Supervised by Professor Ben Walmsley and Dr Jonathan Price, School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds, and Chris Condron, Head of Audience Insight, Tate
October 2021 –
Future Roads – photograph taken alongside the Piazza San Marco, where light creates a pathway in the dark for the couple in the frame. Here, they are heading towards a brighter destination in the distance
Photo © Vanessa Violette Arias Bujía
I am an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership researcher at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with Tate. I responded to a research call focused on Digital Engagement with Visual Art in the 21st Century Museum: A Case Study of Tate in 2021. I developed this project as an observation and analysis of inclusivity in socio-digital dimensions, and how place is experienced online in relation to art and culture, particularly how the situated public space of a national cultural institution is translated into digital form. This evolved naturally as an answer to the rapid global transition towards digital engagement following the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, and the emergence of both digital fatigue and technological optimism that resulted from this societal shift.
My research reads the structures and ecosystems through which cultural institutions design inclusive experiences for digital placemaking and the storytelling that it encompasses. Democratic by Design examines how approaches to inclusion and cultural democracy are interpreted inside national arts organisations, and how social responsibility moves from physical institutional space into digital practice.
I observe the decisions that precede the digital experience we publicly encounter through an art gallery’s social media feed. I ask which histories and artists are given prominence, social storytelling as a form of connection, how curatorial ideas are interpreted into inclusive design experiences, and ultimately, the way in which an art museum approaches connecting with its national audiences through digital inclusion on its social media feed.
This research project uses the term socio-digital architecture to describe the wider system through which the situated place of a gallery or museum, and the locality in which it exists, is constructed and experienced online. The translation of place from the physically situated institution into digital storytelling on social platforms has emerged as a significant theme through the fieldwork conducted as part of this AHRC project. The socio-digital architecture of a national institution therefore encompasses the organisational structures, professional practices, technologies, cultural policies and situated institutional contexts that together shape digital cultural space. Rather than treating digital engagement as a parallel technological activity, the project examines how these elements intersect to shape conditions of visibility, access, participation, representation and a sense of belonging within an arts space or place.
In Democratic by Design, placemaking describes the ways in which the physical and locational character of a cultural institution are translated into digital dimensions. It considers how the gallery as a situated place, its physical architecture and presence, locality, collections, histories, communities and sense of cultural identity, are all carried into social media through images, stories and language. The question is therefore not simply how a museum communicates online, but how a sense of place is reconstructed there. What is retained, and what is reimagined? Whose histories and identities are made visible online, and how are different audiences invited to experience, recognise themselves within, and relate to that place through digital mediation?
My hopes for this research
Whoever you are, wherever you are, you deserve equal and democratic access to art.
A museum does not cease to be a place when it is encountered through a screen. Its histories, collections, architecture and location are intrinsically part of its fabric, and its wider story is what brings its audiences together, both in physical and digital dimensions.
My hope for Democratic by Design is to develop a definition of what inclusion and belonging means when translated to digital space, and how connection is framed when a gallery or museum’s physical context is reconstructed online. I am interested in what is made visible, whose stories are allowed to shape that place, and whether audiences can recognise something of themselves within it.
Ultimately, I want this research to contribute to picturing the future of the national cultural institution. One that treats digital space not simply as a channel for communication, but as a meaningful cultural place in its own right. A place through which more people can encounter art, enter its stories, and feel part of a space that seeks to open its digital doors to wherever they are.
About Vanessa Arias Bujía
My wider research and creative practice is rooted in the apparent dichotomy between the digital world we experience today, and tangible place, material culture and the ways histories are carried through landscapes, architecture, gardens, artefacts and local communities. My work has always moved between the ancient world and the contemporary one. From Greek and Roman gardens, art, archaeology and architecture, to the 21st century museum, sustainable heritage management, multi-sensorial and inclusive design, eco-photography and public cultural practice.
Alongside academic research, my creative practice has taken me to places shaped by the sea, where island and coastal communities use different forms of cultural connection that intertwine with the water and landscape that defines local stories. I have developed and led sensory art and wellbeing workshops with children and teachers at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Ara Hou in Napier, New Zealand, and co-created storytelling through art with local communities across Maui, Ireland, Menorca and Galicia. I have also designed digital photographic exhibitions that reimagine museum, literary and theatrical archives as visual narratives, working with collections from the Rijksmuseum, Tony Harrison and West Yorkshire Playhouse archives.
Instagram: @sculptureviolet
Website: www.vanessaviolette.com