After ten years of devolution Wales has developed as a confident, post-industrial nation with particular economic strengths in the creative industries and heritage. It has pioneered a number of innovative heritage-related projects that have incorporated the latest digital technology, such as BBC Wales's Digital Storytelling Project 'Capture Wales', the National Library for Wales's 'Gathering the Jewels' and CyMAL's (Cymru Museums and Libraries) 'People's Collection' to name but a few. It is also highly involved in delivering on the Digital Inclusion agenda and recognises that it faces specific challenges in this respect due to its georgraphic and demographic profile. \nThis project will create a pan-Wales network of key academic and non-academic partners around the theme of digital heritage in Wales. The network will meet at a series of themed workshops, each of which will interrogate a key issue relating to digital heritage in Wales and seek to establish a more detailed agenda and a series of projects for further research in this emerging field that will have measurable impact upon policy-makers, as well as the economic, cultural and social life of Wales. Each workshop will be hosted by a different heritage organisation. The network will also establish sustainability and expansion of the network amongst academic and non-academic stakeholders and will create case study material which could be used for comparative research in other devolved nations, small nations and succession states.\nLinking the Chain: The Network for Digital Heritage in Wales will be led by the University of Glamorgan, where there is specific experience and expertise in Digital Heritage, but will also include cross-dicsiplinary teams from Bangor University, Swansea University,Glyndwr University and the University of Wales Newport. Non-academic partners include National Museum Wales, the National Library of Wales, the National Slate Museum, the National Waterfront Museum, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments

The winter storms of 2013-2014 set new precedents of coastal damage in the UK, forcing government, heritage bodies and local communities to seriously reconsider the future management of coastal heritage. Relevant organisations were seemingly unprepared for these events, and communities were possibly surprised by what had happened, as well as by their own emotional response. Over 8200 miles away, in the low-lying island nation of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean, over 100,000 citizens face the possibility of permanent relocation due to climate change and sea-level rise which threaten homeland and heritage. Troubling in itself, Kiribati also presents an unsettling visualisation of a collective future. These diverse settings are brought together in this project through the exploration of current and potential loss of heritage in times of accelerated climate change. In the UK our project partners, the National Trust, own 742 miles of coastline and face difficult negotiations regarding their Coastal Adaptation Strategy. This research will consider the challenges facing heritage organisations and communities by focusing on three case studies; two of these are National Trust sites: Porthdinllaen (in North Wales) and Durgan Village (in Cornwall), with these two villages at risk respectively of increased tidal flooding and coastal erosion. The third case study in Kiribati considers a more urgent situation, exploring the societal and personal effect of potential whole-scale loss on perceptions of heritage, sense of place, religious beliefs and cultural identity. At each distinct site we will explore community, heritage and government responses to current challenges, as well as strategies for a stormy future. The data collected will be archived with project partners National Library of Wales and Cornish Audio Visual Archive, providing a legacy for this research and the communities under threat. More immediately, we hope to inform improved communication and consultation processes for these and comparative communities in future. Whereas popular imaginings of 'heritage' are likely to include buildings or assets with acknowledged historic value, there is an increased awareness among heritage organisations and administrations such as the Welsh Government that the more 'ordinary' or 'everyday' can also be valuable to communities, embedded in local history and the texture of lived lives. Broader definitions of heritage could include a bus shelter, coastal path, or even a particular tree, because they have meaning to the people who experience them. In order to deepen our understanding of 'sense of place', we will use a multi-layered interpretation of heritage as a concept and a process relating both to the tangible as well as the intangible (values, beliefs, practices). This strategy is essential to fully appreciate the subtle and traumatic ways in which climate-change disrupts community lives and identities, with potentially painful transitions ahead. This interdisciplinary project invites collaboration with the Australian poet Mark Tredinnick, who will visit Kiribati and offer a poetic response to the effects of climate change on 'place' in more abstract terms. This research claims a greater stake for arts and humanities disciplines in climate adaptation debates, mostly dominated by natural and social scientists, and we will adopt an innovative approach towards engagement in and dissemination of our research. There will be poetry, films, conversation and community stories as well as scholarly and qualitative analysis. Artistic responses will be useful in connecting and articulating perceptions of the past and imaginings of the future at these sites, and in a broader cultural context. Our edited films, freely available to relevant organisations, may serve to amplify and bridge multiple voices, forging local and international cross-cultural understanding of the effect of climate change on heritage, communities and sense of place.

