Applications open for Hack Ur Culture Hackathon

The Goethe-Institut Johannesburg is inviting creative and tech pioneers to apply for the Hack Ur Culture Hackathon, taking place on 24 September.

Hack Ur Culture is a virtual platform that brings together galleries, libraries, archives, museums (Glam institutions) with creative minds and tech enthusiasts to bring about collaboration and innovation deriving from open cultural data.

This cultural heritage hackathon hopes to help shape the future of African Glam institutions.

Covid impact

In 2020, Glam institutions have been severely hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic, losing their audiences since the start of the lockdown. This extended period without foot traffic through their doors has forced Glam institutions to consider what a virtual future looks like.

This is an opportunity for brave young minds to lead the development of innovative solutions that will be used by some of the continent’s most reputable Glam institutions.

With digital experiences and a shared economy at the heart of this initiative, it provides the opportunity to make cultural heritage data more accessible to all.

The focus will also be on how African cultural heritage can be brought to the forefront of virtual experiences.

Interested?

The hackathon is open to enthusiastic young professionals in the creative and cultural industries across sub Saharan Africa. They are looking for game developers, app developers, designers, researchers, media makers, journalists, writers - all are welcome to form teams and register to participate.

The hackathon will run for three weeks, with final project submissions due on Sunday, 18 October, at 23:59. There will be a virtual prize-giving to announce the winners on a date yet to be announced.

The winning team earns a spot to participate in the Coding Da Vinci hackathon taking place in Germany in 2021 in April or August, depending on international travel restrictions.

Additionally, there will be supporting awards for impressive projects that will receive exciting cash or product prizes to be announced in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, the winning projects will be featured in the Fak’ugesi 2020 exhibition.

Impactful learning

The goals for the hackathon include helping to make cultural heritage data open and accessible to the public, delivering impactful learning and development, putting the question of cultural heritage data on the agenda and offering a platform for experimentation to discover what is possible for the future of Glam institutions.

Focus areas that will be addressed through the hackathon include bringing new levels of awareness to Glam institutions and their collections to engage new and younger audiences.

Through this, the hope is also to offer Glam institutions new platforms

and digital products that can transform traditional Glam experiences into new

meaningful virtual experiences, managing the ever-increasing collections.

This in hopes to find new entertaining ways to make learning about cultural heritage fun and engaging.

The initiative further aims to create an open data resource library to discover African heritage artefacts and experiences with the correct naming convention in native languages.

For more updates, follow @goethejoburg and @credipple. Applications are available via airtable.com/shrYByLOz5rwLslyx.