The Digital Lakou™️Sandbox
Greetings from the Haitian Arts Digital Crossroads. You are invited to take part in the Digital Lakou™️ Sandbox—a collaborative online workspace dedicated to the study of Haitian art. Initiated by an NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) implementation grant, we are working with the Waterloo Center for the Arts and other partner institutions to build a multi-institutional database of Haitian artworks.
The Digital Lakou™️ Sandbox is designed for instructors to use in classrooms or group settings. It offers a space for researching artists—their styles, techniques, and recurring themes—and for training student researchers to conduct focus groups and gather participants’ own descriptions of the images they encounter. It also provides an opportunity to practice critical cataloging: evaluating and analyzing the descriptive language collected, determining which terms are useful for metadata, and ultimately refining the object descriptions.
The term lakou, drawn from Haitian Kreyol, refers to a communal space shared by a village or a cluster of homes. Our HADC lakou embodies this idea by providing access to visual art and a virtual gathering place for collaboration across institutions.
Click HERE to read about the “Digital Lakou™️Sandbox in Action.”
By joining our Digital Lakou, you will collaborate with other stakeholders in a digital focus group that will review a curated series of images. Through HADC’s online platform, we will work with you to gather your course summaries and facilitate interdisciplinary conversations and analyses within your group based on your assigned set. Participation requires a one-semester commitment to complete the Digital Lakou™️ Sandbox.
Our virtual community brings together partners from across the region, the nation, and the international community. If you are interested in participating, please use the link below to sign up and review the “HADC Participants Terms and Agreement Guidelines.”
We look forward to your involvement and to continuing our partnership through the HADC project. If you have any questions about logistics, please feel free to contact us.