CIE–Universe & HeritageLab Platform

CIE's signature project, the HeritageLab, anchored by the Heritage Universe and its community-based Co-Labs and Special Projects. HeritageLab is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary in its approach and reflects how communities increasingly desire to play a pivotal role in re-imagining authorized heritage narratives.

HeritageLab is an interactive online space for grassroots organizations dedicated to preserving collective memory and community narratives while at the same time connecting these communities across oceans and trade routes through shared tangible and intangible heritage.

The independently run Co-Labs come together digitally under the Heritage Universe, which links heritage across oceans through timelines and key words, such sustainability, arts and crafts, and professions such as boatbuilding or textile manufacturing.

HeritageLab has worked with numerous communities in what we now call the Global South, empowering them to independently become custodians of their heritage sites and cultural memory by providing frameworks and tools that then allow them to engage with their communities directly, without interference from a third party.  But communities are not just spaces. They can also be built around intangible heritage and environmental heritage spanning oceans, such as HeritageLab’s Tree Routed, which explores through personal stories how we are connected through our tree heritage.

As we shared at the Digital Common Ground: Community, Inclusivity and New Paradigms co-organised by CIE at the 11th International Conference on Culture and Computing July 2023 in Copenhagen, Denmark, HeritageLab offers an independent internet platform, not driven by ‘big tech-companies’ or hierarchical institution, to safeguard communities’ input and independent experimental research.

This digital collaborative platform is based on the pioneering work by many colleagues, heritage communities over the years since it first concept at the CIE field schools on Zanzibar, Moçambique Island and Robben Island.  FH Münster University of Applied Sciences in Germany and the young computer scientists in our network helped us envision this as an online project we introduced in 2024.  It is still a work-in-progress, but we invited you to visit HeritageLab (www.heritagelab.center).