Kysten: Archiving intangible heritage (completed)

Archiving and sharing knowledge in The Norwegian Coastal Organisation (Kysten).

Photo of a life buoy, and the text "Kysten" (The coast)

About the project

This case is based on a design project involving wiki-based technologies for establishing an online space for knowledge sharing in coastal heritage communities. The coastal association – Forbundet Kysten is an association for the use and preservation of traditional boats, historical vessels and coastal environment, founded in 1979 9000 members in 115 local branches. The objective of the association is to strengthen Norwegian identity as a coastal nation, and to maintain, communicate and develop traditional knowledge and practical learning of crafts, seamanship – as well as to improve the standards of protection of coastal culture. The local branches connect communities into project of restorations and building replicas of boats that are representative of the particular heritage of their geographical area. Some of the branches have established and created coastal cultural centers where coastal culture can be experienced and shared with peers.

Several of the branches have created websites for communicating their activities and sharing, that are linked to the website of the association. Meanwhile, these websites are mainly focused on communicating events and meetings - and less as spaces for learning and sharing knowledge.  This also goes for the way the association uses website, and it seems that the association has still not transformed into integrating the potential of digital technologies into organizational practices. While the organization has published several reports and booklets discussing the dynamic character of cultural heritage learning and the activity-based learning of traditional craftsmanship, they have not been able to use digital technologies to document and enhance these learning activities and the use of their website was mainly as an information board for events and news.

The association saw therefore potential for using social media to invite individual members into building a space for exchange of experiences and knowledge related to preservation and coastal culture. This builds the background for the collaboration with TRANGO that started April 2010, and will focus on building an open archive system that seem relevant to use by the members of the association, to document and share experiences and knowledge related to restauration of traditional wooden boats.

Aim

The project studies transformations of knowledge creation and transfer in cultural heritage NGO related to the introduction of digital technologies and social media.

 

Published Dec. 21, 2010 2:21 PM - Last modified July 6, 2023 12:15 PM

Contact

Project leader Dagny Stuedahl

Participants

Detailed list of participants