Cognitive, Creative & Cultural Humanity / Culture and Cultural Memory
SUB-T07-018Living Cultural Memory
Definition
Living Cultural Memory examines living cultural memory within the broader domain of preservation, transmission and adaptation of living culture under digitisation and AI.
Why this matters
Living Cultural Memory can materially affect human agency, capability, belonging, livelihoods, culture, trust, resilience and long-term societal outcomes.
Research questions
Under which conditions does living cultural memory improve human and system outcomes, how do effects vary across populations and contexts, and what safeguards prevent dependency, exclusion, distortion or loss of agency?
Hypotheses
A transparent, participatory and human-directed approach to living cultural memory, with explicit safeguards and longitudinal evaluation, will improve preservation quality; cultural fidelity; community control; access; language vitality; transmission; harmful appropriation compared with opaque, automation-first or short-term approaches.
Proposed methods
participatory cultural research; archival analysis; community governance review; language and metadata audits; longitudinal transmission studies; literature and policy review; expert and affected-user interviews; reproducibility testing; methods adapted specifically to Living Cultural Memory
Stakeholders and beneficiaries
creators; cultural custodians; communities; educators; researchers; publishers; platforms; collecting societies; libraries; archives; museums; regulators; funders