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319
"Connected to the people": Social Inclusion & Cohesion in
Action through a Cultural Heritage Digital Tool
VALENTINA NISI∗and PAULO BALA∗,ITI/LARSyS, Instituto Superior Técnico, U. Lisbon, Portugal
VANESSA CESÁRIO,ITI/LARSyS, Instituto Superior Técnico, U. Lisbon, Portugal
STUART JAMES,Visual Geometry and Modelling Lab & Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision, Istituto
Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy
ALESSIO DEL BUE,Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy
NUNO JARDIM NUNES,ITI/LARSyS, Instituto Superior Técnico, U. Lisbon, Portugal
Current cultural policies are evolving from social inclusion (removing barriers and promoting equality for
participation in culture) to social cohesion (fostering solid bonds between groups despite their dierences).
Digital interventions can create spaces that promote social inclusion and cohesion. In this paper, we report on
the design and evaluation of a cultural heritage and digital storytelling application supporting a participatory
approach to culture and hosting society. We evaluate our intervention in three marginalized communities with
dierent social-cultural contexts: migrant women in Barcelona, a community living in a priority neighbourhood
in Paris and second and third-generation migrants in Lisbon. Through an analysis of their application use, our
ndings point at their needs and desires, highlighting how the app can support social inclusion as the rst
step towards cohesion, but that these are heterogeneous concepts susceptible to nuanced appropriations by
the dierent communities.
CCS Concepts: •Human-centered computing
→
User studies;Collaborative and social computing theory,
concepts and paradigms.
Additional Key Words and Phrases: cultural heritage; social inclusion; social cohesion; cultural exclusion;
migrants; communities; digital storytelling
ACM Reference Format:
Valentina Nisi, Paulo Bala, Vanessa Cesário, Stuart James, Alessio Del Bue, and Nuno Jardim Nunes. 2023.
"Connected to the people": Social Inclusion & Cohesion in Action through a Cultural Heritage Digital Tool. Proc.
ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 7, CSCW2, Article 319 (October 2023), 37 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3610168
1 INTRODUCTION
As technology engages and mediates intricate socio-political issues, complex domains of social life
like culture and migration are increasingly addressed by the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
community. Sabie et al. [
89
] report on the last decade of migration research in HCI, extending from
∗Both authors contributed equally to this research.
Authors’ addresses: Valentina Nisi, valentina.nisi@tecnico.ulisboa.pt; Paulo Bala, paulo.bala@iti.larsys.pt, ITI/LARSyS,
Instituto Superior Técnico, U. Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal; Vanessa Cesário, vanessa.cesario@iti.larsys.pt, ITI/LARSyS, Instituto
Superior Técnico, U. Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal; Stuart James, stuart.james@iit.it, Visual Geometry and Modelling Lab &
Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy; Alessio Del Bue, alessio.delbue@iit.it,
Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy; Nuno Jardim Nunes, nunojnunes@
tecnico.ulisboa.pt, ITI/LARSyS, Instituto Superior Técnico, U. Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
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2573-0142/2023/10-ART319
https://doi.org/10.1145/3610168
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 7, No. CSCW2, Article 319. Publication date: October 2023.
319:2 Valentina Nisi et al.
the mid-2010s focus on the European refugee crisis towards a global scope. In recent years, research
has evolved from focusing on the immediate displacement needs related to mobility to emotional
and nancial needs for long-term settlement, addressing more complex political and emotional
aspects of displacement and risks of being marginalised, through digital technologies [53].
Recently, governmental and non-governmental organisations have adjusted their policies to
promote values for long-term settlement, such as social inclusion and the use of digital technology
to support these values [
89
]. According to a recent European report [
93
], increasing the inclusion
of migrants and minorities in arts and culture promotes the integration outcomes for participants,
strengthens local communities’ social cohesion, and enhances cultural institutions’ relevance and
sustainability. However, proposing digital technologies to foster social inclusion through cultural
participation brings out challenges in how these communities have access, how they participate,
how they produce knowledge and how this knowledge is safeguarded [
41
]. Furthermore, working
with migrants and other vulnerable populations brings out signicant ethical concerns [
52
,
67
]. Co-
designing with vulnerable minorities such as refugees or migrants highlights issues like the power
disparity between researchers and studied populations and cultural conicts among participants
themselves [59].
In this paper, we report on a three-year research project exploring the use of digital tools for social
inclusion through cultural heritage discourse. Cultural heritage encompasses tangible and intangible
elements that can be passed to future generations [
111
]. Discourse on what should be acknowledged
as cultural heritage has primarily been done by the experts organisations like UNESCO [
111
].
Modern approaches to heritage have begun to include communities in this discourse favouring a
polyvocal, critical and future-oriented view of heritage [
41
,
43
]. Through this research, we expand on
previous work about digital technologies connecting vulnerable communities to cultural heritage
[
43
] by empowering communities at risk of social exclusion through cultural participation as
storytellers. This eort resulted in a mobile application that sustains three communities, accounting
for dierent perspectives of migrant identity and other social inclusion challenges. Here, we
summarise the design steps while reporting in detail on the study of the mobile application as a
safe medium for communities to express and share their stories and memories, thus participating in
cultural heritage discourse. Our results are grounded in the evaluation of the app with community
members and other project stakeholders like cultural and social operators, who were the only
ones dealing directly with the disadvantaged communities. We discuss these results against the
project goals of promoting social inclusion, leading to increased cohesion and the ethical and social
concerns of working with vulnerable communities. Overall, ndings from the studies show that
community participants cherished the application as an expressive showcase of their stories and
highlighted their interest in creating, sharing and connecting their stories to other communities
and heritage sites. Our ndings illuminate how the dierent communities want to use the app
to support social inclusion and potentially generate cohesion through participation in the local
heritage discourse. This article contributes to HCI and the cultural heritage elds by designing
and evaluating a novel artefact system supporting a participatory approach that bridges cultural
heritage and vulnerable communities to promote social inclusion by leveraging polyvocality.
1.1 Project Overview
This research was conducted in the context of an EU-funded research project
1
promoting social
inclusion and cohesion through collaborative digital storytelling tools. The project aims to empower
marginalised communities to participate in cultural heritage-making and voice their perspectives
through stories and memories related to cultural heritage. The work accounts for "digital divides"
1https://memexproject.eu/en/
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"Connected to the people" 319:3
Project Start
(Dec 2019)
Field Study
(Feb 2020)
Focus Groups, Digital
Storytelling Workshops,
Requirements Elicitation
(Spring 2020)
Design
(Summer - Autumn 2020)
Pilot Evaluation
(Spring 2021)
Design
(Summer - Autumn 2021)
Exploring and Understanding the Setting
First Prototype Iteration
Second Prototype Iteration
Evaluation
(Spring 2022)
Development
(Autumn - Winter 2021)
Development
(Autumn - Winter 2022)
2020 2021 2022
2019
Fig. 1. Overview of the project approach
[
113
] in access and other barriers that prevent these communities from participating. Overall, the
project’s primary goals are: (i) to empower communities to weld their fragmented experiences and
memories into geolocalised storylines and new personalised digital content, and (ii) to acknowledge
and understand the diversity of voices in society and, ultimately, exercise their rights to participate
in the communities they live in actively.
Recruitment and activities with marginalised communities were enabled and supported by
multiple partnerships with local non-governmental organisations in dierent countries. As such,
the project ambitiously engages a heterogeneous sample from dierent social-cultural contexts
determined by the consortium partners located in three major European metropolises:
(1)
Migrant women in Barcelona, Spain - originally from several dierent countries, mainly
employed as domestic workers, their stories tend to reect a gender perspective on cul-
tural heritage. Most of these participants have been involved in civic and feminist activism
movements. Example stories from this community can be found in appendix A.
(2)
The Rosa Park community, living in the priority neighbourhood of the 19th arrondissement
in Paris, France - Extensive urban renewal in recent years has transformed the neglected
and peripheric area into a residential neighbourhood with a high concentration of migrants.
Community participants have lived through this renewal, and their stories tend to reect
Paris’s lost and gained heritage. Example stories from this community can be found in
appendix B.
(3)
Second and third-generation migrants in Lisbon, Portugal - The community in Lisbon is
composed of second and third-generation migrants from Portuguese ex-colonies, mostly of
African origin. Their stories tend to reect the duality of their identity and the (in)visible
colonial traces in the city. Example stories from this community can be found in appendix C.
Figure 1summarises the project process through its dierent stages. The project’s initial stage
embraced a participatory approach, engaging members from marginalised communities and project
stakeholders. This stage included design methods such as photo voice and digital storytelling
workshops with focus groups for developing a deep understanding of the stakeholder’s needs and
perspectives. These initial eorts and results are described in Nisi et al. [
76
]. These activities were
essential for requirements elicitation, and the resulting eorts materialised in a mobile application
to explore connections with the surrounding tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Following
an agile development process, the prototype was iteratively developed and evaluated with various
stakeholders. This article reports on the studies conducted on the two rst iterations of the mobile
application.
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319:4 Valentina Nisi et al.
1.2 Project Positionality
As we embarked on our project, the complex inter-dependencies between technical challenges
with societal ones became clearer. [
14
]. As such, we set up frequent and regular touchpoints and
exchanges between the project’s team members and structural work packages. The team was
composed of expert stakeholders with dierent expertise (e.g., technical stakeholders with knowl-
edge of technology development, cultural stakeholders with knowledge about cultural heritage
and audience development, and social stakeholders with local knowledge about the communities)
embracing the common goals of the project to contribute to the societal challenge of fostering
inclusion and cohesion through the co-design and development of CH digital tools.
We (the authors) positioned ourselves in this project as designers and researchers, acting as
mediators between the technical, social and cultural stakeholders. We acknowledge the political
and social tensions around inclusion, cultural heritage and migration and worked closely with the
social stakeholders to support migrant participants to feel safe and listened to. We connected only
with organisations and individuals who manifested empathy for our work and the project goals.
Participants from the marginalised communities were recruited and directly engaged by social
stakeholders; volunteers played a crucial role in our work. Furthermore, living and working in
one of the project cities, the researchers experienced rst-hand the importance of multiculturalism
to promote social inclusion and digital tools to empower minorities in contributing and deciding
which cultural aspects should be voiced. Researchers had experience with participatory design
processes, and all activities were approved jointly by the social stakeholders and the University
ethics board. In retrospect, we explicitly formulated several assumptions for this work, which were
implicitly made in the project proposal and initial project meetings:
(1)
Participants from the communities at risk have the same goals regarding which problems
should be addressed and are comfortable with the project approach;
(2)
Technical, social and cultural stakeholders, as well as researchers and participants, have
similar goals and a shared understanding of the importance of participation and co-design
for inclusion;
(3)
Experienced social stakeholders are the only project partners engaging directly with marginalised
communities and addressing ethical concerns (including digital inclusion). This aspect re-
sulted in the social partners conducting the app evaluations on behalf of the researchers
(authors);
(4)
Participants from the communities at risk and the social stakeholders have an intrinsic
interest in a project that aims to develop technological solutions addressing their problems.
