Virtual tours and exhibits: an innovative tool for education and public outreach in INAF

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Mantovani ◽  
Federico Di Giacomo ◽  
Livia Giacomini ◽  
Caterina Boccato

<p>This critical period we are living worldwide forced us to rearrange our way of engaging general public and students to talk about science. Internet and computers are the most used tools for education and public outreach. INAF (National Institute for Astrophysics) has embraced this new way of interacting with the public by developing virtual tours and exhibits of its museums and telescopes spread all over Italy. In this years, INAF’s researchers, thanks to “Polvere di stelle”, the cultural heritage for Italian astronomy, and the editorial staff of EduINAF, the official INAF online magazine for education, have collected and developed a series of virtual tours of the INAF observatories, telescopes and museums managed by the institute. By staying comfortable at home, general public, students and professors can easily access guided tours, which will fully immerse the users to admire the whole scientific and historic INAF’s heritage. During the presentation, some examples will be displayed to the audience.</p>

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-266
Author(s):  
Colin P. Amundsen ◽  
Cristina Belmonte

ABSTRACTThe problem for archaeologists doing public outreach could be that we do not know who our audience is. Marketing to just the public at large is an extremely broad approach filled with the pitfalls of not engaging enough of the public, so it might be necessary to first find out who within the general public would have the most interest in your discovery and then tailor your presentation to that audience. At the podcastCooking with Archaeologistswe are using digital media, social media marketing, and our experience from the business world to do just that. Podcasting has been a trial-and-error project filled with uncertainty and doubt, and for archaeologists engaged in public archaeology it might be a practical approach to reaching the public and a medium to build an engaged and interested audience. In this “how-to” article, we will reveal what we have learned from this exciting and somewhat demanding venture and suggest how podcasting is a democratizing venture that connects the public to archaeology and the archaeologist.


Author(s):  
Doris Daou

AbstractFrom the dawn of consciousness, humans have looked up and wondered about what the universe holds. It is that sense of wonder and thirst for knowledge that astronomy has helped fuel. In this paper we look at how education and public outreach has been a major element in preparing the next generation of astronomers and in sharing with the public the excitement of discoveries we make when we explore the Universe. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a clear set of goals and objectives related to education and public outreach. These goals follow directly from NASA's mission “to inspire the next generation of explorers”. Making progress towards achieving these goals has become an important part of the broad justification for public support of space science. Here we will describe a number of education and public outreach initiatives that are examples of the plethora of NASA funded programs and resources.


Author(s):  
Arthur B. Cohn ◽  
Joanne M. Dennis

In modern times, the development of new survey, navigation, diving, and remotely operated vehicle technologies have made the location, exploration, and excavation of historic shipwrecks feasible to the general public. The debate on the value of underwater cultural heritage is recent and the issues of protecting underwater sites are now accepted. The diving community has been engaged in this debate for several decades, and a wide variety of viewpoints have developed. Museums focusing on underwater cultural heritage serve as platforms to foster discussions on submerged cultural resource protection. As any archaeological site, shipwrecks excite the general public. While museums provide a venue to share the story of the wrecks, or the historical contexts in which they existed, there are multiple ways to share this information with the public that will allow them a first-hand experience with a shipwreck. This notion has given rise to the concept of heritage tourism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Festo Wachawaseme Gabriel

Communicating cultural heritage to the public has gained popularity in many African countries and the world at large. However,little efforts have been done to promote the practice of public archaeology in Tanzania. The main reason is the dominance of conventional archaeology which is mainly meant for academic consumption. In this kind of practice, the participation of local communities has been passive. This paper explores local communities’ understanding of cultural heritage resources focusing on local communities in the Mtwara Region of Tanzania. The results of this study reveal that little effort has been made by archaeologists and cultural heritage professionals to create awareness among local communities on matters related to archaeology and cultural heritage resources. Apart from discussing the state of local communities’ awareness on archaeology and cultural heritage resources, the paper also discusses the importance of communicating cultural heritage resources to the general public and the need to engage local communities in the conservation and preservation of cultural heritage resources.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 597
Author(s):  
Ivan Vranić

Along with many different definitions of archaeology, from the inception of the discipline to the present, it may be valid to assert that it is a kind of complex dialogue on heritage with the public of contemporary societies. In this dialogue, archaeologists have directly constructed social memories and modern identities, this being an exceptional responsibility, and have at the same time been susceptible to ethnocentric transfers of modern values and expectations into the images of the past. In this respect, it may well be said that the public is not only the most important consumer of cultural heritage, but also an active participant indirectly influencing the shaping of archaeological interpretations of the past. Thanks to the global trends in the discipline, but also due to the administrative decisions of the Ministry of Culture and Information, archaeology in Serbia is compelled to intensify contacts with the public and to make the results of our work more readily accessible and economically sustainable. The paper aims to offer a short overview of theoretical premises of various models of collaboration of archaeology and the public, to point to the advantages and shortcomings, as well as the consequences of these approaches, thus warning of the many potential problems stemming from the uncritical dissemination of information on the past and heritage to the general public.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
W. (Bill) Wei ◽  
Hanneke Heerema ◽  
Rebecca Rushfeld ◽  
Ida van der Lee

