Cultural Heritage and Identity Profile

The aim of CHIP (Cultural Heritage and Identity Profile) is to design a tool for the expression of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Social Media and thereby raising awareness of a shared European Identity. In recent years, European cultural identity has been the focus of heated debates. A sense of common cultural heritage and shared values are officially proclaimed as the building blocks of this much sought European identity. In turn, this is viewed as indispensable for achieving the objectives of a true European Union. But what form does this identity take? What constitutes it? How is it expressed and how is it shared? These are some of the usual questions raised and debated by policy makers, artists, culture professionals and researchers alike suggesting that the existence of a common European Identity and Cultural Heritage, while taken for granted and widely acknowledged, is hard to articulate in more explicit terms.

In our project we attempt to address some of these questions by focusing on the self-perceived cultural heritage of young Europeans with a multi-cultural background. The overall goal of our interdisciplinary and trans-sectoral endeavour is to design a multimodal interactive tool – CHIP – for social media implementation in order allow to unravel the more elusive intangible cultural heritage elements (e.g. practices, representations, knowledge, etc.) that, not only are more difficult to capture than their tangible counterpart, but that also, until very recently, have received much less attention. With the help of CHIP, while constructing their own cultural heritage profile, end-users will engage in an act of discovery and identity construction, but also of documentation, identification and archiving of intangible cultural heritage content. We expect that a realistic portrait of today’s European cultural identity and shared values will emerge from the individual profiles, while at the same time exposing the diversity that characterizes it. Due to its interactive features – social media users will be able to tag and share content, as well as get more in depth information about shared content, etc. – CHIP will encourage inter-cultural dialogue, stirring curiosity and discussions, thus creating mutual understanding and raising awareness of a European identity marked by ‘Unity in diversity’. The tool is expected to intensity cultural exchanges and, as a consequence, to promote social cohesion and a sense of affiliation.