Five years after the first very successful DARIAH Innovation Forum, that took place in Aarhus, Denmark in November 2017, DARIAH-EU organised its second Innovation Forum in Dublin, Ireland, in November 2022, bringing together researchers and the creative industries, exploring how best to promote the arts and humanities to industry players and beyond.
During this packed 1-day event, panel presentations, a keynote and an innovation challenge highlighted DARIAH’s relations with traditional and digital industries. This event was organised back-to-back with the DARIAH General Assembly and a joint workshop with the DARIAH National Representatives and DARIAH National Coordinators from its member countries on understanding how different countries monitor, advise and make decisions on national participation in the European research infrastructures landscape.
Programme
The DARIAH Innovation Forum opened up on November 3 with a welcome speech by Jennifer Edmond, DARIAH-EU Director, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities in Trinity College Dublin and chair of the Programme Committee of the event. Professor Eve Patten, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, joined Edmond in welcoming participants and speakers at the Long Room Hub and kicked off the presentations for the day.
The day featured four panels with speakers from major multinational industry companies, including Ernst and Young and ReD Associates, creative and cultural SMEs such as Noho, forward-thinking academic projects such as the Cassandra Project and the Human + Programme, and recognised arts and culture incubators and facilitators such as IMEC and i2CAT.
The first panel on ‘Making technology better with human-centred innovation and policy’ featured Sergi Fernandez (i2CAT), Simon Delaere (IMEC) and Jess Majekodunmi (Accenture) discussing notions of user-centered research and diversity as a driver for innovation. The day continued with the second panel on ‘Humanities and the arts as enabling technologies: building better by thinking different’ featuring Domhnaill Hernon (Ernst and Young), Eliot Salandy Brown (Red Associates) and Juergen Wertheimer (Cassandra project). The third panel of the day on ‘Bringing culture to the market, building stories, audiences and engagement’ featured presentations from Karolina Badzmierowska (Noho), Martin Clancy (Musician and founder of IEEE Global AI Ethics Arts Committee) and Mads Haahr (Haunted Planted) sharing their expertise from building digital exhibitions for cultural venues, music and AI and developing gaming featuring cultural heritage. The day concluded with a final panel on ‘Creating the enabling structures for humanities and arts innovation’ featuring Imelda Lambkin (Enterprise Ireland), Vincent Wade (ADAPT Centre and Human+ Project) and a concluding remark from Jennifer Edmond wrapping up the day.
Highlight of the day was the keynote speech by the multitalented entrepreneur, artist, technologist and high-level innovation policy advisor Michela Magas. Drawing on her vast experience in collaborative projects on Music, Communicative Technology, Social Impact of Innovation, Environment and Sustainability, Maga’s talk introduced concepts such as the JUST research principles (Judicious, Unbiased, Safe & Transparent) instead of only FAIR, how innovation should be embedded in all systems of agreements, resilience, responsibility but most importantly of beliefs and societal values and how policy on the top level is rooted in and following the community in collaborative environments.
We don’t predict the future. We invent it.
Michela Magas
The breaks throughout the day hosted the presentations of the Innovation Challenge finalists: Tamar Berger with her project on ‘A-Port’, Ofir Bouba and Gil Sharabi on ‘Terminal V’, and Uri Yahalom and Mai Caspi on ‘NFT Factories’. The day concluded with a wine reception at the Trinity Long Room Hub and the announcement of the winning project for the Innovation Challenge.
The full programme of the day can be found here.
Watch back the various panels and keynote from the day here.
All photos courtesy Vicky Garnett 2022 CC-BY 4.0
