12 MMNieuws 2012 # 6

Text: Natalia Grincheva

In recent decades, many museums have
been actively engaged in developing digital
platforms for the preservation and enhance-
ment of national cultural heritage. Digital
heritage platforms can better serve societies
if they are specifcally designed to commu-
nicate multiple forms of cultural citizenship
and to encourage various forms of cultural
inclusion and participation. The project
Canadas Got Treasures provides some very
important lessons.
Through the act of promoting its national im-
age abroad, Canadian cultural diplomacy serves
to build a strong sense of national identity for
positive international recognition of the states
culture. Digital diplomacy is widely accepted
in Canada and has been extensively utilised
through building and sustaining the Canadian
Heritage Information Network (CHIN). The net-
work offers a wide variety of online programs
and provides interactive resources such as the
Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC). Canadas
Got Treasures is an online portal developed by
the VMC in cooperation with national heritage
institutions including the Canadian Museum
of Civilization, the Canadian War Museum, the
National Gallery of Canada and others. Using
popular social media networks, such as YouTube
and Flickr, the project aims to build an online
interactive repository of Canadian national her-
itage through contributions by national cultural
institutions, as well as by ordinary Canadians.
Interested individuals are invited to take part in
the project by contributing their own personal
photos and videos to the online collection of
national treasures and thus share their personal
understanding of Canadian heritage.
Museum politics
Museums have always engaged with the most
important political issues and have been an
important part of civic life. However, in recent
decades, due to such phenomena as globaliza-
tion and increased immigration, the role of
museums to build cohesion and reconciliation
among dispersed multicultural communities in
western societies has signifcantly increased.
With the upcoming 150th anniversary of
Canada, the National Heritage Committee set
new important cultural objectives for museums
to play a leading role to promote pride and
belonging amongst all Canadians and () to
promote education and sharing of culture
across the country.
The Canadas Got Treasure project serves
as an illustration of this government initiative
to connect diverse cultures of Canada for
collective cultural activities that promote
national citizenship. The project allows
Canadian museums to connect with each other
and their audiences through the use of digital
technologies and aims to highlight Canadian
museums collections, news, collaborative
projects and resources for professionals and
broader audiences. As the offcial project report
indicates, the Canadas Got Treasure portal was
launched on International Museums Day (May
18, 2010) and was further advertised through a
cross-promotional partnership among Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation, the National Film
Board and the Heritage Network.
The project aimed to create a communal
public space for sharing cultural treasures of
museums and ordinary Canadians by creating
an online gallery based on the platforms of
such popular social networks as Flickr and
YouTube. Project reports indicate that through
experimenting with social media the portal
intended to reach young adults, an age group
that can be diffcult for museums to engage
and to involve them in the collective practices
of national cultural representation online.
Through the active use of empowering and
enthusiastic invitations, displayed on the home
page of the web site, the portal communicates
the democratic principles of the project design
that aims to stress the signifcance of public
contributions.
On frst glance, the design and democratic
rhetoric of the portal suggests the high poten-
tial of this project to build an inclusive place
for everyone to voice their understanding of
cultural heritage and cultural identity. However,
this structure and democratic sounding slogans
should not overshadow the actual cultural
processes that are taking place within the
context of this project.
In application to the Canadas Got Treasure
project, the very design of the project that
involves collaboration of authoritative national
cultural heritage institutions with ordinary
Canadians defnes the power dynamics within
the project. First, the professional quality of the
museums photo and video submissions to the
project gallery creates a gap between museum
projects contributions and those uploaded by
the public. In many cases, do-it-yourself qual-
ity of video and photo submissions of ordinary
Canadians fail to compete with the professional
work of museums that have more experience
CANADAS GOT TREASURES
Constructing national identity
through cultural participation
13
narrative. This strategy is operationalized
through the project in a variety of different
design and moderation techniques, which aim
to highlight and illuminate shared values and
experiences of various cultural representatives
of Canada to construct a unifed image of a
collective national culture.
