The focus of this presentation is the fundamental question - How do we facilitate participatory democracy in the digital domain? How do we frame civic spaces promoting digital democracy for the triangulation of Collections – Connectivity – Communities. Collections are perceived as embedded knowledge systems with layers of significance, visualised as predominantly ‘tangible’ things in the digital domain. The intangible elements once digitised become only documentary heritage, museumising that which is living. Connectivity provides the means, and not the end, for access, engagement and interactivity through the affordances and possibilities in the digital domain. However, stakeholder communities, in all their meanings, manifestations, cultural understandings; and the multitude of publics and audiences remain in the liminal space between the collections and connectivities. The Inclusive Museum Knowledge Community is an open ended project that endeavours to bring the three elements into a discourse to address the complexity and triangulation and situating it in the shifting paradigm of culture in sustainable development.
The ICOM Cultural Diversity Charter underlines the axiomatic principle - DIGITAL DOMAIN: To understand the differences between digitisation, digital access and digital heritage, to support digital access in all activities, and to recognise that digital access is not a substitute for return, restitution and repatriation’. (http://inclusivemuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ICOM_Cultural_Diversity_Charter.pdf)
The 28th General Assembly of ICOM, meeting on 17 August, 2013, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, resolved to ‘Evaluate the extent to which programs and ICOM activities are in accordance with the 2010 Cultural Diversity Charter of ICOM adopted in Shanghai and implement a policy of gender equality as an integral part of the strategic directions of ICOM’. In this context the Inclusive Museum Knowledge Community endeavours to facilitate discursive crossings in the range of cultural borders that we either cross, or transgress if you will, as we create meanings that appear seamless but nevertheless hegemonic.
