Celebrating Cultural Heritage

Ever wondered what to do with that big box of old photographs you inherited from your grandparents that lies in the back of a cupboard and only comes out when you are trying to make space for more junk?

Photographs are a wonderful medium to use to celebrate and share our heritage, and can often lead to re-introducing old friends or even making new friendships. Have a look at this site for an example of a great community-led online archive www.thecromartyarchive.org.

Am Baile http://www.ambaile.org.uk/ is an example of a bi-lingual site which promotes the heritage of the Highlands and Islands, by making images, stories and other material easy to access via the web.

Urras Shomhairle (The Somhairle MacLean Trust) recently launched an online memorial to the life and work of the Gaelic bard - http://www.somhairlemacgilleain.org/

On a grander scale, the Tobair an Dualchais project is busy gathering a huge range of resources to archive Gaelic cultural heritage - see http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/dualchas/ for more information.

Here are some tips for planning an online cultural project:

:) Encourage the community to get involved from the earliest stage: have meetings, invite experts along to give advice, have a community photo amnesty
:) Your local school would probably be very keen to be involved and could possibly offer skills and access to equipment
:) Make your site as interactive as possible: make it easy for people to post their own material such as photographs, poems and place name information; include a blog to allow visitors to post their comments and ideas.
:) Try to make your project relevant to the widest possible range of people in the community - include a range of topics (eg fishing, crofting, sport, education, food)
:) Make sure you have the resources to maintain the site and keep it regularly updated - there is nothing worse than reading the "latest news" from two years ago!

Any more tips or examples of good heritage projects? Please post your comments!