As the project report indicates, throughout
the project development (From May 2010 until
November 2010), over 100 videos and 200
photos were submitted to the gallery. However,
the largest proportion of videos and photos
contributed was from Canadian Heritage
Information Network member museums. The
majority of video and photographs submitted
by the public showcase the beauty of Canadian
nature. Other groups of so called treasures
represent touristic sites, objects of ar-
chaeological and historical value, architectural
designs and urban spaces. A few objects refer
to traditional food, like maple syrup, kitchen-
ware, art pieces, sculptures, toys, postcards,
and other ordinary cultural artefacts that
neither represent a distinct specifc culture
nor vividly express oppositional perspective to
a collective image of Canadian culture.
As the analysis of the overall stream of
public submissions reveals, the representation
of the collective effort in sharing personal
treasures within the online project unites
Canadians in their understanding of national
heritage rather than stresses differences
of diverse cultural backgrounds. Diverse
photographs and video that in various ways
refer to a shared geographical places of the
country (expressed in diverse images of either
natural or urban locations) emphasize com-
monalities between different cultural groups
of Canada, celebrate shared values and inspire
national feelings of citizenship and belonging.
On frst glance, this representational effect of
national unity is achieved through democratic
principles of cultural participation in the
project by ordinary Canadians. However, the
critical analysis of moderation and communi-
cation systems of this project reveals that the
collective image of the publics contribution to
the Canadas Got Treasures portal is a result of
a curatorial work of the projects management
team.
The projects instructions for content upload-
ing indicate that submission process can be
completed only if the projects team approves
the contributed photo or video. This implies
capital that can be signifcantly enhanced online
through participation in online communities and
can further lead to strengthening democratic
relation in the offine world. However, I employ
a more critical framework of the democratic
potentials of the Internet pubic space in which
new media technologies are understood as
communication means to govern and control
the society. The use of online technologies in
building active citizens communities helps to
sustain the processes of social management
and control, as well as to maintain political and
administrative cohesion.
The Canadas Got Treasures project
incorporates free-accessed social networks,
such as YouTube and Flickr, to provide a gallery
space for public submissions to the project.
However, Flickr and Youtube are designed to
provide individuals with representational and
communication means to promote their own
work online and to receive feedback from
other interested parties. Though both of these
websites emphasize free content exchange and
community building, the links among individuals
within those communities are weak and are
based on sharing common professional or
entertaining interests rather than on genuine
mutual values of common culture.
Thus, the Canadas Got Treasures project,
by utilising popular social media sites and
not investing in designing its own gallery
space where communal practices of heritage
exchange could become more meaningful,
creates a deeper separation among minorities
cultural groups underrepresented on the portal.
Through the weaknesses of these communica-
tion practices, the representation of cultural
heritage through museum submissions acquires
additional power and prevents various cultural
groups from uniting their voices for better
representation and promotion of their values
and interest within the project.
Identity construction
Identity construction is a complex process of
ideological manipulation that can be deployed
by governments equally in off line and online
realities. Museums play an important role in that
process. Museums have a crucial role to play in
reinventing these identities and developing an
imagined community. Thus, the Canadas Got
Treasures project aims to create this imagined
community of national collective culture by
employing a discursive strategy of the nations
and resources to represent cultural objects
through different mediums. Moreover, the
museum contributions are displayed directly on
the project portal, and the publics submissions
can be viewed only on the YouTube or Flickr
sites. As a result, the quality and the design
priority of the representation of museums
objects on the projects portal creates a sense
of superiority of museum content over the
content submitted by the public. Though the
project does not articulate implied competition
and is not based on the principles of contest,
the collective representation of national identity
is not based on the principles of equality (not
the equality of access to projects participation,
but the equality of representations within the
project).
The Canadas Got Treasures portal com-
municates an inherent dominance of cultural
heritage institutions in representing national
collective culture through the major voices
of museums. By strengthening the authority
of museums within the project to speak for
the public, the portal mutes the concerns:
whose heritage is being referred to? and who
is defning it for whom?. In this way, though
people are rhetorically empowered to represent
their cultures in the project, the multicultural
complexity of the nation is suppressed.
