Merete Sanderhoff

Sharing is Caring: How Starting Small Can Change the (Museum) World

Sharing is Caring started small in 2011. But the idea behind it was big and bold from the beginning: To share digitised cultural heritage is a palpable way to care about it. When cultural heritage is open, people are free to participate in defining and shaping how to use it. It becomes part of their everyday life, like tools in their hands. In that sense, by opening up and sharing cultural heritage, we safeguard its relevance and value.
Since the small beginnings in 2011, the openness movement has grown and spread across the cultural heritage sector and rendered
Sharing is Caring more relevant than ever. Today, it’s evident that our job is not done with creating access to our digitised collections. Our societal role is changing into that of facilitators: Helping people understand that cultural heritage belongs to us all, and that everyone can use it for their own creativity and learning.      

Merete Sanderhoff is Curator and Senior Advisor at Statens Museum for Kunst where she is working with open access and creative re-use strategies for the museum’s digitised collections. She initiated the international Sharing is Caring conferences, and has published substantial research in the area of digital museum practice. Merete also serves on the Europeana Association Management Board and Members Council.

Simon Tanner

Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at King’s College London

Simon is the Pro Vice Dean for Research Impact and Innovation in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King’s College London, and a senior academic in the Department of Digital Humanities. His research interests encompass measuring impact and assessing value in the digital domain, digital asset management, digitisation and imaging.

His particular research focuses upon:

  • The value and impact of the digital domain
  • Digitisation and digital cultures
  • Economic, social and cultural informatics
  • Open Access and Open Content
  • Sustainability and economic viability for digital collections in memory institutions such as libraries, archives and museums.

His areas of research with the strongest international impact are, first, the economic realities and Open Access/Content strategies for digital content in cultural heritage and second, the Balanced Value Impact Model. He has also carried out extensive research in digitisation working with partners in Africa (e.g. Archbishop Desmond Tutu) or projects such as the Dead Sea Scrolls imaging.

Jan Nikolai Nelles

Artist, Berlin

Jan Nikolai Nelles is a multi-disciplinary artist. His artistic practise oscillates between different fields such as visual and media art, documentary filmmaking and cultural activism. He graduated from Offenbach University of Art and Design in 2011. In the past he founded an independent ‘project space’ in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and co-founded a photography magazine.

Since 2009 Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles work together as a collective, based in Berlin. Their pieces deal with issues arising through hegemonic and neo-colonial power structures and representations between the Global South and North as well as with the various facets of war and its aftermath. The works interfere in social infrastructures by misbehaviour performances or challenges institutions. The collective pursues a critical re-evaluation of actual cultural commons, the power of representation through material objects of other cultures, their digital image as well as the concepts of heritage and identity politics.

Their works got granted by several institutions like Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Goethe-Institut, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IfA), German Federal Foreign Office and European Cultural Foundation (ECF).

Nora Al-Badri

Artist, Berlin

Nora Al-Badri is a multi-disciplinary artist with a German-Iraqi background. Her practice incorporates interventions and different mediums such as sculpture and installation, photography and film. She studied political sciences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main and visual communications at Offenbach University of Art and Design.

Since 2009 Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles work together as a collective, based in Berlin. Their pieces deal with issues arising through hegemonic and neo-colonial power structures and representations between the Global South and North as well as with the various facets of war and its aftermath. The works interfere in social infrastructures by misbehaviour performances or challenges institutions. The collective pursues a critical re-evaluation of actual cultural commons, the power of representation through material objects of other cultures, their digital image as well as the concepts of heritage and identity politics.

Their works got granted by several institutions like Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Goethe-Institut, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IfA), German Federal Foreign Office and European Cultural Foundation (ECF).

Andrea Wallace

Postgraduate Researcher, PhD Candidate, University of Glasgow

Andrea is a Postgraduate Researcher and PhD Candidate in Cultural Heritage Law with CREATe, University of Glasgow in partnership with the National Library of Scotland. Andrea’s research considers how cultural heritage institutions within the public sector have responded to the increasing need to engage in commercialization activities during a time of economic recession. Her research examines the impact of technology on the public domain, examines the obstacles and opportunities generated by the digital realm, and it proposes recommendations for the legal, cultural, and ethical issues that continue to challenge cultural institutions.

Andrea is the researcher behind the Display At Your Own Risk open source exhibition