of innovative applications, functionalities and experiences based on the reuse and redevelopment of the aforementioned digital resources. Our participatory research methodology situates real user needs at the heart of an iterative design and implementation process, through their active involvement in 3 pilot exercises. This will also facilitate the validation of potential solutions in scenarios at 6 museums, as well as engagement with broader audiences (e.g. children, the elderly, and other potentially marginalised groups) and extension to other sectors, mainly education and tourism. The online accessible software platform, applications for handheld devices and multisensory activities will form the basis of a technical approach that will exploit state of the art technologies – e.g. augmented reality, avatars, relief printers and models, context-sensitive tactile audio guides, metadata and advanced image processing techniques – to underpin the generation of a dynamic ecosystem. In this framework, museums will play an important role by adapting content and reinterpreting cultural heritage in manners most suitable for target groups. Our interdisciplinary consortium – involving academia, SMEs, research centres and museums – will focus on ensuring widespread communication and exploitation, stimulating cross-border collaboration to address a challenge common across Europe.

Towards Inclusive Digital Museum Innovation is a cross-disciplinary research network primarily between the UK and South Korea exploring inclusive approaches to the digital transformation of arts and heritage organisations. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our lives in many ways, including how we learn about new things and how we choose to spend our leisure time. Digital leisure, like digital games, has diversified and attracted more players during times of social distancing, with benefits for their mental health and well-being (Barr & Copeland-Stewart 2021). Museums that have vastly expanded digital programmes for the public over the last three decades have further accelerated digital approaches to engaging remote audiences. In a post-pandemic society, digital has become the default even for our leisure. This project connecting the UK's world-leading academic museum studies at UCL IoA and South Korea's outstanding strengths in the digital sector and game studies at KAIST GSCT, offers a unique platform for museum professionals to reflect on the distribution of digital resources, exchange knowledge and experiences of current digital practices in the museum sector, and review their digital strategies and development plans to contribute to further equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in society. Although emerging digital technologies (e.g. AI, ML, VR/AR, robotics) have created exciting opportunities for museums, it is undeniable that neither museums nor technologies are neutral. We have already noticed the increasing social awareness of historical and cultural biases in museums, as well as of the technological and human biases in digital technologies and the digital industry. Certain groups of people in our society have been left behind by digital innovation. Digital inequality is a valid concern across the world. Digital ethics must not, therefore, be overlooked when discussing digital transformations of museums and developing new digital initiatives. Digital inclusion is not something to check at the end of the digital development process, it should be an integral part of that process from the initial planning stages on. Otherwise, digital methods will only amplify the inherent biases of museums while perpetuating the exclusion of underrepresented groups in society, for example, people with disabilities and people with marginalised ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This project provides opportunities for museums to look at their digital initiatives and discuss practical actions to take to implement inclusion in digitally enhanced ways. Over 18 months, museum professionals, academics, activists, and social enterprises will join the network for a series of thematic workshops exploring the three key themes, namely Technology, Culture & Ethics, the Digital Divide, and Inclusive Technology. Public engagement events online, including casual talks will provide further opportunities for different stakeholders to take part in fruitful discussions. A final international conference in London open to the wider public will share the accumulated knowledge and examples of digital museum innovation. A website built for the project will be used to form a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) regarding inclusive digital museum innovation, facilitating the knowledge exchange that is the foundation for the development of a joint research proposal between UCL IoA and KAIST GSCT. This project takes advantage of the two countries' strengths in digital innovation and their cultural and creative industries to make not only an academic contribution to the identification and development of themes and topics around digital inequality and the social responsibility of museums in the digital age, but also practical contributions to museums and other collecting institutions.