Creating Digital Culture by digitizing Cultural Heritage: the Crowddreaming living lab method

Since 2015, the Digital Cultural Heritage, Arts & Humanities School (DiCultHer) – an interdisciplinary network of over 70 Italian organizations including universities, research entities, cultural institutions and associations – has tested models to build soft skills required to co-create, manage, preserve and safeguard digital cultural heritage. This paper outlines the current state of advancement in the development of an innovative living lab methodology named The Art of Crowddreaming. Such methodology has been implemented within the network activities, and it has been proven to be able to engage innovators, researchers, schools of any grade and other societal actors as a community in the challenge to invent, co-design and build prototypes of cross-generational digital monuments. The methodology is illustrated by means of two case studies. Quintana 4D engaged schools of any grade in the City of Foligno in an trans-disciplinary effort to design, expand and manage the Museater of the Joust of Quintana. Heritellers engaged students of “F. De Sanctis” high school for classical studies in the City of Trani in the making of "CastleTrApp", a digital storytelling app and a Museater performance about the famous Swabian Castle of their City.