This is a research project intended to highlight issues inherent in the ownership and use of cultural heritage. All too often, cultural institutions frame their online terms of use by telling users what they cannot do with the content made available on their website, rather than focusing on what users can do with that content. We don’t want to make the same mistake. The intellectual concerns that underpin this project are explored at length in the publication, but first and foremost we want users to engage with Display At Your Own Risk, creatively and otherwise.

So, here are some of the things that you can do with the images and files within this online resource:

• print them out for pleasure or for study
• hang them on the walls of your home or office
• use them to create your own digital or analogue artwork
• use them to order fabric and make curtains, a tablecloth, or something wearable
• take the metadata and repurpose it, perhaps as a poem or as lyrics for a song

These suggestions are by no means exhaustive. You should be guided by your own intuition and interests. And above all, take time to enjoy the works in this exhibition. We have.

You could, of course, decide to host your own version of Display At Your Own Risk. If so, you have two choices: you might choose from the selection of works included in the Display At Your Own Risk exhibition folder; alternatively, you might choose to curate your own exhibition. Should you choose the latter, instructions for how to Curate At Your Own Risk are included in the open source exhibition file, along with the exhibition folder containing our selections.

But whatever you do, please share with us your use of this experimental exhibition by tagging it on Twitter and Facebook as #myDAYOR