About

Welcome to Hack Ur Culture

We are excited to welcome you to the first Hack Ur Culture. This year we have 200 creative problem solvers gathering from 20 different African countries looking to bring GLAM institutions into a virtual future!

Apologies for the slow kick off we wanted to onboard as many of the Hack Ur Culture community on to Discord before formal proceedings kick off. We trust that you have found your way around Discord, exploring the different features and functions that will support your communication during Hack Ur Culture.

Please know that as you are hacking your solutions so are we as organisers. We are one community on a mission to shape the future of African cultural heritage. We remain committed to being agile and to communicate effectively to ensure we work together as a Hack Ur Culture community.

Our role is to support communication and organisation on the Discord to see the realisation of team formations and successful project development.

To do so effectively we need feedback. Please if you have positive suggestions and recommendations post them in the #Feedback channel and we will aim to integrate that as we constantly work at improving the Hack Ur Culture experience.

To further empower our Hack Ur Culture community we are building a mentor network to be accessible per request, facilitating engagements with the different GLAM partners to support your design process and curating a series of panel discussions and guest lectures to keep us all critically engaged with the task at hand.

Please see an overview of the Hack Ur Culture program below:

Overview:

Hack Ur Culture is taking place over 3 weeks with project submissions due 18 October 2020, 23:59 CAT.

We are using an adapted design thinking framework to help give structure to this 3 week virtual hackathon

Week 1: 28 September 2020 - 4 October 2020 - Empathize Week 2: 5 October 2020 - 11 October 2020 - Ideate Week 3: 12 October 2020 - 18 October 2020 - Prototype

Please see full program over here (link to google sheet - Updates will also be shared here)

Next steps

As a community our first goal is to ensure we can all join a team and access our own communication channels where you can work with your team for the next 3 weeks.

To support this, Sunday, 27 September 2020 will be the last day for new Hack Ur Culture participants to join the Discord. We ask that you please spread the word in your own networks to inform other members to check their emails (Spam/Social/Promotion) and join the Discord ASAP.

We note that there are team members who will not be joining the Discord server; please ensure you share all necessary information with them.

Our goal is to ensure that by Wednesday, 30 September 2020 everybody is in a team.

Jump Start session

If you have done design thinking training before this process framework will be very familiar. If you are unfamiliar with design thinking, we encourage you to register for a Jump Start Session hosted by Sprint Base on Monday, 28 September 2020. There are 2 sessions available

Jump Start registration: 2 registration time slots available

  • Monday, 28 September 2020, 10am - 11:30am (CAT) Click here to register
  • Monday, 28 September 2020, 5pm - 6:30pm (CAT) Click here to register

(Please note the times on the tickets you will receive via email are listed as (BST) British Standard Time)

Training and Workshops:

The following training and workshops will be made available to you to support your Hack Ur Culture experience:

  1. Fact Checking facilitated by Africa Check - Wednesday, 30 September 2020 Recommended for teams on the African Heritage Highway problem statement and those that will be working with the publicly sourced data This training 3 hour training session will cover:
  • How and why false information spreads
  • Tips for identifying false information
  • Did they really say it? A closer look at quotes that have been incorrectly attributed to historical figures
  • Online image- and video-verification tools

The training will include practical tips and tools participants will be able to use to establish the authenticity of the information they receive from the public.

This workshop will have 2 available sessions. One in the morning and if there is a high demand a 2nd session in the afternoon will become available.

Please click here to book your place. (limited capacity)

  1. Introduction to Open Data facilitated by Adam Oxford - Thursday, 1 September 2020 & Friday 2 October 2020. 9am - 12pm CAT

The open cultural data workshop is for hackathon participants (Day 1 and Day 2) and collection curators and managers at GLAM institutions (we recommend Day 1 only but you are welcome to join both days). Both days of the workshop are designed to be a friendly, non-technical introduction to open cultural data, so you don’t need to be a programmer or data specialist to participate. These training sessions are sponsored by the Human Science Research Council.

The link to the webinar will be shared in the week. (No capacity limit)

Please note that all training sessions will be recorded and made available for later viewing.

Additional training and workshops to be announced soon.

Guest lectures and panel discussions program

  1. Guest lecture delivered by Chao Tayiana - 2 October
  2. Panel discussion: Cultural Heritage in education today - 8 October 2020
  3. Collaborative guest lecture delivered by Dr. Same Mdluli and Kutlwano Mokgojwa - 9October 2020
  4. Panel discussion: Gender bias in curating cultural heritage collections - 15 October 2020
  5. Guest lecture: delivered by Manenga Mungandi - 16 October 2020

At the start of every week, we will share detailed communication highlighting that week’s activities so you can best manage your own timetable.

We look forward to interacting with all of you over the next 3 weeks!