The principal objective of ‘The snows of yesteryear: narrating extreme weather’ is to reveal and relate past experiences, both historical and more recent, as ways of understanding and coping with phenomena increasingly regarded as markers of climate change. It will explore ways that these events are remembered and mythologised, and interpret what is ultimately learned from them as both warning and opportunity. The project builds on the work developed by the AHRC “Historic Weather” Network, by continuing to scope and assess arts and humanities documentary and narrative primary source materials and demonstrate their value for research of historic weather and climate. It draws into collaboration the Network Co-I Prof Lorna Hughes (now University of Wales) and Prof Mike Pearson (Aberystwyth University) as award holder in the ‘Landscape and Environment’ programme. The project will focus on archival collections in the National Library of Wales (NLW), a legal deposit library. The project’s aims are: • To research accounts of extreme weather events, specifically regional and national experiences of harsh winters, as they are recorded in journals, dairies and literary and art works including narratives, poetry, novels, paintings and other visualisations, especially accounts related to extreme events, for example the 1703 “Great Storm”; and as they are described from living memory, via interviews and web input. It focuses upon experiences in relation to particular sets of historical, social, cultural and environmental circumstance and tradition: of rural communities in Wales and their records – from medieval Welsh poetry to contemporary regional broadcast news. • To research, devise and encourage creative approaches to the exposition of such data from a variety of sources to provide an historical context and understanding of ways that communities have experienced, responded to and survived extreme events through resilience and adaptability. Through this it will draw upon and inform perceptions and discourse, and may inform policy decisions with regard to resilience and adaptability in face of extreme weather in rural contexts. The project involves two strands of enquiry: • scholarly research to identify and prepare potential material for exposition: from library and other archival sources, in collaboration with the NLW, climate scientists from the International ACRE (Atmospheric Reconstructions of the Earth) project at the Met Office, and historic weather researchers. Archival reserach will explore the ways in which extreme winters have been represented and depicted in a wide range of cultural texts and media. This will be augmented by web-based community fieldwork including interviews with local people, historians, geographers and meteorologists, to gather experiences, memories and emotions. • practice-led research to devise appropriate modes of public exposition to engage audiences: as live performance and through on-line platforms. We will use digital arts and humanities methods and approaches for selection and digital representation of material collected by the project. The ordering and exposition of material will also follow principles of dramaturgical organization of content, highlighting ‘performative’ aspects of the content. This will also demonstrate the impact of “thinking digitally” on performance development and narrative. It will result in: • the creation of a live performance to be presented locally and nationally, with a premiere in the National Library of Wales in early 2013. This will evoke past events and immediate responses to them: of both trauma and resilience. • the creation of a sustainable website: with a record of research materials; as the further creative exposition of assembled materials; as an interactive facility for the deposit of experiences of extreme weather, encouraging public engagement • a summative workshop and other academic outputs to ensure the dissemination of academic and public benefits

The aim of this interdisciplinary and collaborative project is to uncover and evaluate hitherto unstudied travel accounts written by European travellers to Wales from 1750 to 2010. This important area of study has been neglected, but is central to our understanding of European intercultural relations, the development of Welsh identity and the establishment of the tourist industry in Wales. The proposed study will serve as a case study to help further understand issues relating to hegemonic / minority and/or periphery / periphery relations. Within the vibrant field of travel writing, Wales has often suffered neglect. Even where there is interest in travel to 'Celtic' nations, Wales has often been overlooked in both the artistic and critical imaginations in favour of Scotland and Ireland. From the mid-eighteenth century, which saw the emergence of the travel narrative as a popular source of information and entertainment, writing about Wales has often been embedded in accounts of travel to 'England'. The current project seeks to redefine perceptions of Wales by problematising the notion of 'invisibility' often ascribed to the Welsh context and by broadening perspectives outwards to encompass European perceptions. This will realign the current debate which has centred primarily on English travellers to Wales. The project will challenge the way in which travel writing studies conceives of 'minority cultures' by analysing relations between smaller nations (Wales / Brittany). The study will examine European perceptions of Wales from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, and seek to identify their impact on developing Welsh cultural identity. The