2 RELATED WORK
This research is grounded in recent HCI, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and CH
trends, mainly focusing on marginalized communities and ubiquitous digital technologies as tools
to tackle societal challenges. We address these topics by recognizing four main subjects of study:
•Social inclusion & cohesion – From removing barriers to strengthening bonds;
•
Migration & HCI – The use of technology in migration studies, extending from functional
to the emotional aspects of lifelong settlers, such as identity and heritage;
•
Tangible & Intangible Cultural Heritage – The growing focus on intangible cultural her-
itage emerging from a changing society addressing migration patterns and marginalization;
•
Role of digital storytelling and CH tools – Preserving and accessing tangible and intangi-
ble cultural heritage, focusing on community access and engagement in cultural interventions.
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"Connected to the people" 319:5
2.1 Social Inclusion & Cohesion
Inclusion is commonly dened as the practice or policy of granting equal access to resources and
opportunities for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as segments of
minority groups [
63
]. In the context of HCI, inclusion is discussed regarding the participation,
engagement, and equity within the research and those doing the research [
59
,
61
,
67
,
80
]. In social
sciences, inclusion is discussed concerning how individuals can participate in society. A European
report from 2019 [
29
] indicates that over 20% of the European population is at risk of poverty or
social exclusion.
Penninx [
83
] maps existing policies for the inclusion/exclusion of migrant communities along
several dimensions (social-economic, legal/political, and cultural-religious). While integration is a
bidirectional process depending on the newcomer and the receiving community, policies established
by the receiving community heavily inuence the migrant’s social capital [
10
]. Social capital refers
to the resources available through the migrant’s social network [
53
]. The [
29
] report highlights
that cultural policies should reframe social inclusion (“as being about removing barriers, such as
discrimination, ensuring everyone’s possibility to enjoy their human rights”) to social cohesion
(“how the bonds between dierent groups or between the individual and society can be strengthened
despite the dierence in world views and cultural practices”). The Council of Europe see social
cohesion as a concept for an open and multicultural society. The meaning of this concept can dier
according to the socio-political environment in which it evolves [9].
2.2 Migration & HCI
Human migration is a complex issue that touches every society worldwide and is often exacerbated
by misinformation [
72
]. The increase in displacement over the last half century has fueled interdis-
ciplinary approaches in migration studies. For HCI, migrant’s use of technology became of interest
to scholars [
28
] as digital technology is used, both as infrastructures for enabling, controlling or
stopping migration [
64
]. This research interest persists in HCI, CSCW and related communities
[
1
,
60
,
62
,
91
,
99
,
101
,
102
,
105
,
107
,
108
] with recent workshops on the role of HCI in migration
and refugee studies.
Research in the eld has highlighted the use of technology such as messaging applications [
75
]
and social media [
34
] for planning migration and interacting with socio-technical systems involved
in mobility [
95
]. On the counter side, the role of technology has also been studied in preventing
mobility, such as through government monitoring [
46
,
48
,
60
,
64
,
94
]. The role of technology has not
only been analysed as contributing to settling, whether in (temporary) camps (e.g. [
54
,
55
,
74
,
92
]) or
in the host country (e.g. [
5
,
16
,
88
]). Several works have addressed the needs of these communities in
their various contexts, such as community building [
54
,
117
], the role of participation and care [
59
],
communication between family members [
116
], education [
4
,
115
], health [
18
,
104
] or language
[
2
,
19
,
114
]. For example, Talhouk et al. [
106
] report on the use of e-voucher systems for food
aid in the Syrian Refugee community of Lebanon, identifying issues of technological literacy and
power and information asymmetries; this work also highlighted collaborative action within the
community to cope with food insecurity.
These works highlight the role of technology in assuring the functional aspects related to settling.
However, Hsiao and Dillahunt [
53
] identify that while technology can easily address immediate
settlement needs, it minimally addresses their nancial and cultural needs and ignores emotional
needs. This was also conrmed by Sabie et al. [
89
], adding that more work is starting to emerge
about long-term integration. For example, Sabie et al. [
90
] used a paper-based home drafting
system as an artefact-driven storytelling practice for heritage sharing; artefacts created expressed
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 7, No. CSCW2, Article 319. Publication date: October 2023.
319:6 Valentina Nisi et al.
dimensions of collective memory (social, material, and mental), acting as cultural probes of their
identity.
As participatory design projects engage with complex social and political issues (such as inclusion,
migration and culture), the growing tension between democratic participation and "care" becomes
a research challenge [
58
]. Based on a multi-year co-design project on digital resettling tools,
Kruger et al. [
59
] argue that participation is insucient in a complex domain such as migration
and that applying a lens of "care" provides insights relevant to the broader research community.
Therefore, factors such as ethical practices, reective processes, and group-oriented spatial layout
and dynamics are required to create "safe spaces" when working with vulnerable populations
[
20
]. Hutchinson et al. [
13
] and Duarte et al. [
20
,
21
] apply User-Centered Design frameworks
(interviews, focus groups and participatory design workshops) to involve migrants in the process
of designing technologies for their use. Fisher et al. [
39
] engaged Syrian refugee youth through
speculative design, co-designing paper prototypes of visionary devices to help their community;
Almohamed et al. [
6
] used "magic machines" with Iraqi refugees in Australia while Rüller et al. [
49
]
used speculative ction to engage with Imazighen native people in Morocco. These speculative
approaches favour understanding tensions and desires over direct applications to technology, caring
for participants’ individuality.
2.3 Tangible & Intangible Cultural Heritage
The concept of Cultural Heritage was coined after the French revolution in the 19th century,
profoundly connected to the European nation-building processes [
22
]. Until the late 20th century,
the concept of CH remained primarily Eurocentric, mainly understood as tangible monuments
and art, to later evolve with the shift of focus from national to the intercultural dialogue among
the diverse European nations and cultures [
96
]. Within the context of decolonization and the
impact of modernization on indigenous cultures, the migration processes resulted in an emerging
discourse on intercultural dialogue with cultures of the migrants’ origin [
3
]. In parallel, the concept
of CH evolved to include dynamic and intangible aspects, specically community-related [
7
]. The
2003 UNESCO recognized Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) as “the practices, representations,
expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces
associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part
of their cultural heritage” [
111
]. This broader denition recognizes the importance of ICH to build a
sense of identity and continuity through the active recreation by communities in response to their
environment. ICH concerns people and, as such, is uid, continuously negotiated, and inherently
contested, and it relies on complex social processes and political actions to “stay alive” [3,96].
In a universal approach to CH, UNESCO addresses the importance of culture for social cohesion
with “the recognition of equal dignity of and respect for all cultures, including the cultures of
persons belonging to minorities and indigenous peoples” [
111
]. Nevertheless, migration-related
diversity in hosting societies is only implicitly addressed. Integrating migrant ICH has existed
in several discourses since post-WWII through forced assimilation and placement into ethnically
stratied social structures [
33
]. However, as argued by Giglitto et al. [
43
], despite recognising
ICH as a critical community-building factor for migrants in their host countries, studying ICH
in the context of migration is complex, demanding several dimensions that are dicult to cluster
and analyze holistically. Therefore, the relationship between ICH and migration requires further
exploration because of its importance to the lives and experiences of migrants [42].
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"Connected to the people" 319:7
2.4 Role of digital storytelling and CH tools
Storytelling has been of interest to HCI research, as a method of inquiry [
12
,
36
,
109
], as a focus for
interaction design [
8
,
11
,
82
], and as a learning and self-expression tool of individuals and commu-
nities through social media [
38
], video platforms [
40
] or mobile and geolocalised applications [
78
].
Storytelling research can contribute to society through work with vulnerable communities [
77
]
and the institutional or political contexts of their telling [
85
]. The use of technology allows for a
bottom-up approach, valuing individual creation and democratic participation.
In the last decades, locative apps that use storytelling to enhance democratic access to CH have
ourished. From making CH content visible and accessible inside and outside museum spaces
[
25
,
84
], these systems expanded their scope to heritage making, giving voice to the local living
communities that inhabit a space [
79
]. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach [
30
], Clarke and
Wright [
26
] conducted workshops to co-create digital stories and digital portraits with vulnerable
women about their experience; the created artefacts were evocative/imaginative rather than repre-
sentative of the experience. Dimond et al. [
35
] investigated an online collective storytelling platform,
Hollaback, whose mission is to end street harassment. Interviewing participants who shared stories,
they found that the struggle to understand and express their experiences changed their cognitive
and emotional orientation towards their experience. These results focus on storytelling as a driver
for personal catharsis but do not look at its inuence on those without the lived experience. Manuel
et al. [
71
] focus on the conguration of participatory media to widen participation and enable story
creation and sharing amongst citizens. Michie et al. [
73
] created exploratory storytelling platforms
in a series of workshops on Abortion Rights with pro-choice stakeholders in Ireland. The digital
storytelling platforms were not intended to be prototypes but instead used as a design material to
provoke critical reection on the role of platforms for activism. These critical reections highlighted
opportunities to "raise awareness and challenge stigma through exposing hidden realities; foster
empathy and polyvocality to expand the collective community; and provide stepping stones to
activism that allow for an engagement at dierent levels" [
73
]. Bonsignori et al. [
15
] discussed
the challenges of designing and evaluating an in-situ authoring tool (StoryKit) that provides a
simple integrated media-capture interface to enable rich expression; their research provides insights
on how to conduct these studies in the wild. Projects such as CultureLabs [
43
], SPICE [
97
], Loci
Stories [
110
], and SEE.TELL.LISTEN [
68
], explore the concept of polyvocality in CH to diversify the
accepted knowledge, values and stories formed in response to or challenging "authorized cultural
heritage" [
47
,
110
]. These works also highlight the diculty of working with polyvocality, such
as dealing with perspectives that go against the power dynamics, social structures, and historical
narratives [
110
], balancing multiple perspectives [
47
], and balancing authorship with potential
risks [47,73].
