Art and Heritage Education in a Digital Arts Center

Mª Dolores Soto-González; Ramona Rodríguez-López; Ester Ventura-Chalmeta

doi:10.20944/preprints202607.2107.v1

Submitted:

28 July 2026

Posted:

29 July 2026

You are already at the latest version

Abstract

The article analyzes how a digital arts center can become a critical, participatory, and inclusive space for artistic and heritage education, articulating theory and practice around an immersive exhibition on La Ruta at the Bombas Gens Centre d'Arts Digitals (Valencia). An interpretive qualitative approach, based on hermeneutical phenomenology and Visual Arts-Based Educational Research, is adopted through six discussion groups with 30 professionals from visual arts, education and visual culture after a visit to a recent cultural heritage installation supported by immersive technologies. The results show that technological immersion only acquires educational value when it is coherently integrated into the story and accompanied by pedagogical mediation, reveal the role of vicarious nostalgia and heritage literacy in the construction of collective memory, and evidence narrative silences around subaltern voices and social controversies. It is concluded that digital arts centers can function as hybrid learning laboratories for teacher training and heritage education, as long as technological spectacularization is subordinated to processes of participation, epistemic justice and critical reading of heritage.

Keywords:

art education

;

heritage education

;

digital arts centers

;

technological immersion

;

vicarious nostalgia

;

heritage literacy

Subject:

Arts and Humanities - Museology

1. Introduction

This study addresses art and heritage education in a digital arts center from six interrelated axes: (1) the epistemological foundations of artistic learning, (2) art education in the digital age, (3) heritage education and its theoretical models, (4) critical heritage studies, (5) the digital arts center as an educational space, and (6) the international institutional framework. These axes configure a conceptual framework that allows for a comprehensive analysis of educational practices in contemporary contexts. The main theoretical foundations that support this research are presented below through the introduction and conceptual delimitation of each of these areas.

1. Epistemological Foundations of Artistic Learning

Aesthetic experience as an educational axis: The philosophical starting point of contemporary art education resides in the Dewey [1] an notion of aesthetic experience. For Dewey, art is not an object separate from life, but a process of intensification of experience that connects the person with his or her cultural and material environment: "the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience" (p. 3, [1]). This conception shifts attention from the finished artistic object to the complete experiential process, establishing a principle of continuity between the aesthetic experience and the ordinary experience that is central to thinking about education in digital arts centers.

As d'Agnese [2] has pointed out, Deweyan aesthetics offers a basis for "overturning the hierarchy between the theoretical and aesthetic dimension in educational theory" (p. 74, [2]), which allows art education to be understood not as a subsidiary complement to the curriculum, but as an autonomous and transversal formative territory.

Eisner [3] expanded on this line by identifying six lessons that the arts can contribute to general education, including attention to form and content as inseparable dimensions, and the appreciation of processes of inquiry that tolerate ambiguity: "the arts teach is how to secure the feelingful experience that slowed perception makes possible" (p. 8, [3]). This approach is particularly relevant when transferred to the digital realm, where perception is mediated by technological interfaces.

Social constructivism and the zone of proximal development: From the sociocultural perspective, art education is based on Vygotsky's [4] concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD), understood as the space between what the learner can do independently and what he or she can achieve with the mediation of a more competent peer or cultural tools. In the artistic context, images act as sociocultural mediators that enhance educational strategies within what have been called "co-creation zones" (p. 184, [5]), expanding the original ZPD towards an eminently creative and collaborative space [6].

Constructivism applied to visual art education has recently been systematized through the 7E instructional model (Elicit, Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate, Extend), which "emphasises student-centred and enquiry-based learning as a pathway to foster creative development, critical thinking, and artistic expression, beginning with learners' lived experiences" (p. 82, [7]). This constructivist perspective has also been transferred to the digital environment, where the transition from face-to-face to online pedagogies has highlighted the possibilities and limits of social constructivism in technology-mediated visual education [8].

2. Art Education in the Digital Age

Digital visual culture and new skills: Digital visual culture is a key concept for understanding the socio-cultural transformations that affect art education. Erişti and Freedman [9] argues that "digital visual culture is a crucial concept in today's digital landscape, influencing socio-cultural interactions, communication, and education" (p. 57, [9]), and that art educators must develop new competencies that allow them to "bridge traditional and contemporary practices, equipping students with essential skills for critical engagement with the digital visual world"[9] (p. 58, [9]). Her research identifies the integration of artificial intelligence as an enriching factor of creative processes and personalized learning in art education [10].

