This proposal responds to challenges faced by smaller museums struggling to engage online with audiences during varying levels of lockdown, and beyond. Problems include: low levels of basic digital literacy; poor understanding of audiences (including those with specific access needs); uncertainty over how to transfer real-world interpretive practice to the digital realm; lack of guidance about technical solutions; barriers to future-proofing digital assets in line with the FAIR data principles (data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable); and shoestring budgets. The project will create a community of practice that will (through sector-wide dissemination) extend beyond the immediate participants to museums across the UK. The core cohort will receive training, mentoring and technical support to develop digital collections-focussed content to stay connected with existing audiences, and reach new audiences. Technical support will, as appropriate, pilot solutions (based on integration of existing tools) and demonstrate how a fully-developed infrastructure for cultural heritage data, when coupled with digital skills support, might benefit even the smallest museums, as well as well-resourced and digitally-savvy IROs. This community of practice will explore prototype solutions for user-group testing, that respond directly to emerging challenges, informing the TaNC discovery process. The study is action research with a cohort of staff and/or volunteers from small museums, who will create online content based on their collections. The methodology is built around the collaborative action research approach developed by Culture 24 over a number of previous projects but adapted for delivery online in a time of home-working and social distancing. The hallmarks of the approach are: Learning from others - including a variety of voices and perspectives from within and beyond the cultural sector, to inform, support, guide and reflect on the challenges at hand. Learning by doing - encouraging practical action research and supporting participants to experiment in the context of their everyday work, testing out hunches developed through collaborative discussions. Learning together - creating a community of supportive peers with a shared sense of purpose, turning them into invaluable sources of understanding for the wider cultural heritage sector. As well as the core collaborative action research, the study will include a socio-technical challenge: as the participants encounter difficulties along the way, the project team will respond where possible and prototype simple tools that demonstrate how a fully developed infrastructure might support even - perhaps especially - the smallest and least resourced museums. This project will engage with six to eight smaller museums who have been navigating these challenges, reporting back to the wider museum sector, and helping others during the what for some have been make-or-break months. Through critical evaluation of current practice in microcosm through online workshops, and a technical gap analysis, the project will draw scalable lessons to inform Towards a National Collection's (TaNC) discovery phase, and AHRC's infrastructure planning.

It is people who drive digital change in the museum. Irrespective of the focus on 'technology' (on hardware and software, standards and systems, products and platforms), it will, in fact, always be the leaders and curators, partners and stakeholders, who enable the digital capability of museums. And yet, the lived professional experience of individuals inside the organisation, in the workforce, around digital change is little understood, much overlooked, and frequently generalised upon. Plainly put: the very dimension that we now know is fundamental to digital change in the museum, is that about which - in our scholarship and practice - we know the least. Moreover, at a time when museums are not only attempting to understand new forms of visitor participation and digital experience, but are doing so within a moment of both institutional and individual precarity, this need to understand the human (and not just the technical) dimension of museum digital change, becomes crucial. And so, it is to this issue - and this gap in our knowledge of museum digital maturity - that this project looks. '3 by 3' is an 18-month, multi-partner, transatlantic research collaboration, bringing together cultural institutions, academics and professional bodies to open new directions for leading empathetic and equitable digital change in museums at a time of institutional and individual precarity. The project asks what new models of 'empathic leadership' might be needed to enable the holistic institutional adoption of (and adaption to) digital, as well as which inequalities exist in the landscape of digital change in museums, and how can these be confronted. In doing so, '3 by 3' attempts to initiate a retelling of what successful digital leadership in museums looks like - in human and not just business and technological terms. This research confronts and articulates a new set of questions on equity, inclusion and diversity within the digital workforce, workplace and culture of museum digital change, re-locating museum technology as a socially purposeful subject and set of practices. In this way, the project is leading an 'emotional turn' in museum computing and digital heritage, characterised by a new sensibility to the emotional labour, affective practices and personal storytelling underpinning digital work in museums. Led by the University of Leicester and Southern University New Orleans (and supported by Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University), '3 by 3' is a unique research collaboration, bringing together the leading sector bodies in the UK and US: the American Alliance of Museums with the UK's Museums Association, and the Museum Computer Network (US) with the Museums Computer Group (UK). At the core of the project is a transatlantic partnership of cultural organisations, with digital leads across the Smithsonian Institution partnering with their counterparts in the Science Museum Group, Victoria and Albert Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, and National Museums Scotland. Driving this practice-based research of '3 by 3', are '3' researchers following '3' key themes (on 'empathy', 'precarity', 'equity'), through a series of live interventions within the working environments of the partner museums. Real-world tests of new approaches to leading digital change. As well as producing a series of practitioner-facing resources, a new reflective podcast series for the sector, and the synthesis of its findings into a cohesive 'Framework for New Digital Leadership in Museums', '3 by 3' will also partner with its policy-making and industry collaborators (that include Arts Council England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Culture24) to produce a 'Sector White Paper', setting out the challenges and opportunities for UK and US organisations as they lead digital change (empathetically and equitably) in these times of individual and institutional precarity.