In summary, technology, and in particular digital storytelling, plays an essential role in the context
of engaging with vulnerable communities (such as refugees and migrants) [
8
,
45
,
86
] and ICH
[
11
,
69
,
70
,
87
]. The transmission and safeguarding of ICH are intertwined with the generational and
cultural mismatch, exacerbated by digital technology use and divide [
42
]. However, technologies
provide unique opportunities to democratize access and promote an inclusive and participatory
approach to ICH that spans cultures, and borders [
3
,
33
]. While polyvocality is a grounding concept
for empowering communities in the heritage discourse, how systems are able to support it and
safeguard its users is still an active research topic. Specically, polyvocality in heritage discourse
may risk social cohesion as it can create further rifts in perspectives. To the best of our knowledge,
our work provides a novel combination of a storytelling tool (authoring and viewing) focused on
connecting stories and memories of vulnerable communities with cultural heritage, supporting
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319:8 Valentina Nisi et al.
heritage-making discourse and dialogue, fostering participation and embracing cohesion from the
Council of Europe point of view: a concept for an open and multicultural society [51].
3 DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION
Over the last two decades, researchers embraced the concept of community-centred heritage, with
digital technology playing a crucial role in grassroots engagement for collecting, managing and
displaying cultural heritage [
43
]. Our work expands this movement by designing and evaluating
tools for the discourse on cultural heritage, allowing for social inclusion and preparing the basis for
social cohesion as well [
29
]. By doing so, we aim at leveraging the polyvocality of cultural heritage,
with dierences and similarities between groups but equality in views [47].
3.1 Exploring and Understanding the Seing
The project followed a participatory design approach from the beginning, including community
members and other project stakeholders allowing for an understanding of the context of the
communities involved. The scope of planned activities was aected mainly by the COVID-19
pandemic, which restricted physical meetings and travel necessary for presential activities. While
these eorts are reported in detail in Nisi et al. [
76
], here we summarize such activities, highlighting
relevant ndings for the design process:
•
Exploratory Field study – We engaged ten rst and second-generation migrant participants
from Lisbon in a one-week photo challenge where they were asked to take photos of their
surroundings and everyday journeys through the city and describe their experiences in short
Twitter-like texts. The material was then used to engage the same participants in further
story co-creation, inspired by photo-voice methods [
27
,
98
]. The material collected during
this phase included ten individually created story journeys (made of four to ve photos plus
text for each photo) and six co-created stories inspired by the pictures, reinterpreted by the
group as a collective.
•
Synthesis and requirements gathering – Regular one-hour weekly online meetings were held
between the HCI researchers and the social partners from each city; the meetings were held
in March and April 2020 to compensate for the inability to travel to the locations and perform
follow-up studies. The extensive dialogues generated six personas and six scenarios (two
per community) to cover the dierent communities. Using an empathy mapping framework
[
57
], a set of emotional requirements were derived from the personas. The requirements
encapsulated how the digital tools could support heritage discourse (e.g., allowing in-situ
writing) and methodological concerns about involving communities in the research process.
Because of lockdown restrictions so early in the project, it was impossible to engage any
community participants in this process. Mutual trust, condence, and a safe space had not
yet been established between the social partners and the target community users.
•
Digital Storytelling Workshops – Based on [
37
], one of the cultural organizations partnering
in the project organized a set of (online and oine) Digital storytelling workshops structured
to facilitate the development of short personal stories about heritage in a digital format.
Three workshops (divided into two sessions, two hours each) targeted the project’s social and
technical partners to understand the creative process of writing about heritage. Subsequently,
each social partner adapted the methodology to suit their community needs and local lock-
down constraints. The national dierences in lockdown policies added to the community’s
needs and constraints, challenging a homogeneous deployment of storytelling workshops.
Nevertheless, at the end of the project, a total of 80 stories were collected, ranging from short
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"Connected to the people" 319:9
images and textual descriptions to several minutes of edited videos. Some examples of stories
from each community (and their English translations) are available in appendices A,Band C.
The elicited requirements were used to plan the agile development of the app prototype in three
incremental iterations. Each iteration included a design, development and evaluation phase, which
addressed feedback from prior assessments and added new features according to that stage’s design
concern (see Fig. 1). Per iteration cycle, low/high delity interactive prototypes were validated
internally among project stakeholders.
3.2 First Prototype Iteration
The rst app prototype was a web-based application. The main design concern for the rst iteration
was supporting social inclusion through digital storytelling. Entailing that, the initial app prototype
(in Fig. 2) was required to support essential interactions for accessing, creating, searching and
viewing participant’s stories:
•
For accessing (A1 and A2 in Fig. 2), the app supported two types of users: guests (shown
in blue, that can only search and view stories) and authors (shown in pink, that can create
stories).
•
For creating (C1 and C2 in Fig. 2), the app allows for input of dierent story elements
(e.g., title, location, cover image, various types of media, story text, keywords), as well as
controlling the state of the story (draft/published).
•For searching (S1 and S2 in Fig. 2), the app allows for multiple visualizations for exploring
stories (list in S1 or maps in S2). Both views allow ltering based on keywords or queries
using a search bar. The user can also use the current location to limit the number of stories
and maintain a spatial awareness of the places and cultural heritage highlighted by the close
communities ("Near me").
•
For viewing (V1 in Fig. 2), the app supports visualization of the created artefact, including
media playback and connecting to the phone’s navigation application.
3.3 Second Prototype Iteration
The main design concern for the second prototype iteration was to support the creation of bonds
across stories and bonds across stories and CH elements. It also entails visualizing these bonds
in conjunction (in what we call connectedness). This creates scenarios where guests can discover
new and unexpected connections between stories and CH elements, identifying social cohesion
among a polyvocal set of stories. Ultimately, these bonds should not be user-driven but instead
controlled by Articial Intelligence (AI) processes based on Knowledge Graphs (KGs) – a standard
method to incorporate human knowledge in AI models [
50
]. This process was supported by the
existing KGs of geolocalized CH elements of the three project cities. KGs are graph-based data
models, where nodes (e.g., "Spain", "Barcelona", "Gaudí") are entities of interest, and edges are
potentially dierent relations between these entities (e.g., "born in", "is in"). Crossing nodes and
edges can make complex relations between entities (e.g., "Gaudí [was] born in Barcelona, which
is in Spain"). Abstraction makes KGs exible enough to be applied to a variety of domains (e.g.,
to control robots [
118
]) or aligned with language models to create prompt questions [
65
]). Open
KGs like Wikidata [
112
] are publicly available and crowdsourced, allowing them to be edited and
extended. Digital archives curate both tangible (e.g., monuments, buildings) and intangible CH
elements (e.g., customs, traditions), including both text descriptions as well as media [
23
]. Therefore,
for this project, we built a custom tool for ingesting data from Wikidata
2
. Initially, this process
collected geolocalised entities within the city’s constraints. Then, it expanded to connected entities
2https://github.com/MEMEXProject/MEMEX-KG
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319:10 Valentina Nisi et al.
Searching for Stories Access Viewing Stories
Creating Stories
A1
A2
S1 S2
C1 C2
V1
Fig. 2. Interface flow for the first prototype iteration.
•
Pink dots (on boom half) are representative of
actions an author would need to create a story, while
•
Blue dots (on top half) are representative of actions a
user (such as a guest) would need to explore and search for stories. Interfaces are divided into four areas:
Access (A1 and A2), for access as a guest or as an author; Searching for Stories (S1 and S2), regarding
visualizing list/maps of stories, searching and filtering; Creating Stories (C1 and C2), supporting authoring
a story; and Viewing Stories (V1), regarding the visualization of the story and associated media.
(that may not be geolocalized such as intangible elements). The resulting Neo4J
3
graph database
allows us to have more complex interactions:
•
We expanded the KG with Europeana,
4
a digitised cultural heritage meta-data aggregation
with over 50 million cultural and scientic artefacts.
•
We expand the KG by treating the stories created in the prototype as entities. Story elements
(like uploaded media or keywords) can be treated as entities and connected to the original
story.
•
We support dealing with queries based on entities and relationships between them. For
example, given the current GPS location, we can query for tangible cultural heritage sites in
a radius.
3https://neo4j.com
4https://www.europeana.eu
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"Connected to the people" 319:11
Creating Stories
C1
Viewing Stories
V1
C3 C4
V2 V3
Fig. 3. Interface flow extension for the second prototype iteration.
•
Pink dots (on top half) are representative
of actions an author would need to manually add content from the KG to their story, while
•
Blue dots (on
boom half) are representative of actions a user (such as a guest) would need to explore the connectedness of
the story being viewed. Interfaces are divided into two areas: Creating Stories (C1, C2 and C3), regarding
the inclusion of KG content into a story; and Viewing Stories (V1, V2, and V3), showcasing the visualization
of connections of the story with other stories and with geolocalized cultural heritage content.
•
Stories can be automatically related to entities in the KG based on the text content related to
the entities’ title (keyword spotting); this allows for identifying places, people and events, for
example.
•Connections between stories can be created based on tags assigned by the user.
The use of KGs creates a scenario where AI can help users to create stories (e.g., incorporating
media about CH from the KG) and to connect stories and CH (e.g., identifying bonds between
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319:12 Valentina Nisi et al.
polyvocal stories). As such, the second iteration of the app prototype (see Fig. 3) leverages the KG
to increment the previous features of creating and viewing stories:
•
For creating (C3 and C4 in Fig. 3), the app supports a direct search of the KG, returning results
as text descriptions or images related to the search term. One of the identied requirements
involves supporting the user in writing by allowing access to information - results from the
search can be directly inserted into the written story and edited by the author. To make
connections between entities, we must have stories where the entities are recognizable. This
is done manually by the author using the entity in their story. This is also done automatically
with Named Entity Recognition (NER), or keyword spotting [
66
], identifying KG identities
within the written text.
•
For viewing (V2 and V3 in Fig. 3), the app can query for geolocalized stories and cultural
heritage that have a relevant connection to the story being viewed. These connections can be
explored in a map (V2) or a detailed list (V3), showing the connectedness between elements.
4 STUDY
To gauge the application against the project’s goals of social inclusion and cohesion, user studies
were organized with participants from the three communities:
•
Pilot study, conducted in Spring 2021, using the rst prototype iteration (described in section
3.2) and involving 23 subjects. This pilot study was conducted remotely due to the COVID-19
restrictions. It engaged participants in base tasks like creating and viewing stories, aiming to
apprehend their view of the app’s purpose and how it could have a purpose in their lives.
•
Main study, conducted in Winter/Spring 2022, using the second prototype iteration (de-
scribed in section 3.3) and involving 37 participants. Following COVID-19 pandemic health
guidelines, the study was done in person. The main study used a rened prototype of the app
(compared to the pilot study), which included advanced features such as uploading various
media content, viewing stories from dierent countries/communities and interacting with
the cultural heritage assets via a Knowledge Graph (KG).