Along these lines, Sweeny [11] offers a comprehensive framework for digital visual education that encompasses five dimensions: digital visuality, virality and interconnection, material indeterminacy and post-digitality, identity intersectionality, and playful interactivity. These categories make it possible to map contemporary digital artistic practices and their educational potential.

Techno-immersion and cultural pedagogies: Huerta [12] coined the neologism techno-immersion to define the current condition in which students and teachers are immersed in the digital universe, proposing that "all education is digital" and that it is not operative to establish a separation between analogue education and digital education (p. 15, [12]). From cultural pedagogies, Huerta connects digital humanities with art education, incorporating the critical gaze, design and popular culture as essential elements of new social and cultural demands.

In the SAMPLERS project (PID2021-123007OB-I00), inclusive creativity in secondary school is investigated through the relationship between schools and museums, including the analysis of the virtual environments of museums to enhance creativity [13,14,15,16,17]. This project constitutes a reference for the understanding of how digital arts centres can function as spaces that catalyse creativity.

Digital pedagogy and the TPACK model: Suárez-Guerrero [18] argues that digital pedagogy should not be reduced to the mere incorporation of technological applications, but requires "a critical, but not paralyzing, vision that allows technology to be evaluated and made meaningful to the human project that justifies it, education" (p. 1, [18]). This broad conception of digital pedagogy as a complex object, full of opportunities and dilemmas, is especially relevant for digital arts centers, where technology is simultaneously medium, content and context.

In the specific field of the arts, the TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) model of Mishra and Koehler [19] has been adapted to conceptualize technological integration in artistic learning experiences. This model "emphasizes the connections, interactions, affordances, and constraints between and among content, pedagogy and technology" (p. 1025, [19]), and its application to the arts, highlights the need for art educators to synthesize artistic, pedagogical, and technological knowledge in an integrated praxis.

The pedagogical shift in the digital age: Ji and Shen [20] document a paradigmatic shift in art education brought about by digitalization, where "the integration of digital interactive and immersive technologies in arts education pedagogy facilitates the cohesion of artistic aspiration and technological capacity" (p. 348, [20]). This shift involves the extension of a multimodal pedagogy that promotes constructivist learning within art education, incorporating virtual spaces, interactive teaching-learning practices and advanced digital tools for artistic production.

3. Heritage Education: Theoretical Models and Digital Environments

The Heritage Learning Sequence: Heritage education has undergone a remarkable theoretical development in the last two decades, led in the Spanish-speaking field by Fontal. Their Heritage Learning Sequence (HLS) model identifies seven fundamental processes that articulate heritage learning: knowing, understanding, respecting, valuing, caring, enjoying, and transmitting [21]. These seven verbs constitute the dimensions of the Heritage Process Model (HPM) and have been operationalized in the Q-Herilearn instrument, a calibrated scale to measure heritage learning in digital environments with guarantees of validity and reliability [22,23].

Fontal [24] also psanchesroposes an approach to heritage education focused on bonds, conceived as "the origami of goods, values and people" (p. 1, [24]), where the educational relationship with heritage transcends the mere transmission of knowledge about objects to be situated in the construction of affective, identity and community ties. This shift from goods to people and links is especially significant in digital contexts, where the relationship with heritage is mediated by interfaces that condition the experience.

Heritage education in digital environments: García-Ceballos and Rivero [25] offer an up-to-date view of how technology transforms heritage education, analysing tools ranging from digital platforms and multimedia resources to artificial intelligence, video games and 3D modelling. Her work compiles classroom experiences and international projects that illustrate practices of media literacy and digital museumization, constituting a reference resource for educators and cultural managers.

Fontal, García-Ceballos, and Aso Morán [26] documented the impact of the use of 2.0 platforms and digital environments on the reconceptualization of heritage by future teachers, showing that, after digitally mediated educational implementations, "the concept orbits towards a comprehensive and humanistic definition" of heritage, integrating "values, uses, and contributions of heritage, in addition to showing commitment and responsibility to cultural legacy" (p. 1, [26]).

Fontal [27] summarises the advances in heritage education in Spain, analysing the change in perspective from assets to heritage people and communities, and identifying as future challenges "the redefinition of heritage or the opportunities of technologies and artificial intelligence for heritage education" (p. 10, [27]).