project will focus primarily on texts by French- and German-speaking travellers, as these constitute the majority. However, narratives from other parts of Europe and across the globe will also be considered. The project will analyse travelogues, travel guides, almanacs, encyclopaedias, private correspondences, diaries, creative works and periodical contributions which have Wales or Welsh culture as their focus. The definition of the traveller encompasses those travelling for the purpose of leisure, scholarship or commerce as well as those who remain in Wales on a more permanent basis, such as exiles and refugees. Central is the role of Anglophone culture as a mediator between Wales and the European traveller. While most studies of travel literature are one-directional, this study explores a three-way relationship, looking outward from Britain to the continent, then considering how Europe reflects back the perception of Wales and how that perception is then received in Wales itself. The project will result in a number of outputs of interest to a wide range of beneficiaries. Tully, Jones and Williams will produce a jointly-authored book. Focusing on travellers from French and German-speaking cultures, the study concentrates on historical flashpoints (political exile, revolution, war, and Romanticism) when Wales and its culture have attracted the attention of European travellers. Further European perspectives on Wales and views from other parts of the world will be considered via a special issue of the journal Studies in Travel Writing and the end-of-project conference. The Research Assistant and the two PhD theses are central to the project, extending the range of material to be studied to literary responses (both creative and critical), philological works and guidebooks. The broader findings of the project will be showcased to the academic community and the general public by means of a searchable online database and a website. An exhibition (both physical and virtual) will be staged, and a range of educational materials for schools will also be developed concurrently. A briefing paper for Visit Wales will outline what travellers and tourists want or expect from Wales.

How can we unlock "dark" digital archives closed to the public? What is the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in making digitised and born-digital cultural records more accessible to users, on both sides of the Atlantic? AEOLIAN (Artificial intelligence for cultural organisations) focuses on born-digital and digitised collections that are currently closed to researchers and other users due to privacy concerns, copyright and other issues. Archives are meant to be used, not locked away. In order to unlock cultural assets, we need to work across disciplines and harness the latest technology. AEOLIAN brings together Digital Humanists, Computer Scientists, archivists and other stakeholders to transform the access and use of born-digital and digitised collections which are currently hidden away. Analysing vast amounts of data cannot be done manually: automation is no longer a choice, it is a necessity. Artificial Intelligence can be used to improve access to non-confidential materials through sensitivity review, for example by distinguishing between personal and business emails. AEOLIAN aims to unlock born-digital and digitised collections and open them up to a large number of users. Access to digital archives is essential, but we also need to anticipate the moment when born-digital records will be more accessible. To make sense of this mass of data, new methodologies are urgently needed, combining traditional methods in the humanities with data-rich approaches. Collaborations between humanities scholars, computer scientists, archivists and other stakeholders are therefore essential to make archives more accessible, but also to design new methodologies to analyse huge amounts of data. AI and machine learning create opportunities, but also challenges, for libraries, archives and museums. The project will address larger questions in the humanities - including ethical and social considerations at the centre of current debates on AI and digital technologies. The AEOLIAN project will lead to the following research outputs: _6 online workshops , which will result in the creation of an international network of theorists and practitioners working with born-digital and digitised archives. _5 case studies of US and UK cultural organisations . These case studies will feed into an open-access 100-page report for an interdisciplinary audience outlining avenues for future research. _2 collections of essays published as special issue of journal or edited collection. The final report will offer a roadmap on born-digital and digitised cultural assets, based on 5 case studies of specific collections in the UK and US and detailed interviews. Crucially, it will also develop specific ideas for interdisciplinary research areas to solve the issue of access to digital cultural assets, which could form the basis of future research initiatives. Archives are of course not reserved to academic researchers. The online workshops and the website will foster public engagement on the topic of the changing nature of archival collections (from print to digital) in the twenty-first century. The website will keep track of all the project activities in the form of presentation materials from all workshop participants, video recordings of workshop presentations, and case studies that will then feed into the final report. Associated social media will help us connect with interested parties - in academia, archival institutions and beyond.