4.1 Participants
The app was evaluated by community members (those who participated in digital storytelling
workshops and created stories) and other social and cultural stakeholders in touch with those
communities (e.g., social workers and cultural mediators). For brevity, we refer to the rst as
community members and the latter as stakeholders. Table 1summarizes the participant prole
across the three communities:
•
The Pilot study involved 23 subjects (10 in Lisbon, 6 in Barcelona, and 7 in Paris), 13 of
which were community members, and 10 were other social/cultural stakeholders.
•
The Main study involved 37 subjects (15 in Lisbon, 11 in Barcelona and 11 in Paris), 26 of
which were community members, and 11 were other social/cultural stakeholders.
All participants were recruited according to the social and cultural stakeholder’s ethical regula-
tions and protocols. Facilitators prioritized community members when scheduling, so stakeholders
were exposed to a growing corpus of stories. Through an informed consent form, participants were
aware of the purpose of the study, protocol and their privacy rights, including that collected data
would be anonymized and serve only for research purposes. Participants were reassured that the
study was evaluating the app (and not them) and that they could interrupt or end their participation
at any time. Participants are anonymized and coded by the rst letter of the city and an assigned
number (e.g., L2 is participant 2 in Lisbon). In this article, we use a prex (PS_) to identify the pilot
study participants. Additionally, we use a sux (_st) to identify participants who are stakeholders
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"Connected to the people" 319:13
but not community members. For example, PS_L3_st refers to the pilot study’s participant 3 from
Lisbon who is a cultural-social stakeholder, while P6 refers to the main study’s participant 6 from
Paris.
4.2 Procedure
We (the authors) did not participate directly in collecting the data. Because of the project ethics
regulations designed to protect vulnerable communities, only the social partners could directly
contact and interact with the vulnerable community participants. While the protocols were designed
by the researchers and adapted to the local pilot setting together with the social partners, the
researchers were not able to perform observations and capture contextual data, nor derive meaning
from expressions and other subtle cues. Moreover, during the semi-structured interviews, the
researchers could have directed the conversation in accord with their hunches and curiosity.
Still, we carefully instructed the local social and cultural stakeholders to act as facilitators/mediators
in conducting the evaluations, capturing the data and later sharing it with the researchers. This
proved to be a successful technique, as it elicited more candid responses from participants because
the facilitators had already built a rapport with the local communities and were less attached to the
prototype design, and not directly involved in the creation or implementation of the app.
The facilitators were responsible for setting up the evaluation sessions and helping participants
set up their devices (smartphones with data access). Each session took between thirty minutes to one
hour. Both studies engaged participants individually via online video-conferencing platforms (in
the Pilot study) or in person (in the Main study), with one device per person. After lling out the
informed consent form and a demographics form, participants were asked to use the prototype to
perform a printed list of tasks and express their thoughts through think-aloud. Facilitators took notes
and were allowed to help the participants if asked. Afterwards, facilitators led a semi-structured
interview on the use of the app:
Table 1. Description of Pilot and Main study participants across the three communities (Lisbon, Barcelona,
Paris). For each community, we report the gender (M - male, F - female, NB - non-binary), participant type
(community participant or stakeholder as defined in section 4.1) and IDs used.
Community Gender Participant Type IDs
Pilot
Study
(N=23)
Lisbon
(N=10) 1M, 9F Community (N=4) PS_L1, PS_L2, PS_L9, PS_L10
Stakeholder (N=6)
PS_L3_st, PS_L4_st, PS_L5_st, PS_L6_st,
PS_L7_st, PS_L8_st
Barcelona
(N=6) 6F Community (N=5) PS_B1, PS_B2, PS_B3, PS_B4, PS_B5
Stakeholder (N=1) PS_B6_st
Paris
(N=7) 2M, 5F Community (N=4) PS_P1, PS_P2, PS_P3, PS_P4
Stakeholder (N=3) PS_P5_st, PS_P6_st, PS_P7_st
Main
Study
(N=37)
Lisbon
(N=15) 3M, 12F Community (N=10) L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6, L7, L9, L10, L15
Stakeholder (N=5) L8_st, L11_st, L12_st, L13_st, L14_st
Barcelona
(N=11) 10F, 1NB Community (N=10) B1, B2, B5, B9, B10, B11, B12, B13, B14, B15
Stakeholder (N=1) B3_st
Paris
(N=11) 4M, 7F Community (N=5) P3, P4, P6, P7, P13
Stakeholder (N=6) P5_st, P8_st, P9_st, P11_st, P12_st, P14_st
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319:14 Valentina Nisi et al.
•
For the Pilot study, this semi-structured interview probed participants about their likes and
dislikes of the prototype and their motivation and expectations in using or incorporating it
into their lives.
•
For the Main study, in addition to the previous questions, the interview probed participants
about how they perceived the features of connectedness and the expressive power of stories.
The list of tasks was dependent on the type of participant (community participant or stakeholder)
and the version of the prototype that was being tested (pilot study or main study):
•
In the Pilot study (see g. 2), participants were asked to access the app (A1, A2), create a
story (C1, C2), edit/delete that story (similar to C1 and C2), and browse and view stories (S1,
S2).
•
in the Main study (see g. 3), in addition to the previous tasks, participants were asked
to search for suggested CH content (C1) related to the city in which they are based (e.g. a
cultural heritage site) and add text (C3) or images (C4) to the story. When viewing stories
(V1), participants were asked to explore how those stories were connected to others (V2, V3).
•
In both the Pilot study and Main study, community members who had participated in the
Digital Storytelling Workshops (see section 3.1), were asked to bring some already made
material for the story creation (a short text recounting a story or memory, 1 or 2 digital
photos, audio or video) and were also asked to create a story with those materials (C1, C2).
These stories compose the corpus of narratives on heritage discourse and remain in the app
for others to view (S1, S2).
4.3 Thematic Analysis
For the Pilot study and Main study, interviews (transcribed and translated by facilitators) were
analysed using thematic analysis [
17
] with NVivo (1.6.2),
5
a qualitative data analysis package.
While using the same methodology, interviews from the Pilot study and Main study were
analysed separately. We based our thematic analysis approach on the six phases described by
Braun and Clarke [
17
], using two coders (the two rst authors). For each study, the two coders
began by familiarising themselves with the interviews and started a coding round; we adopted
an objective stance acknowledging people’s experiences as they report them and using inductive
coding (informed by the project’s emphasis on social inclusion and cohesion). After generating
initial codes, researchers met to discuss the codes, resolve any conicts through discussion until
consensus was reached, and agree on a codebook. The two coders looked again at the data to rene
the analysis. After coding, the two rst authors and the last author met to dene/review themes
and produce the results report. Dening/reviewing themes was made in a two-tier process: rst,
considering the whole dataset to identify common themes across communities and second, ltering
the dataset into community subsets to dene community-specic themes. For the Pilot study, due
to the smaller sample size, the prototype features and the interview focus, we decided not to report
community-specic themes, favouring common themes. For the Main study, we report common
themes (mainly connected to usability and user experience issues) and community-specic themes.
In both cases, when reporting, we prioritise reporting feedback from community members over
stakeholders as the app’s design is geared primarily towards their needs.
5 FINDINGS
In this section, we separate themes from the Pilot study (section 5.1), from the ones conceptualized
in the more comprehensive Main study (section 4).
5https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data- analysis-software/home
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"Connected to the people" 319:15
5.1 Pilot Study Findings
The semi-structured interviews across the three communities were thematically analysed [
17
]
identifying three positive themes about the use of the app, as well as themes with suggestions for
changes or new features:
•
Valuing the concept of a tool for "inclusion" - Overall, community members (who had
engaged in the digital storytelling (DS) workshops) were happy to see the concept realised in a
digital prototype, found the app easy to use, and praised the possibility of further customising
their stories. While some realised the app was dierent from what they had envisioned (e.g.,
PS_B3 stating "I think it’s dierent from what we imagined, what we thought it would be from
our practice [from the DS workshops]"), they were curious and appreciative of the app, enabling
them to view others’ stories (e.g., PS_B1 "It is beautiful to see someone else’s story.", PS_L10
"You can see other people’s creativity. To how far other people’s imagination goes."). When asked
about their expectations, participants said they would like to see more stories on the app and
that, once it is fully operational, they would like to use it while walking or when socialising
with friends (PS_P1,PS_P2). Participants highlighted the power of locality (and the app’s
geolocalized features) and desire to contribute to it, "[I want to use it] when I go for a walk, to
know what people really think about a place and also to share my experiences" (PS_L9). Finally,
some participants informed facilitators that they would appreciate the possibility of being
more included in the app’s design. Participants saw themselves not only as future users but
as co-designers (e.g., PS_L9 "[I] am anxious to see it concluded and know I contributed in a very
small way to the app").
•
Creating and sharing personal stories cross communities - Being able to publish their
stories in the app made participants feel accomplished and somehow connected (e.g., PS_B4
"I’d use it [...] when I want to feel connected to someone else through their experiences."). The
possibility to preview a story before its publication was much appreciated, as well as the
opportunity to upload dierent media content for each given story (video, audio, text, and
photo). They enjoyed scrolling through the stories accounts, seeing their contributions be
visible alongside others and being part of a "big" project (e.g., PS_B3 "Because I help to build it,
I was part of this process and I think that is what motivates me the most."). This made them feel
empowered in communicating with and understanding others. Another participant (PS_L9)
indicated that viewing shared stories could be in itself a prompt for others to share "What is
good is that when someone wants to know a specic place, they can put the location and check
all stories told near there, which can be good to help visitors start imagining stories, that someone
was there and had a dierent view. Although language came up as a potential barrier for some,
several participants shared a general willingness to engage and explore stories from other
pilots even in their original language, "I liked seeing stories from colleagues from Paris and
Lisbon. I’d like to have more access to their content" (PS_B3), "[...] we can know about someone’s
story, from other countries" (PS_B4).
•
Geolocalization of stories Community members highlighted that the map and the geolo-
calisation features of the app are crucial in supporting connection, inclusion and exploration
of CH, with PS_B3 identifying the app as "[...] a tool to build dierent narratives and to explore
other ways of seeing cultural heritage. A more grounded vision, more embodied". Community
members associate digital maps and the interaction patterns aorded by them with explo-
ration, mentally placing the app as "[...] an alternative way to approach a city. For example,
if you come to Barcelona – where lots of people travel here frequently, they can use it to do
something dierent. It would be great to add the places I already know, stories from people that
live there" (PS_B2).