4. Critical Heritage Studies

The Authorized Heritage Discourse: Smith [28] introduces the concept of Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) to reveal the hegemonic construction of heritage. He argues that "heritage is not a 'thing', it is not a 'site', a building or other material object. While these things are often important, heritage is really about the processes of meaning making" (p. 44, [28]). This critical perspective challenges the idea that heritage value inherently resides in objects, demonstrating that it is social and cultural practices that give meaning to heritage.

In his later work, Smith [29] delves into the emotional dimension of heritage, analyzing the affective engagement of visitors in museums and heritage sites. This concept of Emotional Heritage is particularly relevant for digital arts centres, where immersive technologies can intensify or transform emotional responses to heritage [30].

Digital heritage and youth: Youth participation in cultural heritage through emerging digital technologies is generating new opportunities for engagement. As research from Eindhoven University [31] of Technology points out, young people "develop their own unique narratives of cultural heritage, shaped through and further influencing their processes of identity formation and personal development" (Abstract, [31]). This integrated framework provides a theoretical understanding of youth digital participation in cultural heritage management, underlining the need to overcome the position of young people as passive recipients of heritage values.

5. The Digital Arts Center as an Educational Space

The Contextual Learning Model: Falk and Dierking [32] propose the Contextual Learning Model as a framework for understanding the visitor experience in cultural institutions. This model articulates three interrelated contexts—personal, sociocultural, and physical—that, in their interaction over time, shape the learning experience. Personal context includes "prior knowledge, prior experiences, interest, motivation, choice, and control"; the sociocultural context attends to group and cultural mediations; and the physical context encompasses spatial design and exhibition objects (p. 26, [32]). In a digital arts center, the physical context expands to incorporate digital interfaces, virtual environments, and interactive devices that reconfigure the visitor experience.

The participatory museum and co-creation: Simon [33] defines a participatory cultural institution as "a place where visitors can create, share, and connect with each other around content" (p. ii, [33]). Their model distinguishes different levels of participation – contributive, collaborative, co-creative and hosted – that allow the degree of agency of the public to be graded. This participatory approach, originally designed for physical museums, takes on new dimensions in digital arts centres, where technological tools facilitate co-creation, interaction between visitors and the generation of content by users.

(Post)digital pedagogy in cultural institutions: Wollentz [34] analyzes the emergence of a (post)digital pedagogy in museums, focusing on "how digital technology can help museum professionals stimulate active participation and co-creation with an audience" (p. 3, [34]). Rather than focusing on technological tools per se, this approach examines the educational forms that emerge through the use of digital technologies, seeking to overcome the dichotomy between the digital and the physical in cultural dissemination and mediation activities.

Lupo et al. [35] address the challenges and opportunities of digital transformation in the cultural heritage sector from a multidisciplinary design approach, identifying three relevant themes: digital transformation, inclusive engagement and new experience rituals, which are directly applicable to the analysis of digital arts centres as educational spaces.

The new museology and interpretive communities: Hooper-Greenhill [36,37] develops the concepts of post-museum and interpretive communities to describe cultural institutions that go beyond the model of unidirectional transmission of knowledge. In his proposal, visitors are active participants whose "individual, social and cultural backgrounds are negotiated to shape personal meaning" (p. 82, [37]). This theoretical framework is essential to understand the digital arts center as a space where the interpretation of art and heritage is a social process mediated by both community and technology.

6. Institutional Framework:

The UNESCO Framework (2024): In February 2024, UNESCO [38] Member States adopted in Abu Dhabi the Framework for Culture and Arts Education, a global framework that broadens the understanding of culture to encompass "built, natural and living heritage, cultural expressions, as well as the cultural and creative industries" (par. 3, [38]). The Framework underlines the capacities of digital technologies and artificial intelligence in cultural and arts education to promote intercultural dialogue and linguistic diversity and emphasizes the need to strengthen relations between educational and cultural institutions.

This institutional framework provides legitimacy and guidance to arts and heritage education initiatives in digital arts centres, by explicitly recognising that cultural and artistic learning should be lifelong and extend to all educational settings, including non-formal and informal settings.

