A collaboration with The Swarm and University of Birmingham Digital Humanities Hub

 
This artistic R&D project, with The Swarm and University of Birmingham Digital Humanities Hub, investigated how institutional archives, such as that held by the Library of Birmingham, can be ‘crowd-connected’ through data-mining tools. The aim – to demonstrate how social media archives can build access points that drive engagement for libraries, galleries, and museums.
Photographer Adam Lee facilitated a series of community workshops, creating a new body of photographic tableaux with non-attenders of the Library.

Software was then used to create new connections and access points that drive engagement via the workshop participants social networks.

The tableaux enabled the workshop participants to build a personal connection to the work to stimulate interest from others in their social networks driving engagement (through tagging and similar).

The project enabled us to examine how we might crowd-connect and engage non-attenders and whether using the Mining the Archive engine can create new access points and engagement with archive content.

1. The Unknown
2. Progression
3. Education
4. Discovery
5. Empowerment