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319:16 Valentina Nisi et al.
Stakeholders valued the importance of linking personal accounts to the surrounding cultural
heritage (e.g., PS_L3_st "This is an application to share personal stories related to the heritage
that surrounds us", PS_L6_st "Understanding dierent perceptions about the heritage that we
have in the city of Lisbon. Getting to know heritage from other European cities"). Stakeholders
also acknowledge the polyvocality of CH through the app and its ability to engage people in
dierent ways emotionally, "A statue that transmits happiness or joy can transmit the opposite
to another person. It’s interesting to know what other people see in the same heritage element"
(PS_L3_st).
•
Participants as co designers - While a portion of the diculties encountered in using the
app are related to its prototype nature (and set to be tackled in the subsequent versions),
participants enjoyed suggesting design improvements or new features that not only aect
the usability but the core experience of using the app.
Participants (PS_P2,PS_B3) suggested improving the design through a more colourful interface
with PS_B3 stating, "[...] the app graphics, I found them very corporate. It didn’t appeal to
me to participate. [...] As a user, I imagined it warmer, embracing, then I feel its aesthetics are
opposed to the goal, the message of it". One stakeholder (PS_B6_st) suggested rethinking the
app from a woman’s perspective, paying more attention to details and nuances, "a more
sensitive approach".
Participants often compared the app to other platforms such as blogs (PS_P1), YouTube
(PS_L2), Tumblr (PS_P1), and Instagram (PS_P1). While some voiced desire to have interfaces
that resembled social networks (e.g., PS_L4_st "[...] interface should be more similar to Insta-
gram, with contents in a single column and innite scrolling") or that connect to it (e.g., PS_L1
"[...] would like to link to social media"), others defended the need to dierentiate from social
media as the goal of the app should be dierent (e.g., PS_L1 "A person may not understand the
aim of the application or it may look more like a social network [...] It may not be the goal, as it
evades the judgment of social media.").
One suggested solution to dierentiate from social networks is the option of linking stories
together (e.g., PS_P1 "Beyond the geolocation, it would be nice to link all the stories together
to create a journey."), creating a more complex narrative journey through several stories
and valuing the connectedness potential of the app. Several participants commented on the
potential of the app to escape the mainstream (e.g., PS_L7_st "I think it could be very useful
even at the touristic level, as shared heritage can get even more visibility so that it isn’t only
the primary sites that are visited", PS_B2 "[...] normally everybody wants to go to most visited
spots, sights. . . I wish we all have the time to have these other experiences."). Stakeholders like
PS_B6_st considered the app potential broader than the CH and story sharing and voiced
that it could be helpful for some of their activities (e.g., supporting the making and sharing
of the anti-racist route through the city centre of Barcelona).
5.2 Main Study Findings
The thematic analysis [
17
] of semi-structured interviews from the Main study identied community-
specic and common themes about using the app for discourses on CH. In the following subsections,
we present common themes across communities rst and then expand on results per community.
5.2.1 Common findings across communities. Across the three communities, participants viewed the
creation of stories as fostering belonging and inclusion in the hosting society. Moreover, making
these stories visible to others solidies their societal position despite their dierences from the
mainstream population. Through the analysis, we clustered the following common themes across
communities:
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"Connected to the people" 319:17
•
Valuing cross-community access - participants wished to read stories about other places,
cultures and nationalities, despite existing language barriers;
•
Valuing geolocalised storytelling and CH - participants praise the incentive to physically
explore places by having content connected to the physical world;
•
Valuing multiple and dierent perspectives - participants appreciate the existence of
polyvocality about their city, especially since stories are often personal and intimate;
•
Valuing multimedia support - participants desire the possibility to integrate dierent
types of media to tell a story;
Community members and other stakeholders alike, voiced dissatisfaction towards two particular
bugs of the prototypes: (i) the slow loading times, which made them feel unsure of their actions, and
(ii) the complex interface of the KG-assisted authoring tool, which was not responding to their needs.
The support provided by the KG was not pertinent to the user’s needs or the topic; forecasting this
problem, researchers instructed facilitators to support the participants through the technical parts
of the tasks, including the KG-supported interactions. Nevertheless, most participants demonstrated
interest in the KG-assistive tool concept and recognised its potential (B2 "this is very relevant... It
has the potential to give (the app) even more value"), describing it as "a very powerful idea" (B12).
Similarly to the pilot study, participants across dierent communities valued their roles as co-
creators of stories and the app and contributed with several improvements and suggestions. These
ranged from broadening the list of keywords categorizing the stories (L1, B1, B5); to translation of
stories into the language of the participant (L1, B1, P6, P13); optimise loading times (L4, B2, B10,
B11, B14); further providing positive or negative feedback messages about interactions (L7, B2,
B10).
5.2.2 Lisbon’s community. In the Lisbon study, 15 participants tested the app, including ten com-
munity members (with second and third-generation migrant backgrounds) and ve stakeholders
from the local cultural and social sector:
•Supporting multiple perspectives for inclusion - Community members recognized the
app’s value for inclusion; they not only cherished the app as a community story-sharing tool
but identied its purpose in showing multiple perspectives inside and outside a community.
In L1’s words, "I published a story about the Praça do Comércio. For them [the other app users]
to see my vision, how I see the Praça do Comércio, and how I think it’s beautiful. Because they
might have this same perspective... And I also have a perspective like they do. Each one has a
dierent way of seeing things, right?"; L1 acknowledges through the app that people can "[...]
can understand the diversity of feelings and stories, and dimensions that may exist about the
same heritage monument". L3 reported that the app’s scope is not limited to local inclusion but
could reach to those who left or those that arrived in Lisbon, "[...] connecting with other people
stories, I think it also helps when you are away, living in another country that isn’t your own,
[...] it is very interesting to understand other people perspectives. And I think maybe some people,
they just moved to Lisbon but [would] probably nd it very useful as well and then realize there
is more going on. And it is almost a contribution to the city, [...]It’s part of sharing the story of
Lisbon". Overall, participants recognize that the app enables self-expression, which can lead
to understanding the city (and the CH within it) by including multiple perspectives.
•
Participation as a form of integration - When using the app, some participants voiced a
sense of belonging stemming from the act of sharing their stories and having their perspectives
included at the same level as a local, L3 "[...] it brings dierent people from dierent backgrounds
and whether you were born in Portugal or not [...] But I think gives a sense of community-based
on how you live. So it’s integration also. [I’m] feeling [like] a part of Lisbon. Like a Lisboner".
For this participant, integration is not referred to as feeling accepted but as having agency in
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319:18 Valentina Nisi et al.
participating in the place where they live. The ability to share stories through the app is a
meaning-making activity and a form of integration by connecting to the place. This view
is also shared by stakeholders, with L8_st stating that "We can mix our personal stories with
the stories of the places and in that way integrate the [migrant] population in the Portuguese
culture and heritage. Because we are included, but at the same time, we aren’t. And this is a way
to connect people to the place they live in and more".
•
Valuing polyvocality to escape the mainstream - While some participants recognize that
several end-users may exist (e.g., L1 "[...] mainly for tourism but also for the local participants"),
most participants acquiesced that one of the app’s values is to allow polyvocal views about
the city, outside the tourist-beaten tracks. Participants reported several ways in which the
app can help in this: identifying new views (e.g., L15 "Because there is a lot of people that
travel, that move around, that like to search for less obvious things, escape from patterns, [...]");
recontextualizing old views (e.g., L7 "It’s an app to discover new perspectives about the city
through dierent perspectives on known places such as museums or streets... places that may be
more touristic and such."), or humanizing views (e.g., L3 "It is always nice if you are visiting a
place to have an alternative sense of what is going on as well because, of course, you have the
travel guide and things like these, but this is testimonies from people.").
In this case, polyvocality is not just about having multiple personal views but also the
connections between personal stories and cultural heritage information. As L2 states, this
is what makes the app dierent from other mainstream platforms, L2 "it’s dierent [than]
when you see Wikipedia. It has feelings, and it is related to the person, it’s more interesting. It’s
connected to the people". This authenticity about a city is a value that they recognize "[...] I am
going to Paris next month. So the probability of accessing the app.. . To know what people are
writing here. What happened there. I think that’s interesting" (L6). While this personal touch is
the base for authenticity, one stakeholder warns about their diculty in adjusting to it in the
context of heritage discourse, L13_st "What I kind of had to get used to, was that the texts were
not written by professional authors and so they hadn’t this dramatic storyline. They were more
additive in what they were saying about certain places. And you didn’t know upfront what you
were supposed to expect. So it was kind of a surprise".
5.2.3 Barcelona’s community. The Barcelona study engaged a total of 11 participants, including
ten community members (all migrant women) and one session with a stakeholder from a local
NGO:
•
Geolocalised storytelling and CH - Community members highlighted the app’s potential
to share and view stories by valuing personal stories as heritage (as stated by B2 "The story
of a person [...] is already a heritage in itself: this aspect of the app is very relevant because
it has the potential to give that value, to make the personal something public and shared".
Despite several technical issues (e.g., slow connection aecting the app’s responsiveness),
most participants said they would use the app regularly, praising the geolocalization of stories
and CH. The value of this feature (both locally and globally) was identied by participants
(e.g., B2 "[...] based on connecting geographic spaces with the stories of people who have bonded
with those spaces.", B10 "I think it’s interesting the idea of connecting places, countries [...] The
visualisation of the map helps me make a connection between countries."). Some participants
(B5, B14, B11) mentioned adding or updating stories on the map regularly, which could
incentivise a continued use of the app.
•
Grassroots community building for cohesion - Several participants mentioned the
potential of the process (including the app) to create a sense of community (e.g., B11 "[...] I
think it is an app that can be adopted by a community, where people can also put more stories or
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"Connected to the people" 319:19
some new features, in a way almost making the community grow"). For this set of participants,
many of which are engaged activists, the process of storytelling about heritage is not only
person-centric but community-centric. As B11 states, "We, as migrant women, come alone and
this form of being a community is a perspective of knowledge, getting to know places from a
feminist, activist perspective, and in this way, we would show [it] to workers in Paris or Lisbon.".
They see heritage discourse as a community-building activity, as stated by B9 "I would like
people to know that when you get to a country, you think you have no rights, and the step of
protesting in the street for me was important. I was scared to participate because I thought as a
migrant, I couldn’t participate in the country’s political life. That changed my life. I felt strength.
The right to protest is a right we migrants have, and we can nd strength through unity."