1.1 Hypotheses and tensions

One of the most debated assumptions in this field is whether digitalization really democratizes cultural access or whether, on the contrary, it reproduces participation gaps and new forms of exclusion [39,40]. UNESCO's framework takes an affirmative but nuanced stance: it underlines the expansion of opportunities through digital technologies and artificial intelligence, while insisting on the centrality of inclusion, media literacy and bridging the digital divide [38,41]. On the other hand, the critical literature warns that digital visibility does not necessarily equate to meaningful participation and that platform logics condition the cultural and heritage experience, generating hierarchies of attention and forms of "platformized participation" [42,43,44].

Another relevant tension affects the role of the digital arts center as an educational space. On the one hand, these centers can function as participatory institutions where visitors and learners create, share, and co-create content, in line with the approaches of critical museology and cultural participation [33,45]. On the other hand, its potential depends on participation not being merely nominal, but implying real agency, contextualization, and quality pedagogical mediation [37,46]. This ambivalence justifies analyzing the digital arts center not only as a technological infrastructure, but as an educational, social, and cultural ecosystem articulated with international guidelines on culture, education, and digital technologies [38].

1.2 Purpose and contribution

The main objective of the work is to build an interpretative framework that articulates art education, heritage education and digital mediation to analyze the role of a digital arts center as a space for learning, creation and cultural participation. Based on the six proposed axes, the research seeks to identify what theoretical foundations sustain these practices, what opportunities the digital environment offers and what limits or controversies emerge in the relationship between art, heritage, technology and participation [47,48,49]. Consequently, the study aims to contribute both to the academic debate and to the design of more inclusive, critical and culturally sustainable educational strategies, aligned with UNESCO's framework on arts and culture education and on digital and AI skills [38,41].

2. Materials and Methods

Research Approach and Design

A qualitative design of an interpretive-descriptive nature is proposed, based on the phenomenological and hermeneutical tradition, aimed at understanding the perceptions, experiences and evaluations of education and art professionals in the face of an immersive exhibition of contemporary cultural heritage. Discussion groups are a qualitative data collection technique that is particularly suitable for obtaining data on perceptions, opinions, attitudes, feelings and behaviours in relation to an educational and cultural phenomenon.

The approach aligns with Visual Arts-Based Educational Research (IEBAV), which allows for a focus on the aesthetic qualities of the form of (re)presentation of research processes and results.

The research is developed around the visit to the exhibition "The Route: Modernity, Culture and Lack of Control" at Bombas Gens Centre d'Arts Digitals (Valencia - Spain), a space of Art Deco industrial heritage converted into a center for digital arts. Participants are organized into 6 discussion groups.

• Profile: 30 professionals, with training in visual arts, education and visual culture.

• Selection: intentional sampling; Diverse profiles (local, national, international) are included to enrich the perspective.

• Group size: between 4 and 7 participants per group, a recommended figure to ensure fluid interaction and discursive diversity.

Data collection technique: the focus group

The discussion group allows the collective construction of knowledge and meanings through conversation and interaction, accessing levels of representations, meanings and experiences that are not accessible through individual techniques. In the context of audience studies and educational museography, this technique is especially relevant to assess the relevance of an exhibition project and to identify the motivations, interests and needs of visitors.

The 6 discussion groups follow a common semi-structured script articulated in 7 thematic blocks that correspond to the dimensions of analysis:

Warm-up and profile of the group: previous relationship with Bombas Gens and the neighborhood, initial expectations.
Immersive route experience: physical and emotional sensations, most meaningful room.
Memory, identities and stories about La Ruta: previous image, confirmation/questioning, included and excluded voices.
City, heritage and contexts: dialogue with industrial heritage, relationship with the environment.
Technologies, museography and critical reception: influence of immersive technologies (VR 360, laser mapping, holography, surround sound), spectacle vs. reflection.
Ethical, political and educational dimension: visible lights and shadows, aspects in shadow.
Educational proposal: design of educational activity and key question.

Procedure -Phases:

Phase 1 – Preparation: design and validation of the script by the research team; Training of moderators.
Phase 2 – Development: realization of the 6 discussion groups after the visit to the exhibition; duration of approximately 60–90 minutes each; audio recording; note-taking by an observer.
Phase 3 – Transcription: verbatim transcription of each session, preserving discursive marks (pauses, emphasis, overlaps).
Phase 4 – Validation: review of transcripts by participants (member checking) as a criterion of credibility.

