Luigina Ciolfi’s research while affiliated with University College Cork and other places

Physical restrictions in many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic affected almost all aspects of social life, including end-of-life rituals such as funerals. In Ireland, public health restrictions required mourners to adapt to alternative rituals to customary Irish mourning practices, which are traditionally community-focused and highly social. This period brought significant changes and challenges in the way Irish people and communities mourn, and in how events such as funerals were experienced through digital and online technologies. This paper reports on a qualitative study that contributes a better understanding of the experiences of mourners in Ireland during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly regarding the use and role of digital tools during this period, and their continued use following the lifting of pandemic restrictions. Overall, the findings indicate that participants felt a sense of unfulfillment and faced a series of challenges in managing altered support mechanisms, while acknowledging the importance and utility of digitally-mediated experiences, such as participation in live-streamed funerals and in online books of condolences. The paper sheds further light in the experiences of use of technology during the pandemic and provides insights to inform the future design and use of end-of-life digital tools and services, as they remain widely used also after the end of the pandemic.

This workshop advances a CSCW-perspective on how scale and place relate and how we might better understand what role scale plays in the design of tools and collaborative processes. This full-day workshop is designed for up to 20 participants, to be selected based on short position papers that relate to one or more of the workshop themes: (1) the political and ethical challenges of scale, (2) modes of organizing, infrastructuring, and governing, (3) (inter)organizational aspects, and (4) place and care. The workshop builds upon the COST Action From Sharing to Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy that played a key role in bringing researchers together to address issues of care and scale, as well as recent workshops and interests groups at CSCW and HCI venues that have focused on issues of scale, cooperation, and place-making. Our aim with this workshop is to provide a space for the continued unfolding of the discussions sparked through these prior activities, this time with a particular focus on the political and ethical challenges of scale.

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an interdisciplinary research area concerned with developing computing technologies that facilitate, mediate, or regulate interaction between people engaged in cooperative work or similar kinds of sustained social activities. CSCW is a heterogeneous enterprise, addressing a motley of computational technologies and assimilating contributions from a host of scientific disciplines. What unites CSCW research is a shared concern with the fundamental problem of incorporating models of coordinative practices in computational artifacts and to do so in such a way that actors are able to deal with contingencies and are supported in that by the functionalities of the computational artifacts. Reflecting this shared concern, CSCW research is also united in a symmetrical commitment to ground design efforts in studies of actual work practices and to orient studies of actual work practices towards informing the development of collaborative technologies. As a field CSCW focuses on a variety of domains where complex cooperative practices occur. Due to the heterogeneity of the field and of such domains, a range of approaches and frameworks are applied to CSCW research. A notably established approach that has shaped substantial part of CSCW scholarship and had influence beyond the discipline are in-depth ethnographic studies of actual practices in their naturally occurring settings. In this regard CSCW has been influential in championing a hybrid approach to the study of computing systems encompassing concerns for understanding and for designing.

In recent years, we have witnessed a growing interest from cultural heritage professionals in assuming a more socially active role and in engaging with different communities, including disadvantaged and marginalised ones. However, these actors may often lack the knowledge about the most appropriate approaches, methods, tools, and collaborators for their intended participatory activities and audiences. Starting from an analysis of the needs of a variety of actors and target communities, the CultureLabs project developed an online platform that aims to streamline and facilitate the collaborative organisation of cultural heritage-oriented and social innovation-compatible participatory projects. Through the platform, users can discover helpful resources (“ingredients”) and combine them to form “recipes” for social innovation. Users are guided to document and share with others not only the successful results of a project, but also the process by which these results were achieved. This chapter discusses how the CultureLabs platform can connect institutional practices, cultural heritage, and digital technology in a way that can leave a legacy for the broader cultural sector and society at large.

Digital Approaches to Inclusion and Participation in Cultural Heritage brings together best examples and practices of digital and interactive approaches and platforms from a number of projects based in European countries to foster social inclusion and participation in heritage and culture. It engages with ongoing debates on the role of culture and heritage in contemporary society relating to inclusion and exclusion, openness, access, and bottom-up participation. The contributions address key themes such as the engagement of marginalised communities, the opening of debates and new interpretations around socially and historically contested heritages, and the way in which digital technologies may foster more inclusive cultural heritage practices. They will also showcase examples of work that can inspire reflection, further research, and also practice for readers such as practice-focused researchers in both HCI and design. Indeed, as well as consolidating the achievements of researchers, the contributions also represent concrete approaches to digital heritage innovation for social inclusion purposes. The book’s primary audience is academics, researchers, and students in the fields of cultural heritage, digital heritage, human-computer interaction, digital humanities, and digital media, as well as practitioners in the cultural sector.

This chapter introduces the recent scholarly and practical developments at the intersection of cultural heritage, digital technologies, and social innovation. It also serves as an introduction to this book, which brings together best examples and practices of digital and interactive approaches and platforms from a number of projects based in European countries to foster social inclusion and participation in heritage and culture. It will propose some common threads emerging from all the chapters that will underpin and support the establishment of more inclusive heritage practices and institutions through the pursuit of digital innovation. After having presented each individual chapter and its main topic, this chapter will also propose some open questions built around ongoing challenges related to the mediation between potentially diverging actors, the politics of technology design, and the need for reflexivity, hoping to foster further discussions on these themes.

This article investigates the current practices and needs of institutional actors operating at the intersection of cultural heritage and social innovation. Through a mixed-methods approach that includes a survey and in-depth interviews, responses have been collected from GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), social enterprises, public administration, cultural and artistic associations, and educational institutes. A key focus is given to exploring cultural-based participatory practices aimed at engaging disadvantaged communities. The article explores problems and barriers hindering quality engagement, beneficial participation, and impactful outputs, as well as collecting instances of good practice, suggestions, and lessons learnt. The overall goal of this work is to outline the lessons learnt from fields of action to develop guidelines and recommendations for facilitating participatory, collaborative, and inclusive cultural heritage initiatives, including when planning for the use and adoption of digital tools and technologies.