•
Unexpected connections - The second iteration of the prototype leverages KG in creating
and connecting stories. However, most participants found KG-supported interactions hard
to grasp. Some participants (B2, B9, B10, B11) were frustrated when searching for relevant
content to add to their stories. This frustration was mainly caused by the limited scope of the
KG (e.g., B2 says, "[...] I wanted to enter the word sorority, but I opted for fraternity, thinking
that the search would be simpler, and I nally opted for cooperation. I would highlight that it
was dicult for me to nd a word to enter into the search engine to nd it."). For participant
B10, the frustration was caused by not knowing where the information was coming from
"[the suggestions][...] It seems a bit random, and I would like to understand where those results
are coming from. I put the word "woman" in the images, and a man came up [laughs]. It’s
weird and ambiguous". These concerns were connected to the lack of visibility in the Human-
AI interaction. Similarly, when asked to explain how stories were connected, participants
(B2, B3_st, B10, B11, B12) showed diculties or uncertainty in explaining why connections
happen. For example, B3_st stated that they were "[...] a bit confused by this, I think they are
connected because of themes, but I am not sure".
nevertheless, some participants were positively surprised by the KG support, even if it did not
provide what they expected when creating stories (e.g., B15 "It was useful but I was looking
for a dove, and there was no dove amongst the choices", B9 "[...] I put some words, but I didn’t
identify with the [written] results. Only when I looked in images, I nd a statue of a woman
I liked."). While there is a consensus the feature needs some further development, several
participants (B10, B11, B9) praised the value of the suggested content (and how it could
empower their story) and future connections with other communities and cultural heritage,
with B10 stating that "[...] it’s interesting to see how countries are connected because of shared
memories . . . or how two countries are related. It can be a reective space if you know how to
use the tool". For B15, the existence of unexpected connections was a reective trigger "I was
surprised that mine is connected with another place in Portugal, it’s incredible.").
5.2.4 Paris’s community. The Paris study involved a total of 11 participants, ve community
members (migrants living in the Rosa Parks neighbourhood), and six stakeholders from local
authorities and the sociocultural sector:
•
Leveraging grassroots engagement as collective memory - Community members from
Paris perceived the app in close connection with the history of the local neighbourhood, with
P3 stating, "It’s a way to valorise people’s memories and thus, the neighbourhood’s memory.
It’s an interesting tool that puts humans at the centre". As the area has changed recently, the
principal shared content was personal stories about the neighbourhood’s history, urban
transformation, and memories of lost buildings and people. In a way, the app leveraged
grassroots eorts to build or rebuild the neighbourhood’s heritage. For example, P13 uses
his story to recognize a social centre as a new heritage, one that is inuenced politically and
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319:20 Valentina Nisi et al.
socially "By talking about the Rosa parks centre, I wanted to convey the link between a political
will and its concrete application by a group of inhabitants.".
Participants enjoyed being able to share their experiences about the neighbourhood and
mostly being able to build a collective history of their shared living space, with P3 stating "It
aims at valuing people, stories and places which are not necessarily known, marginalized". When
asked how they would use the app, similarly to Lisbon, a stakeholder reported the potential of
the app to support newcomers in knowing the neighbourhood, P8_st "[the app] presents a real
interest for a newcomer in the territory, to understand the dynamics of the territory [...]". Other
participants identify an educational potential to these stories (e.g., P7 "to educate students
about these places.", P3 "For instance, we can imagine some kind of pedagogical treasure hunt
with children or adults, using the stories and the [app’]s map.").
•
Empowering new perspectives of heritage - Stakeholders from the area saw the app as
an interconnection tool. They expressed interest in expanding its reach by connecting and
mapping more stories inside and outside the area of Rosa Parks. This may be because some
stakeholders see the tool not only as showcasing dierent perspectives but also as a tool to
engage and promote activities in the neighbourhood.
Stakeholders recognize that the stories told by community members have value in the heritage
eld (e.g., P11_st) "I nd it interesting to listen to the perceptions of the inhabitants on the
district, micro-local approach, the tools bring knowledge on the district for the professionals
[...]") and beyond it (e.g., P12_st sees it as a way to study the neighbourhood, "[...] it would be
interesting to use it as a tool for diagnosis"). For local authorities (such as P8_st), the app could
have a political value by focusing on "Stories about the social centre, cultural facilities, and the
neighbourhood’s transformation over time".
•
Connecting transnational communities - Similarly to the other cities, the sharing of
stories across countries was cherished (e.g., P13 "there are no longer any borders, as we can
access the stories of people abroad") and some participants suggested translating the stories
to facilitate exchanges. Similarly to Barcelona, some participants found adding content
suggestions from KG complex. They did not quite understand how stories were connected
or the value of the suggested linked content (P6, P9_st, P7). Some stakeholders thought the
story’s connection was only based on its geolocation (P14_st, P12_st). In that sense, users
felt the need for more guidance and a more straightforward user interface, P9_st "I used it
randomly, the story suggestion wasn’t relevant, but the idea is good, it might give more to the
story.".
6 DISCUSSION
In this section, we discuss the ndings from the study in parallel with the goals and outcomes of
the project and connect them to the related work when appropriate.
6.1 Social Inclusion & Cohesion in action
The concepts of social inclusion to encourage and support cohesion (introduced in section 2.1)
were cornerstones in the design of the prototype for engaging with heritage discourse. For the
rst iteration of the prototype, social inclusion was expressed through access and the ability of
community members to share stories. This enables the creation of a trusted and cherished safe
space for participants to share their CH and participate in the hosting culture. Following Sabie
et al. [
89
] invitation to cater for more than basic needs, the app created a safe space for cultural
participation [20,21,32,71].
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"Connected to the people" 319:21
For the second iteration of the prototype, the app design in support of social inclusion was
expanded to champion cohesion and expressed through the identication (via the KG) and visual-
ization of connections among stories and CH [
43
]. Highlighting the existence of bonds between
stories across the same community, as well as stories in dierent communities, and stories and
society (through CH assets), was valued by participants despite their dierences to the "mainstream"
society. Here expanding on previous work [
59
–
61
], the app went beyond participation and oered
the communities a way to experience cohesion through the bonds created among stories, cultures
and CH. Throughout the study and the whole project, inclusion and cohesion were identied and
valued as heterogeneous concepts composed of distinct elements, practices, feelings and actions;
they present nuances that dier depending on the marginalised community.
The complexity of the concept of inclusion, and its relevance as a seed for cohesion, becomes
visible through how participants talk about the purposes of the app. All participants across commu-
nities valued the app as a tool for inclusion, expressing a desire to keep using it to add more stories
to it; from this point of view, the app facilitates inclusion through sharing and participation
similarly to what is suggested by [
53
] and in line with the insucient support for participation
reported by [
59
]. Participants cherished reading and learning about other communities framing
inclusion from a bonding and embracing perspective, which can be seen as a seed for cohesion
in line with the importance of the tension between democratic participation and care suggested
by [
59
,
60
]. Moreover, participants appreciated being involved in the evaluation of the app, and
some wished they could further help in the design process, valuing the co-design process itself;
this expression values inclusion as co-designing. To further expand the inclusive features of
the app to support social cohesion, the app created visible connections between stories and CH,
through what was named the "connectedness" feature. The connections were made manually
(e.g., tagging the stories through keywords) and automatically (e.g., KG-supported Named Entity
Recognition). The importance in support for connectedness is consistent with previous work on
migrants networking support (e.g., [
1
]) and supports the longstanding call for HCI to support
wider humanitarian research [
102
,
103
]. In addition, it provides one example of the socially just
use of Articial Intelligence and Machine Learning extending its reach to marginalized people
[
99
,
100
]. Participants identied and cherished the existence of connections through their stories,
both inside the same community and in other communities, manifesting curiosity towards the
interrelatedness of their experiences and a tendency towards cohesion inside and across dierent
communities. As such, connectedness was appreciated, and even though the connection is not
necessarily cohesion, it can be conducive to it [
83
], especially since it contributes to removing the
barriers to inclusions [
29
]. Similarly to inclusion, cohesion emerged as a complex concept through
how participants talked about the app’s purpose. Each pilot community interpreted it as a tool
to cohere dierently, consistent with Beauvois and Jensen [
9
] claim that they dier according to
the socio-political environment in which it evolves. Participants in Barcelona wanted to use the
app to share and connect their stories to support grassroots engagement around activism; they
expressed wanting the app to empower other migrants (from their original city and others) to
express themselves and ght for their rights. This frames cohesion as a form of community
building [
10
]. Participants in Paris wanted to use the app to share their stories to stimulate grass-
roots engagement with their neighbourhood; they created a repository of memories, making the
neighbourhood’s heritage visible and known to others. They saw the app as an invitation to create
new heritage dialogues centred on their locale, suggestive of a cohesive behaviour that takes the
form of collective memory and community building, extending on the work of Sabie et al.
[
90
] on physical spaces and households. Participants in Lisbon wanted to use the app to make
their migrant origins visible and root them in the Portuguese culture and heritage; by making
their heritage visible, the participants aimed to make themselves visible and directly participate
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319:22 Valentina Nisi et al.
in their hosting society’s culture. This attitude highlights participation in meaning-making as a
fundamental aspect of inclusion and possibly cohesion providing evidence of civic engagement and
participation processes of mean-making places [
31
]. Community members’ various appropriations
and interpretations of the app all point towards ways to create stronger social bonds within and
across dierent communities. We acknowledge that other potential frames of the app may exist,
tied to the nature of the marginalized communities the authors engaged with and the conscious or
unconscious societal boundaries they are pushing against. Paris participants who lived through a
profound urban renewal of their peripheral neighbourhood use the app to think about the tension
between remembering the past and embracing modernity. Barcelona participants engaged in gender
and migration activism used the app to reect on their struggles to integrate into the new society
and ght for their rights. Lisbon participants, as rst and second-generation migrants, use the
app to manifest the duality of living with multiple concurring cultures. In summary, the app can
function as a social probe, making visible the boundaries against which each community is pushing,
highlighting dierent backgrounds, cultures, contexts and social challenges.
6.2 Geolocalised Storytelling and CH
Across communities, participants praised the app’s geolocalization features and its ability to
visualise stories and CH on a map in line with previous work [
40
,
77
,
78
]. Participants described
several use cases for the app (e.g., to suggest guided tours and pedagogical treasure hunts) that
take advantage of geolocalization and contextualize the use of the app in the real world and go
beyond the use as a self-expression tool [
85
]. Although the app can be used anywhere (e.g., the
user is free to choose its GPS positioning for any created story; there are no location barriers in
searching for stories), features like the map and the journeys can be seen by participants as prompts
for physical exploration. Furthermore, heritage discourse often focuses on physical places’ tangible
and historical heritage. The cities where the studies took place all have highly developed tourism
sectors. Therefore, these factors align to create use cases where the exploration of the town can be
a primary use of the app. Overall, our results suggest the app could widen participation and enable
story creation and sharing amongst citizens in line with previous research reported by Manuel
et al. [71].