My research project aims to advance our understanding of human-centred design practices within museums that are moving toward a digitally mature condition, in which an increasing proportion of the sector is transforming, due to the tendency of museums to embed digital activity, media, and thinking within museums' practices and organisational structures, strategies and mission. Digital media, activity, and thinking are impacting rapidly on the nature of collections, learning, and services; on audience behaviour and expectations; and on the ways in which museums can fulfil their (new) missions. Museums are not just adopting new technology, but rather they are embedding digital in their vision and strategy, organisational working practices and skills sets, and ways of thinking and decision making. Significantly, museums have started to embrace a significant trend that sees human-centered design practices booming in those innovative industries where digital transformation requires new competences and capabilities, and novel ways of thinking, experimenting, and making to design for effective user (human) experiences and services, and envisioning new organisational strategies. Why is fostering design practices so crucial in the digitally mature museum? And why is studying those emerging practices important? Design practices are both shaping and shaped by the integration of the digital within museum practices and, therefore, inevitably results in and emerges out of the organisational change that ensues (Mason and Vavoula 2020 "Digital Cultural Heritage Design Practice: A Conceptual Framework"). Design is a driving force within a wider landscape of the transformative museum. Design brings into the organisational practices new mindsets, capabilities, and practices that help museums to embrace and deliver change, and pursue (digital) transformation. Human-Centered Design promotes a creative and explorative culture and collaborative working practices, where museum professionals are called upon to actively participate in design activities in collaboration with digital specialists, design consultancies, and stakeholders (including visitors and communities). This is changing internal working practices and design activity, where knowledge is created and shared in new ways, in which new tools are introduced, and workplaces re-configured. Through the first systematic study of design practices in the digitally mature museums I aim to understand these changes, how and why they are affecting and changing museum design practices. This project is driven by a social science approach based on qualitative research and ethnographic observations to conduct a study in/for UK museums. It is an interdisciplinary research project at the intersection of design, digital cultural heritage and organisational studies to (1) overview the landscape of emerging design practices in UK museums and (2) understand how these emerging design practices work, towards (3) establishing theoretical foundations of emerging design practice in the digitally mature museum. This project considers innovation for museums, not only resulting from the adoption of cutting-edge technology, but about creative and explorative culture, and collaborative working practices that are enacted by design.

Given that digital continues to disrupt and transform the parameters of visitor participation and experience, how should museums respond organisationally to deal with this change? '2 by 2' is a nine-month, multi-partner, interdisciplinary, action research project (led by the University of Leicester and Southern University at New Orleans), aiming to develop a new, sector-wide transatlantic partnership around digital leadership and skills - helping museums to build the organisational conditions to support new forms of visitor experience and participation at a time of social change. Taking a practice-based approach, the project uses a Design Thinking to inform the structure and logic of its fieldwork, with researchers delivering a series of action-research interventions in four different museum contexts - each intervention acting as a 'stage' to animate and understand different sets of issues (and possibilities) around new forms of organisational leadership, business process, institutional culture and professional practice. To deliver this work, '2 by 2' brings together national professional bodies and established communities of practice, with leading digital heritage scholars and a core group of eight museum teams with an international reputation for digital leadership, as well as an group of outstanding advising institutions - Microsoft, Arts Council England, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University. Our 'Commissioning Partners' (the American Alliance of Museums, and Museums Association) with their extensive professional membership base, oversee the direction of the partnership and help us to identify strategic opportunities for the research. Our 'Community Partners' (the US Museum Computer Network and UK's Museums Computer Group), bring their nationwide communities of practice, working together to help share the activity and outcomes of the project to a wider 'muse-tech' community. Appropriately, however, it is our 'Museum Partners' who are at the centre of the research, providing both the environment and the expertise to explore these issues around organisational digital capability. Ambitiously, '2 by 2' pairs teams across Smithsonian Institution (at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the cross-organisation American Women's History Initiative) with four 'critical friend' UK partners (Science Museum Group, Victoria and Albert Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, and National Museums Scotland) all of whom, as IROs, serve as the project's Co-Investigators. Throughout the project, four 'Community Days' provide a means for a set of wider constituencies to input into our research insights. Each event (a 'Study Day' for early career practitioners; a 'Demo Day' for technology companies delivered with the Balboa Park Online Collaborative; a 'Leaders' Day' for museum directors and executives delivered with Culture24; and a 'Practitioners' Day' for curators and professionals) helps to inform the project's findings, but also lays the foundations for a cohesive, trusting, on-going partnership in this subject area.