Heritage today is far more than museum artifacts and historical buildings, and how they are preserved and communicated. It is about making sense of our memories and developing a sense of identity through shared and repeated interactions with the tangible remains and lived traces of a common past. 

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We socially construct heritage in the context of our own lives and imaginations to interact meaningfully with our past and shape our vision of the future (Thomas 2004; Lowenthal 2005). Indigenous knowledge is founded in “… the immediate world of personal and tribal experiences… and … spiritual world evidenced through dreams, visions, and signs” (Battiste, 1986, p. 2). Thus, by way of oral traditions and histories, this accumulated knowledge has been passed on to subsequent generations, using oral narratives like sacred creation stories, songs, historical events, cultural traditions, environmental knowledge, educational lessons, and personal life experiences. 

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Heritage and Digital Media explores how community reframe their understanding and experience of heritage by opening up more participatory ways of interacting with heritage objects and concerns through existing social media platform through the idea of participatory culture. Jenkins et al. (2006) defines participatory culture as one in which not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute when ready and that what they contribute will be appropriately valued. 

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The media workshop is a part of the research team's initiative and method to cultivate the habits of knowledge sharing and transfer of traditional and local knowledge of the indigenous communities in Sarawak. Through this workshop, participants will be exposed to content building exercise, photography practice and the usage of existing social media platform as their archives. 

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There will be at least 2 workshops for each community. We will be conducting our first workshop on mid August 2016 in Long Silat, Baram. Interested parties are definitely welcome to participate in this workshop. 

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