Press release 31 March 2015
Reusing Finnish cultural heritage - Best concepts of ‘
Hack your
heritage’
awarded
The first Finnish hackathon with open cultural materials was held 6-8 February 2015.
Hack4FI Hack your heritage hackathon gathered together over 50 artists, graphic designers, programmers,
designers, scriptwriters and others interested in multi-professional collaboration and a new way of
working with cultural heritage. As a result over 15
ideas and concepts were created and several
collaborations formed.
The hackathon was part of a project the purpose of which is to bring Finnish open cultural materials
to use. The project run by
Open Knowledge Finland
, Aalto University
Media Lab and
Aalto Media
Factory
culminated in a final gala organised 26th March.
The final gala was held in an old atmospheric hall in the National Archives of Finland. A prestigious
and multi-professional jury granted awards for the most creative, useful and versatile works.
A concept named
Kerttu’s journey (Interactive Story) was crowned as the winner of the
competition. Kerttu’s Journey is a “point and click” adventure game that tells the story of a young
Finnish woman in the 1930s. The jury complimented this project for its compelling storyline and
versatile use of cultural heritage materials.
The second prize was given to
Sift.pics which is an application that crowdsources the tagging of
historical pictures. Users add basic classificatory tags by making choices whether e.g. the picture is an
interior or exterior view, the picture has taken from the ground level or from a raised viewpoint etc.
The application uses 920 Signe Brander’s Helsinki photographs from the Helsinki City Museum and
can be downloaded from
Play Store
.
Three honorable mentions were given for projects that reused cultural heritage materials in
exceptionally creative ways. These projects were: (1)
Video Poetry Marathon - a track that combined
poetry and video art carried out in collaboration with
Sivuvalo project - (2) a three-game entity
Runepeli - The Runeberg Quest which uncovers the life and persona of the Finnish national poet J. L.
Runeberg and (3) and an installation named
Aikaa
, built in the form of a clock which is used to
explore the interactive possibilities of time based archives.
Hack4FI - Hack your heritage
gathers together a diverse group of people interested in open cultural
materials, digital culture and multi-professional collaboration. The project is financed by
the Ministry
of Education and Culture
and run by the
Avoin GLAM network
.
Hack your heritage
is originally a
Danish concept the purpose of which is to create new services and applications from open digital
cultural materials.
Hack4FI - Hack your heritage
continues the work initiated during the Open cultural data master class
of spring 2014.. The master class was organised to educate Finnish cultural and memory institutions
in opening data and content. The purpose of
Hack4FI - Hack your heritage
is to herald the possibilities
that open cultural heritage materials contain. It also aims at facilitating the participation of everyone
and anyone in the creation of our cultural heritage.
More information
http://hack4.fi/
Sanna Marttila, project manager, sanna.marttila[a]okf.fi, p. 040 144 2103
Laura Sillanpää, project coordinator, laura.sillanpaa[a]okf.fi
Photographs from the
hackathon
and
the gala
.
Avoin GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums) is part of an international OpenGLAM
network that consists of people and institutions working with open content and data. The aim is to
collaborate with GLAM organisations and to open content and data from cultural and memory
organizations for different audiences. The Avoin GLAM initiative organises workshops, seminars
and other events, sharing knowledge and experiences of open culture and art. More information:
avoinglam.fi