Regarding using the KG tool to support the authoring of the stories, participants across communi-
ties had issues using it and using the information it provided. While the concept was well received
(a tool suggesting CH content that relates to the story being told), the interface design for such
a feature proved hard to grasp as it did not clearly express the intended interaction. Participants
were puzzled about where the information came from, hence not incentivising trust in the system
or transparency in its performance. Participants were not satised by the support information pre-
sented by the KG while authoring their stories because it did not full their needs and expectations.
This provides challenges for human-AI interaction for disadvantaged communities [
99
,
100
]. While
participants recognize that this feature has potential, further work is needed to make this feature
more transparent, trustworthy, helpful and appreciated.
On the other hand, participants understood its purpose when used for viewing stories (instead
of authoring) despite the opaqueness of the interaction. They praised the connectedness as it
connected stories and content across the maps (see V2 in g. 3). Nevertheless, the feature needs
further redesign to make the human-AI interaction explainable and more usable. But even in its
current form, participants enjoyed seeing their stories connected to others and CH, especially if
that connection was transnational.
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"Connected to the people" 319:23
6.3 Tensions due to power disparities
Results from the study expand on the complex ethical issues concerning the work of researchers with
vulnerable communities [
52
,
67
]. Our analysis highlighted several tensions between community
members and stakeholders’ expectations for the app and the power disparity between researchers
and vulnerable participants populations [59].
Participants often compared and wished the app was more similar to mainstream platforms (e.g.,
blogs, Instagram, Tumblr, Wikipedia, etc.), many of which they already used. Some storytelling
participants suggested the app interface mimics existing mainstream apps. Mainly for the ease of
interaction but also because they wanted to be identied as authors of the content. On the other
hand, the project ethics did not allow the app to identify authors nor let them comment or leave
tokens of appreciation for each other’s authored stories. In parallel, participants recognized that the
app’s purpose is not the same as a social network (where "judgments", rankings and preferences are
expressed) or a crowd-sourced archive of content like Wikipedia (where the personal and polyvocal
nature of heritage could be lost). As voiced by L2, the app needs to be "connected to the people" as
opposed to being mediated by authorised sources of information. While the app intended to serve
communities at risk of exclusion in particular, throughout the studies, we realised that embracing
standard features and interaction design patterns from the mainstream application could benet
our target users. It would diminish interaction problems and usability issues. The creation of a
novel and original artefact was counter-intuitive to the goal of supporting communities in using
and adopting the app. Moreover, during the co-design session between technical and social partners,
the issue of designing a "special" app for vulnerable communities brought up the danger of further
discrimination against them, distancing them even further from the mainstream.
Stakeholders participants recognised the app’s power in celebrating polyvocality as a way to
escape mainstream (both in CH discourse and tourism). They valued having multiple views on
CH, identifying hidden heritage elements and creating new or contextualising old heritage. The
participatory approach of the app was praised as a promising feature embracing the latest trends
in cultural heritage discourse [
41
,
44
]. Stakeholder participants described the app as a counter-
mapping tool (maps challenging dominant power structures of knowledge [
24
]), creating new
experiences for those exploring the city. These experiences escape the mainstream by focusing on
personal accounts. Nevertheless, escaping the mainstream can lead to ethical questioning of the
participation of fragile and marginalized communities in heritage discourse. Care should be put
into avoiding their exploitation. While the researcher’s ethical practices and positioning as allies
are intended to create "safe spaces" for sharing stories [
20
,
21
,
32
,
71
], we acknowledge that digital
tools need ethical considerations before being released in the wild [8].
For example, the funding guidelines of the project prohibited the disclosure of any personal
information about participants from vulnerable communities that could lead to identication and
in compliance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In contrast, several
participants wanted ownership and identication of their work. This generated tensions between
the design team and the project coordinators, where the ethics delivered to the funding agent
super seeded the desires of the communities the app was supposed to serve. Similar tensions
emerged during the design of the connectedness features. The social partners enforced their
section of keywords that would act as tags to the participants’ stories and connect the stories
among themselves and to the surrounding CH. Social partners justied the action by protecting
the participants from identifying themselves through keywords, exposing vulnerabilities, and
triggering reactions [
13
,
20
,
21
]. Nevertheless, very early in the evaluation process, the storytelling
participants disagreed with what they perceived as a "top-down" approach to classifying their
content. Participants wanted more agency in dening their stories’ keywords. Such tensions are
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319:24 Valentina Nisi et al.
an exemplar of the power imbalance regarding some funded projects [
58
]. Those designing and
engaging with fragile communities are often bounded by rules that do not reect the community’s
needs and desires. This is an open issue, particularly with projects that need detailed plans to receive
funding and rely on complicated balancing processes of project awarding, reporting and results. As
such, features such as public proles for participants were discussed internally but could not be
implemented in the app. However, this is a common discussion point for participatory projects that
work with marginalized communities [
67
]. Further, counter-mapping with personal stories can
also be viewed as exploitative for the communities in those areas. Tourism can be a marginalizing
practice [
81
] when authenticity is performative. Most of these tensions were unresolved in our
project, but identifying them and unpacking their dynamics can help future researchers take further
steps to solve them.
In summary, this paper contributes to the HCI community in several ways.
(1)
First, through the results and insights from the artefact evaluation with the communities at
risk of exclusion. After careful analysis and discussion of the data, we can arm that the
app extends previous work of HCI and migration with a caring artefact that can support
the participation of vulnerable communities in their hosting society’s culture, fostering
heritage-making and dialogue. This dialogue reinforces inclusion and cohesion for an open
and multicultural society [29,56,63].
(2)
As a second contribution, we present a digital storytelling and CH artefact that brings together
several novel features, such as giving agency to vulnerable communities to tell their stories,
connecting them to tangible and intangible local heritage, and building and strengthening
the heritage discourse of those communities and their localities. The tool supports heritage
discourse among co-located and distant vulnerable multicultural communities.
7 LIMITATIONS & FUTURE WORK
There are several limitations to this work, often connected how these projects are funded and
managed. Several aspects of the project were dened before achieving the funding and could not
be changed afterwards. The pilot communities were part of the initial proposal bid, chosen for their
variety in covering vulnerabilities of several European communities. Still, no further communities
of study could be added once the project had been awarded funding.
The project started at the end of 2019 and encountered several barriers that shaped its evolution.
The heterogeneous nature of stakeholders was exacerbated by the COVID-19 challenges in having
geographically distributed design and development teams and very heterogeneous groups in
the three case cities of Barcelona, Paris and Lisbon. The social distance restrictions imposed by
the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of the project aected the participatory methods and the
number of participants for the evaluation sessions. The traditional face-to-face methods often
transformed distant interactions, challenging trust and rapport online as many social cues were
missing, privacy concerns were raised, and the digital divide played a role. In addition, evaluating
complex experiences (such as those supported by our app) with prototyping technology (e.g.,
KG) can be problematic as the level of performance also aects the experience. Future work
involves enhancing the app’s support for more ecient AI techniques and broader KG support. The
interest demonstrated by the participants in pushing the project team to make the app available for
mainstream use is probably the best outcome we could expect from this project.
Despite several setbacks, we successfully deployed the mobile application to gauge the commu-
nities of migrants’ needs, desires, and experiences concerning the concept of inclusion through
CH and managed to conduct the presential evaluation of the technological interventions with
participants belonging to at-risk communities. Nevertheless, because of the ethical framework set
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"Connected to the people" 319:25
up by the Project funding agent and the coordinator’s partners, the communities at risk could only
be contacted by the social partners. For this reason, the researchers never had direct access to the
participants of the studies. They relied on the social partners conducting the studies, recording
the sessions and transcribing the records. While this was intended to protect participants, this
proved to be limiting for the research output in several ways. The social partners were not experts
in the technology used, nor in conducting this kind of study. While interviewing the participants,
researchers could not follow leads and probe in specic directions deemed essential or emotionally
charged. Additionally, researchers could not collect observations of the app’s contextual use or
participants’ physical expressions.
Finally, although our results indicate ways in which our participants felt social inclusion and
social cohesion while using the app and appropriating the app to voice their stories, a longer
engagement with the app "in the wild" is needed to quantify these measures. For example, social
cohesion [
56
] is a multi-dimensional measure that involves economic, political and socio-cultural
factors, making it complex to quantify. While indicators of belonging (like multiculturalism, trust,
and participation) were identied in our interviews, a longitudinal study would be needed to
investigate the eect of our system on the participants’ daily lives. Alas, such an endeavour is not
possible in short-term funded projects such as ours.
8 CONCLUSION
Digital tools are ubiquitous and provide opportunities to promote social inclusion and support
cohesion. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a CH-oriented digital storytelling
application, in support of participatory approaches bridging cultural heritage and vulnerable
communities, to promote social inclusion and cohesion by leveraging polyvocality. Our results stem
from a cross-European project focusing on three vulnerable communities and provide evidence
and design guidelines for future work in this critical domain supporting meaning-making and
participation as a form of integration. Overall, participants valued the concept of the storytelling app
as a tool for promoting inclusion and cohesion (inside and across communities). Inclusion manifested
and was valued as empowerment via engagement, participation and co-design activities. Cohesion,
on the other hand, is manifested through exploring dierent territories and modes of viewing
(supported by geolocalization and connection with the surrounding cultural heritage) and sharing
and viewing personal stories across communities (cohesion enabled through connectedness). Our
study also provides cultural and social stakeholders insights into supporting vulnerable communities
through participation in the cultural heritage discourse. The app enables self-expression, leading to
a polyvocal point of view on the city’s heritage (and the CH within it) and can impact areas such as
tourism (e.g., escaping the mainstream of tourism) and political activism. Through this research, we
highlight the complexity of the concepts of inclusion and cohesion, considering how participants
address the app’s purpose; inclusion as sharing and participating, and cohesion as embracing
dierent perspectives and polyvocality. We provide evidence that digital apps can function as social
probes, making community boundaries visible and highlighting dierent backgrounds, cultures,
contexts and social challenges.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by MEMEX (MEMories and EXperiences for inclusive digital story-
telling) project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program
under grant agreement No 870743, by LARSyS (Project UIDB/50009/2020), and by ARDITI (Post-
doctoral Grant M1420-09-5369-FSE-000002).
