Paper short abstract:

This paper demonstrates how technological innovations in design and personalization, through in-situ 3D printing, offer opportunities to escape the serial reproduction of culture by using creative processes that engage the visitors to heritage sites in the creation of meaning.

Paper long abstract:

Gift shops are common in most museums and galleries offering visitors the opportunity to transform their intangible experience into a tangible memory through the purchase of a souvenir. Often the souvenirs stocked within these gift shops are 'inauthentic' and 'commoditised' products. This can detach the viewer from engagement with the actual heritage experience. However, technological innovations in design and personalization, through 3D printing, offer opportunities to escape the serial reproduction of culture by using creative processes that engage the visitor in the creation of meaning. Through this personal engagement in the production process, visitors are enabled to assign more emotional value to the customized souvenirs.

This paper contextualises the relationship between heritage and souvenirs based on scanned in and 3D printed versions of artefacts within heritage sites. An example will be provided, examining the case of a site-specific collaboration with Historic Scotland at Stirling Castle. Future possibilities for a series of public engagement events at locations of endangered modern heritage are discussed, to show how in the face of a growing critical awareness of the daring sculptural features celebrated by the Brutalist movement, the scope for creating objects that represent a souvenir of the living memory of such architecture for future generations is created.

This paper will conclude by presenting the outcomes of this project including observations of tourist engagement with the 3D printing process, the aesthetic appeal and commercial impact of the 3D printed souvenir and the subsequent analysis of the relationship between the tourist, souvenir and heritage location.