We are excited to announce a new publication in the Science Museum Group Journal from our recently-completed Communities & Crowds project.

‘Communities & Crowds: A Toolkit for Hybrid Volunteering with Cultural Heritage Collections’ is a toolkit that reimagines the role of museum volunteers and highlights how local communities can collaborate with online crowds. Developed as part of the AHRC-funded Communities & Crowds project—a partnership between the National Science and Media Museum (Bradford, UK), Adler Planetarium (Chicago, IL), National Museums Scotland (Edinburgh, UK), and the University of Oxford (Oxford, UK)—this resource provides actionable steps for identifying and digitising photographs that matter to local audiences, then sharing them globally via crowdsourcing platforms.

The toolkit walks you through best practices for:

  • Empowering local volunteers to choose photographs reflecting their interests
  • Digitizing collections to museum standards
  • Engaging global digital volunteers to enrich and describe these images

Accompanying downloadable templates are included to help any heritage organisation discover and tell stories hidden in their photographic collections.

One of the images digitised by the volunteer researchers shows a Black woman walking in front of a group of white male demonstrators in support of the racist and fascist MP, ​​Enoch Powell.  Reflecting on this image, volunteer researcher Maureen Rowe said: 

“…for me [this photograph] just says everything about standing up for who you are, speaking out. And when I look at [it] I think, yes, how things have changed. I think some things have changed, but we are still demonstrating. We are still fighting to be heard, to be seen. And so for me, yeah, that’s it. Every time I look at this picture, every time I see it, I just see this one strong Black woman standing up for the community.”

Read more and access the toolkit here:
Communities & Crowds: A Toolkit for Hybrid Volunteering


Written by Alisa Apreleva and Samantha Blickhan