The terms ‘digital transformation’ and ‘digital innovation’ are increasingly prevalent in policy discourse and institutional practice, yet remain conceptually fragmented. There are suggestions that technological progress drives the cultural sector (see, for example, Culture is Digital 2018; Wagner 2023) and that organisations simply need to step up as open infrastructures for digital innovations. Digital transformation in the GLAM sector is often framed as a linear process of innovation, where technological progress drives cultural institutions forward. Yet, everyday experiences in the GLAM sector reveal a more complex landscape, shaped by frictions between institutional infrastructures, professional practices, external partnerships, and the diverse communities involved in digital heritage work.
Workshop aims
This workshop reconsiders digital innovation not as inevitability but as situated negotiation. Drawing on the concept of frictions from anthropology and infrastructure studies (Tsing 2005; Star 1999), it approaches digital heritage as a field shaped by the encounters between technologies, institutions, and people. In Anna Tsing’s account, friction names the awkward, unequal, and yet generative engagements that occur when global forces meet local contexts: how movement, collaboration, and knowledge are always made possible through rather than despite tension. For Tsing, friction is what both enables and complicates connection; it is a metaphor for the social texture of interaction across difference. Susan Leigh Star, writing from the perspective of infrastructure studies, sees infrastructures not as neutral or invisible backdrops, but negotiated social arrangements maintained through practice, repair, and translation. Her notion of infrastructural inversion invites making these underlying systems visible by tracing how standards, classifications, and institutional routines shape participation and power.
By bringing these perspectives together, the workshop frames “digital innovation” as a social and infrastructural process that materialises through the everyday negotiations between creative experimentation and institutional constraint, between openness and control. Rather than viewing frictions as problems to be eliminated, we approach them as productive sites of inquiry: as spaces where values, authorship, and expertise are contested and reimagined.
The workshop situates digital frictions within the Nordic–Baltic context, where smaller institutions operate with uneven digitisation resources, limited funding, and rapidly emerging AI-based tools. This environment amplifies the tensions between institutional stability and technological experimentation.
We also address the ethical and legal aspects of digital co-creation, including data rights, intellectual property, and the crediting of contributors in distributed authorship models. Inclusivity is integral: the session explicitly welcomes early-career researchers, students, and community heritage initiatives.
The session looks at how collaborations among heritage institutions, creative practitioners, technology developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, young people, and other heritage-user groups create new possibilities and tensions.
How does the abundance of data transform the visibility and value of heritage? How do institutions adapt to technological development? How do digital projects negotiate between artistic experimentation and infrastructural constraints? How do collaboration and co-creation unfold among diverse participants? And how do digital heritage practices shape the boundaries of knowledge production and authorship?
Workshop targets
This workshop invites GLAM professionals, researchers, artists, and technology partners to explore three interlinked dimensions of digital heritage practices:
• Visibility. How does the abundance of data and images shape what becomes visible and what remains unseen?
• Use. How do different actors – audiences, researchers, developers, curators, artists, school students, and others – interpret and use digitised heritage?
• Negotiation. How are value, authorship, and accountability reconfigured in collaborative and co-created projects?
Workshop format and structure
Duration: 120 minutes.
Expected participants: researchers, artists, technologists, museum professionals.
The workshop draws on the concept of digital frictions to rethink innovation as a process of negotiation rather than smooth progress. Combining short lightning talks (15 min), case-based discussions, and a collaborative mapping exercise, it invites participants to identify key challenges and strategies for meaningful engagement with digital heritage.
Participants will collaboratively map how digital abundance, co-creation, and cross-sectoral partnerships reconfigure visibility, use, and negotiation in the cultural field. The session invites GLAM professionals, researchers, artists, and technology partners to rethink innovation as a process of negotiation and shared responsibility.
Expected outcomes and public output
• A collaboratively produced “Frictions Map”, documenting tensions, strategies, and emerging patterns in digital heritage innovation.
• A summary note to be deposited on Zenodo under an open license, providing a citable resource for the DHNB community.
• Optional continuation as an online discussion or publication forum.
Call for Participation
We invite short expressions of interest from participants who wish to contribute a case study or lightning talk addressing one of the guiding questions.
Proposals must be submitted via DHNB2026 ConfTool as an abstract of 150-200 words (excluding references). Contributions may take the form of an academic paper, a demonstration of a workflow/code/tool, or a hands-on mini-tutorial. Presentation length: 15 minutes.
The submission deadline is 25 January. Notifications will be sent on 10 February.
Keywords: digital cultural heritage, innovation, co-creation, digital engagement
Topics: digital humanities and museum collections, digital heritage and GLAM practices, innovation, collaboration and co-creation with digital heritage, critical digital humanities, knowledge production and participation, art, technology, and cultural data, monetisation of digital heritage, new forms of interaction with digital content, user engagement in cultural heritage projects
Chair contact: agnes.aljas@erm.ee
Organisers:
Agnes Aljas is the research secretary at the Estonian National Museum. Her research focuses on audience studies, museum participation from the perspective of the participants, digital reuses, and to museum’s social impact.
Pille Runnel is a research director and deputy director of the Estonian National Museum, specialising in media studies, digital culture, youth culture, participatory practices, museology and audience studies. She is leading museum development and management initiatives. Currently, she is directing experimental research projects on digital cultural heritage and digital tools for museum audiences.
Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt is a professor at Malmö University and a visiting researcher at the Estonian National Museum. Her research focuses on challenges of digitalisation and datafication as it is co-created by museum and media professionals.
Kai Pata is the adult and informal education professor in Tallinn University. Her perspective is in how educational institutions in the formal and informal sectors see opportunities and challenges in museum collections interaction.
Culture is Digital. (2018). Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. Obtained from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5aa68f84e5274a3e3603a65e/TT_v4.pdf
Star, Susan Leigh (1999) The Ethnography of Infrastructure, – American Behavioral Scientist 43(3) DOI: 10.1177/000276499219553
Tsing, Anna. (2005) Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press. DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt7s1xk
Wagner, Anne (2023). Safeguarding Cultural Heritage in the Digital Era – A Critical Challenge.- International Journal for the Semiotics of Law – Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique 36(1) DOI: 10.1007/s11196-023-10040-z