Online cultural participation
New technology is discussed by many
authors as a potential tool in the revitalisation
of democracy in its various forms and has been
researched through the analytical lenses of
political activism. Some scholars indicate that
collective uses of the Internet promote social
In this way, though
people are rhetorically
empowered to represent
their cultures in the
project, the multicultural
complexity of the nation
is suppressed.
14 MMNieuws 2012 # 6
participation is more important than a fnal
result, which might be completely different from
what was envisioned at the very beginning. The
success of such projects should be measured
against an increased level of creativity,
transformation and deviation from the initial
projections. By prescribing results, setting
preferences and inviting only particular types of
content-providers for sharing, any participative
project loses its democratic potentials and
turns into a tool for ideological control and
manipulation. To avoid this, the democratic
cultural platforms should allow enough room
for fexibility and openness to refect the true
nature of culture, which is never fxed and
always in a process of development and
change.
c
that not all the pictures and videos, submitted
by the public, could eventually end up in the
projects gallery. This considerably undermines
the democratic principles of this project and
signifes that the resulting image of a collec-
tive national identity developed through public
participation is a mere ideological construc-
tion. In achieving its democratic principles,
the project could beneft tremendously if it
would employ a crowdsourcing moderation
system that would enable projects participants
to vote for the submitted content in order
to be accepted to the projects gallery. This
public voting process could help not only to
establish more fair power relations between
the Heritage Network and the community of
participants, but also to provide a platform for
minorities to voice their cultural opinions and
to consolidate dispersed cultural groups from
different geographic locations of the country
through participation in the cultural activity.
Another communication technique that was
employed in this portal to aid the construction
of a collective image of Canadian heritage and
culture is a public invitation of the manage-
ment team of the project to specifc individu-
als, groups, or companies to contribute their
photos and video materials, which had been
initially developed earlier for other purposes.
Specifcally, the management team solicited
public contribution to the project by contact-
ing mostly touristic companies (for example,
Canadian Tourism) that have developed a wide
range of photo and video materials advertising
Canadian heritage sites, places of touristic
interests and other famous locations.
The Canadas Got Treasures portal, by
claiming to present cultural heritage of
the country through the eyes of the public,
provides only a platform for social control
and for media representation of an artifcially
constructed collective identity of Canada. The
project once again illuminates the expanding
power of media representations in producing
identities and shaping the relationship
between the self and society. But not all is lost.
I would like to name a number of suggestions
which would be helpful for developing and
implementing future similar participative
projects. First, I cannot emphasize enough
how important it is to build inclusive
cultural platforms not for communities, but
with communities. Only by allowing the public
to take an active role and responsibility on
all the stages of the project development
and involving people in curating, evaluating
creative content, voting for favourite pieces
and enabling crowdsourcing censorship, can
project a achieve democratic goals. Second,
it is crucial to provide people with all the
necessary representational tools that would
allow participants from diverse cultural
backgrounds to voice their cultural standing
and to represent their own culture. However,
such representation should be equal for all the
participating parties and should not be placed
in a competitive context or in juxtaposition
to other content which can create a sense of
superiority of some culture over the other.
Finally, managers of such participative
projects should clearly realize that the whole
process of public engagement and independent
The Canadas Got Treas-
ures portal, by claiming to
present cultural heritage
of the country through
the eyes of the public,
provides only a platform
for social control and for
media representation of
an articially constructed
collective identity of
Canada. The project once
again illuminates the ex-
panding power of media
representations in produc-
ing identities and shaping
the relationship between
the self and society.
Natalia Grincheva is
doctoral researcher in the
Centre for Interdisciplinary
Studies in Society and
Culture (CISSC) at Concor-
dia University, working on
her PhD across new museology, cultural
diplomacy and social media. Her research
focuses on the use of social media in
museums international outreach and
diplomatic activities. The project explores
the changing nature of contemporary
society revolutionized by the advance of
new digital technologies and how these
changes are refected in the international
activities of major cultural institutions,
such as museums. (grincheva@gmail.com)