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319:26 Valentina Nisi et al.
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319:32 Valentina Nisi et al.
A BARCELONA STORIES
From the migrant women of Barcelona, the stories celebrate activism and manifesting their rights
in the new society, going to the street to make their rights heard. From marching together along
the Rambla, to gathering with fellow migrant women to face together the hardships of the migrant
life, the stories reect a nostalgia for home but also a strength, curiosity, and life force that comes
from taking their destiny in their own hands and improving their way of life, even if that meant
leaving home and migrating to another country.
A.1 Mi barrio mi hogar / My neighborhood my home
In Arabic the word Raval means neighbourhood and I live here in the El Raval neighbourhood of
Barcelona. In a small attic but with a lot of owers, herbs and a good view. I have already embroidered
simply, limited by La Rambla, Pelai street, Ronda Sant Antoni and Sant Pere, it is said that El Raval
has the shape of a diamond... A very raw, multicolor-multi-avor, which three years after my arrival I
already feel as my own. Around here several times a week I head to La Bonne from where with my
companions from Sindihogar we face up to this migrant life. The story of struggle that we face every
day is for another chapter. For now I will continue this story, about the class unity between women
beyond their race or origin... The story of female poverty of my neighbourhood of working-class origins.
And I come to this Rambla - Because very close, in this small street, is located the Lokal, a meeting
point for struggles and resistance: bookstore, music store and community self-organization. Founder
and soul of LoKal, emblematic Barcelona activist, Iñaki García, has been part of the group that has
managed this place for 30 years. The book that he shows me is: The Women’s Revolt. It is about the
historic uprising of 1918. Of that January so cold and hard, as combative in Ciutat Vella. Little is
missing to the end of the Great War. The enormous benets brought about by Spanish neutrality have
not impacted wages. The daily wage has been frozen since the beginning of the conict. Middlemen and
traders hoard and speculate on essential products. Coal is scarce and adulterated in a spiral of upward
prices, which drags down food and rent. The working-class households cannot ensure subsistence, and
the women decided to ght the situation. Textile workers, from the factories or small workshops, are
the ones who start the revolt. Yes, we can say that the history of the poor is unocial, but that of the
women who have taken to the streets to ght for their demands is not even that, because they have been
made invisible. A migrant is someone who seeks to live fully. And to do it well, a fair share of curiosity
is needed. My neighbourhood, my home, the history of my new people. . . I’m interested in everything!
A.2 La Rambla
Las Ramblas, when I walk here, I remember 1st May, 2019, that day we held a demonstration where for
the rst time, I went to the streets to demonstrate as a working woman in Barcelona and against the
violence of the immigration law. That day I shared laughter, cries of protest, and dances, and above all,
I discovered that I was not afraid to protest in a new country, where I am a foreigner. My compañeras
from the sindihogar/sindillar struggle gave me the condence and security to go out into the streets, to
demand my rights. And since that day, every time we go out into the street, fear is present, although it
is less and less, what I feel above all: the strength of the ght together!
A.3 El arbol no te cobra / The three does not ask for money
Being thousands of kilometres from my country, only memories sustain me; the days will pass like
soap bubbles bringing closer my return to the land where I was born, a land to which I am transported
mainly when I walk through the Boqueria market and contemplate the variety of tropical fruits
characterised by their colours, aromas, shapes and avours, as well as the incomparable pleasure of
tasting them directly from the tree at my grandparents’ house, "Riches that I don’t have now, and they
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"Connected to the people" 319:33
Fig. 4. Accompanying image for "Mi barrio mi hogar / My neighborhood my home" story (A.1)
Fig. 5. Accompanying image for "La Rambla" story (A.2)
Fig. 6. Accompanying image for "El arbol no te cobra / The three does not ask for money" story (A.3)
make me realise how lucky I was". On the other hand, touring the Gothic Quarter and contemplating its
architecture and colonial style transports me to the historic centre of the beautiful Cartagena de Indias
where you can also see colonial houses, churches hundreds of years old; beautiful wooden balconies,
windows full of owers and how to forget its sunsets from the wall.
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319:34 Valentina Nisi et al.
B PARIS STORIES
The community from the priority neighbourhood of Paris, District XIX, recounts and remembers
their neighborhoods gone iconic buildings such as the hospital Claude Bernard, and how they spent
some time there when they were children. But also the long queues of refugees standing outside the
refugee center which has now been demolished. The community member wonders what happened
to those who used to queue outside that building. Did they get integrated in the new society and
where they are now? The community members reect on the changes in specic spaces that were
once derelict and polluted but got rescued by community action (such as the space transformed
into a garden).
B.1 L’hopital Claude Bernard / The Claude Bernad Hospital
Fig. 7. Accompanying images for "L’hopital Claude Bernard / The Claude Bernad Hospital" story (B.1)
I am going to tell you the story of the Claude Bernard Hospital, which extended from the Porte
d’Aubervilliers to the Saint-Denis canal. I was hospitalized there at age two, suering from rubella,
my mom being pregnant with a second. So I was isolated, and she came to see me behind a window.
Then the hospital was destroyed, demolished and then remained a wasteland for a very long time.
Subsequently they built buildings on the site, they kept the square, then built a cinema, and nally
oces, housing, the health center, a dentist, a bank, etc etc. And I nd myself, 63 years later, living in
one of the building blocks that was built on the site of the Claude Bernard hospital. France.
B.2 Le jardin Ver Têtu / The green stubborn garden
Fig. 8. Accompanying images for "Le jardin Ver Têtu / The Ver Têtu garden" story (B.2)
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"Connected to the people" 319:35
In 2008, my children were attending the Curial School. Contamination of the soil led the city of
Paris to decide on a relocation of the school classes, during the construction period and put in place
buses to move students every day to other schools. Part of the work plan was the construction of
a garden. In 2013, the Régie de quartier du 19 launched an open call for applications interested in
gardening in a community garden. A group of around ten enthusiastic gardeners was created around
the garden coordinator to nally get started. The beginning was very hard because there was a lot of
weeding to do and it was necessary to build composting bins because we would never manage to get
the eld completely clean. The City of Paris provided the composters. So in the winter, we prepare the
containers, then we sow in spring and harvest in the summer. The garden was nally opened to the
public in 2016, the group has grown a bit since then, but not that much. The owers kept growing in
the solid ground and during the connement, the garden remained closed and when nally reopened...
It looked beautiful. The garden is a gathering place for neighbourhood celebrations, picnics and several
associations.
B.3 Le pont / The bridge
Fig. 9. Accompanying image for "Le pont / The bridge" story (B.3)
I came to live in this neighbourhood about 22, 23 years ago, in the late 90s. It was murky, there were
only three apartment buildings and the Macdonald warehouses and Macdonald Boulevard between
two doors. There was nothing to see, nothing to do, no food stores, absolutely nothing at all. We only
wanted to get out of it to go to the other side of the bridge on foot or by bus. There was no metro here, to
start being in a city. You could notice in the morning when you were walking or taking the bus, a very
long queue of people, men, women and children. Very early in the morning and until the afternoon,
a particularly wise queue, no jostling, well aligned to the sidewalk. There were no police, guards or
security watching them. I wondered what it was about. Are they there for overnight accommodation?
by day ? food aid? But when I learned that it was a centre dedicated to asylum seekers in France, I
felt ashamed of this reception on this sidewalk in all weathers. And one day, the place closed and was
destroyed and overnight there was no longer any trace of you, asylum seeker in France whom I saw so
many times, so many hours on the sidewalk and I want to tell you that you succeeded get your asylum
or not, I hope you haven’t fallen into hiding and the rough hiding of life. Whether you returned home
or not, know that your passage is inscribed in the memory of the neighbourhood and the people of
the neighbourhood, although now it is a totally dierent city. Also know that if you come back to this
neighbourhood, if you nd yourself where this place was, where you waited for so many hours, you
will see many refugees. If you go back to this old address, you will recognize yourself.
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319:36 Valentina Nisi et al.
C LISBON STORIES
The Lisbon communities’ stories mostly look at the city through the eyes of those born elsewhere
who encounter another culture with curiosity and an open mind. They welcome spaces where
people gather to celebrate and manifest through music, social and multicultural events, gardens,
riversides, and monuments. A migrant participant reects on the personal enjoyment and liveliness
of the Rossio square, until almost by chance, the somber history of the character of the statue
towering on the square came to light. From then on, that square took on a dierent light. On the
other hand, places such as Alameda square is cherished as a green space where people get together
and celebrate a sunny day, a music jam session or carnival festivities together.
C.1 Dom Pedro IV
Fig. 10. Accompanying image for "Dom Pedro IV" story (C.1)
I’ve been in Lisbon since 2013, I didn’t know the history or the Portuguese culture very well and I
walked by, lived, met friends, danced, and stopped a thousand times in Rossio square, but I never knew
who the gentleman was up there. Either because of my lack of interest in stopping for a moment to ask
who it is, or because the statue is too high and you can’t see it, or maybe because I was too preoccupied
celebrating the 25th of April with my friends, running to catch the train or getting ready for a date. The
happiest memory I have of this square is April 25, 2014, which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the
revolution, and which made me understand, know and love Portugal more. My friends and the people
around me have inspired me until now, not to mention the music, noise and energy that emanated from
that day! Returning to the statue, all I know is that its stairs brings together demonstrators, events,
tourist groups or simply friends or lovers. The day I found out who Dom Pedro was, at rst I don’t know
if I memorized and understood everything, but I realized the sad and frightening historical symbolism
that presides over the center of the city and where everyone passes with their eyes turned to the ground.
I go to this square with a dierent look now and I am curious to better understand its history, as a
hidden part of the place.
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"Connected to the people" 319:37
C.2 Fonte Luminosa / Luminous Fountain
Fig. 11. Accompanying image for "Fonte Luminosa / Luminous Fountain" story (C.2)
This is the luminous fountain of Alameda’s square. I pass by here every day or almost every day
and as you can see, it is an inviting space and all it takes is a few rays of sun for Alameda to be
"occupied by people", some to sunbathe, others to leave the house, others to catch air and walk the dogs.
Alameda and its luminous fountain is a space with a lot of potential. I have already attended many
parties organized by the council. But what enchants me most about Alameda are the parties and/or
moments organized by creative people. For example, I’m part of a carnival block / percussion band
and in January and February our rehearsals are in the Alameda on Sunday afternoon and it’s very
beautiful to see people love it, and they applaud us it’s very special mainly because nobody needs to
pay, it’s people entertaining people at zero cost in the public space, something that is increasingly rare.
Received January 2023; revised April 2023; accepted May 2023
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