Cultural heritage professionals are becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of care being taken by municipalities for their cultural heritage objects which include works of art in public places. They have therefore begun to ask the public to help take care of “their” cultural heritage through so-called public participation projects. Cultural heritage professionals tacitly assume that if they “teach” the public to treasure such objects of “their” heritage, the public will become more proactive in helping to conserve them. However, research being conducted by the authors is showing that a majority of the general public often has a completely different awareness and/or feeling about cultural heritage objects in their neighborhoods than the cultural heritage professionals think they have, or think they should have. Three recent case studies carried out by the authors show that these differences are most noticeable during so-called “value moments” at the beginning and at the perceived end of an object’s life. These are the two moments when decisions are made, usually by cultural heritage professionals, to place an object in a neighborhood or have it significantly changed or removed, often to the surprise and disagreement of the residents. Between these two moments lay many moments when an object is taken for granted, grudgingly accepted, or not even noticed. Given the fact that cultural heritage professionals often make the ultimate decisions and do not always consider or outright ignore public opinion, it should not be surprising that there is an increasingly negative public perception of what they do. The results of the case studies illustrate the need for professionals to consider and accept as valid, public feelings about cultural heritage objects in their neighborhoods.


Tempo ◽  
1955 ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Changeur

“How will the public react to it?” is a question that arises when an opera is about to have its first performance in a foreign countryArthur Benjamin's opera Primadonna does not seem a difficult one to “export,” mainly because of its subject-matter. One might expect the action of a British opera to take place in some remote part of Old England (as in Peter Grimes, the most famous of English operas with us French) whose ways are so unfamiliar as to risk leaving the general public quite untouched. Here, however, there is no such risk: we are in Venice, the courtly Venice of the 18th century, and the characters, the déecor, the whole atmosphere belong to the cultural heritage of all Europe.


Author(s):  
Agnes Stefánsdóttir

In the EAC 2018 heritage management symposium, the idea was to look at the topic of development-led archaeology from a different angle and encourage discussions between heritage management officials, developers, archaeologists working in the field and the public. How can we meet the needs of these very different stakeholders and do we always need to? This topic was also highly relevant in view of the decision of the EU and European Parliament’s decision to make 2018 the European Year of Cultural Heritage with the aim of raising awareness as well as drawing attention to the opportunities offered by Cultural Heritage i.e. to reflect on the place that cultural heritage occupies in our lives. This themed issue reflects some of the topics covered by speakers from professional archaeology and cultural heritage spheres as well as representatives of the media and the general public.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Melis ◽  
Guido Stefano Mariani

<p>In a world where the interaction between humans and the physical landscape is deep and widespread since prehistory, geological and cultural heritage are still very much separate and addressed by experts and professionals coming from very different fields. The scarcity of effective communication channels impairs shared experience and fruitful collaboration in enhancing geosite awareness in the general public. When integrated approaches appear, they often still concentrate on the cultural narration using geological and environmental information only to support a palimpsest very much human-centred. Attention on integrated divulgation of the geological and natural processes surrounding cultural sites is still lacking. In fact, there is the possibility of walking the opposite path: that is, of using cultural heritage in order to inform the public and divulgate past and current geological processes acting on the wider landscape. This is especially true in highly dynamic environments, where geomorphological processes visibly modify cultural landmarks over time. In this sense, coasts are the ideal setting. They have represented one of the preferential places for human settlement since the dawn of civilization. Coastal environments show strong, complex geomorphological dynamics subject to cycles and variations over time which can be recorded in many different archives, some readily understandable by non-experts.</p><p>In this contribution we bring examples of how the interaction between cultural heritage and geoheritage can be used to enhance the communication of geomorphological issues. The coastal area of the southwestern portion of Sardinia (Italy) is the location of numerous archaeological settlements, ranging from Mesolithic shelters to wide, majestic Punic and Roman trade ports and cities. Sea level rise since the Last Glacial Maximum has widely interested this territory, and its effect is very well recorded in archaeological contexts. Here, variations in topography and geomorphology are changing the contexts of the sites themselves and sometimes threat their integrity through different geological and geomorphological hazards. The development of narrations focused on explaining these processes, using the archaeological evidence as a tool to convey geological concepts, might raise geological awareness in the general public and spread knowledge about the geomorphological history and features of the local and global landscape.</p>


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