Reporting on Culture and Development
Cross-cultural understanding and access to cultural heritage are important issues in the globalizing world of today. However, the international archaeological and cultural heritage field is increasingly struggling to attract financial and public support, and faced with demands for demonstrating its social impact, for engaging communities, and for making its work more transparent.
Dr Sjoerd van der Linde talks about how he tries to tackle these issues though his work with CommonSites, a non-profit foundation based in the Netherlands that implements innovative media and IT solutions for the cultural heritage field - based upon the belief that cultural heritage is a human right and a driver of social change.
In particular, Sjoerd will talk about the implementation of the tools Really Simple Reporting (RSR) and FLOW, developed by its partner Akvo for the international aid sector. RSR is an open source content management system that increases transparency, stimulates paperless reporting and facilitates crowdfunding though shared storytelling. FLOW is a multi-language surveying tool for collecting, evaluating and displaying geographically referenced data using Android smartphones and an online dashboard. Both RSR and FLOW are linked to the international IATI standards, and currently used by over 1000 partners in the developing aid sector – amongst which the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs who now runs a pilot study with CommonSites to increase the communication surrounding its Culture and Development portfolio.
Sjoerd will discuss his recent work with CommonSites, and will offer his view on current challenges in the international cultural sector to which multi-disciplinary work in the field of mobile and interactive technologies could offer smart solutions.
Dr Sjoerd van der Linde is General Director and Co-Founder of CommonSites, a non-profit based in the Netherlands that stimulates creative collaborations between practitioners, communities and funders in the cultural heritage sector by developing new transparent online technologies. Besides this, he is Assistant Professor Archaeological Heritage Management at the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University, where he focuses on the implementation of digital and creative solutions in the global heritage sector.
Previously, Sjoerd worked as Head of Site Management and Interpretation at the Centre for Applied Archaeology of UCL, and as Interpretation Officer Stonehenge at English Heritage. He has undertaken projects in the UK, Palestine, Turkmenistan, Mali, Jordan, Syria, St Kitts and the Dutch Antilles. Sjoerd holds a MA cum laude in Managing Archaeological Sites (2004, UCL), and a PhD cum laude on a critical perspective of international heritage practices (2012, University Leiden).
https://nl.linkedin.com/in/sjoerdvanderlinde