SPICE (Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement) is an EU Horizon 2020 funded project dedicated to “citizen curation” of cultural heritage. Citizen curation refers to encouraging museum visitors to learn more about themselves and develop a better understanding of, and empathy for, other communities. In SPICE, we are designing and developing tools that help communities select museum objects and share their interpretations and reflections about them with others.
As one of the five case studies in SPICE, the Design Museum in Helsinki is designing the Pop-up VR Museum as a VR experience targeted to senior citizens, rural communities, and asylum seekers. In this experience, users can access, interact, and engage with virtual artefacts from the collection of the Design Museum. A key feature includes users listening to stories of the artefacts contributed by members of diverse communities as well as reflecting and contribute their own if they wish. This process of experiencing the Pop-up VR Museum is weaved through gameplay that involves solving certain quests and painting in a 3D immersive environment.
