Culture Weaver
Curating local memory together
Milestone 1
The Design Problem
❶ Problem
Collective memories tend to be forgotten. We may not carefully preserve the memories of our daily lives because we tend to be overwhelmed by huge amounts of digital records (e.g. photos, videos, audio, text) in the modern world. But after decades, we may find that they are valuable since those memories of our daily lives are also the most authentic and local collective assets, which are the basic elements of local history and culture.
However, we usually passively rely on scholars and journalists to collect, organize and re-present our stories, and interpret our history as well. What’s worse, another realistic issue is that these people might easily face resources and budget limitations, which could become the major barrier to the practice of historical and cultural records.
❷ Why Is It Important?
Culture Identity
Collective memories help community residents construct cultural identity. If community members have a low cultural identity, they may have little motivation to participate in community affairs.
Local Culture
Collective memories play a vital part in the local culture. Losing collective memories may hasten the loss of local culture. And losing local culture means losing our uniqueness and becoming ordinary.
Historical Materials
Currently, collecting historical materials costs lots of labor and time, and those collected materials are usually incomplete.
❸ Target Population
Community Residents in Taiwan
❹ Social Impact
Who are the stakeholders and how can our design help them?
Address, interpret and curate local history and culture on their own
Collect historical materials more easily and comprehensively
Meet authentic local information of the community in various ways online
Discover local characteristics more easily and democratically to improve the policy of community development
❺ Solution Ideation
• To make community residents record and address their memory by themselves, not passively re-presented and interpreted by media or literal and history workers.
• Nowadays, most data are born-digital, so it is suitable and also easy to archive and present these data digitally.