Ethical considerations

Prior informed consent, guarantee of anonymity and confidentiality, and the possibility of voluntary abandonment at any time.

Data Analysis Plan: Thematic Analysis

A thematic analysis [50] is proposed as the main strategy, complemented by an analysis of the communicative and interactive processes of the group technique. Thematic analysis allows for the identification, analysis, and reporting of patterns (themes) in the data, providing interpretations of the various perspectives shared among participants:

Familiarization with the data: repeated reading of the 6 complete transcripts; Initial annotations (memos).
Initial code generation: open and inductive coding of significant segments in each transcript (MAXQDA).
Topic search: grouping codes into categories and potential themes, organized around the 7 blocks of the script and emerging themes.
Topic review: Contrast the topics with the coded extracts and with the dataset; refinement and fusion or division of topics.
Definition and naming of topics: writing a narrative description of each topic, with its scope and limits.
Writing the report: presentation of results by theme, illustrated with textual quotations representative of the different groups.

Quality and rigor criteria

To guarantee the quality of the qualitative study, the following criteria will be applied:

Credibility: triangulation among the 6 discussion groups, member checking, and triangulation with the pedagogical diagnostic questionnaires (if complemented as an additional source).
Transferability: dense description of the context (Gens bombs, exposure, participant profile) so that the reader assesses the applicability to other contexts.
Dependability: detailed record of the research process (research journal, coding audit).
Confirmability: documentation of analytical decisions; peer review of the category system.

Structure of the Results section

It is proposed to organize the results into two levels:

Level 1: Results by topic

Each theme is presented with:

Description of the topic and its relevance.
Representative textual citations from at least 3–4 different groups (indicating Group 1, Group 2, etc.) to show convergences and divergences.
Brief internal interpretation (what the data reveals).

Level 2: Cross-sectional analysis

Summary table of convergences and divergences between the 6 groups for each dimension.
Visual thematic map (diagram of relationships between main themes and sub-themes).
Identification of patterns according to participant profile (e.g., local vs. international perspective, prior knowledge of La Ruta vs. lack of knowledge, table 1)

Table 1. Previously suggested dimensions and categories of analysis.

Dimension	Suggested a priori categories
Immersive Experience	Sensory and emotional impact; Most significant room; Degree of immersion and perceived interactivity.
Memory and identities	Previous image vs. Resulting image; Voices represented and absent; Construction of collective memory.
Heritage and city	Dialogue between industrial space and exhibition; Tangible vs. intangible heritage.
Technology and museography	Potential educational of immersive technologies; Tension spectacle-critical reflection.
Ethical and political dimension	Lights and shadows of La Ruta; Gender, diversity, cultural work; Narrative gaps.
Educational proposal	Key question identified; Formative conflict; Proposed didactic design.

Discussion: proposed axes

In the Discussion, the results will be contrasted with the literature on:

Immersive Museography and Heritage Education: How Immersive Technologies Mediate the Educational Experience and What Balance Is Achieved Between Entertainment and Critical Reflection.
Discussion groups as a tool for critical reception: contributions of the technique to capture collective perceptions in audience studies.
Voices, narratives and epistemic justice: which narratives are prioritized and which are made invisible in the museographic construction of cultural memory.
Art education and transdisciplinarity: connections between heritage, visual culture, technology and teacher training.

3. Results and Dicusion

The results corroborate the thesis that technological immersion, by itself, does not guarantee learning or critical reflection. The exhibition achieves the greatest educational impact when the technology replicates the original experience (immersive room, VR car tour) and fails when perceived as decorative (collapse room as a "screensaver"). This is in line with the warning that "when technology overshadows the story, the object or the mediation, the museum runs the risk of substituting its educational function in favor of an ephemeral experience." The mediating variable is the thematic link between the technological resource and the narrative content: immersive technologies are coherent with the phenomenon of La Ruta (club culture, electronica, visual avant-garde), which reinforces their relevance.

Topic 1. Immersive experience and corporality

The immersive room emerges as the most significant moment in 5 of the 6 groups, but the reasons differ substantially. For groups with less previous experience in nightlife contexts, immersion generates what one participant calls "feeling nostalgic for something you haven't experienced." This phenomenon corresponds to vicarious nostalgia, conceptualized by Chi and Chi [51] as the longing evoked by heritage experiences that the subject did not live directly, and which is activated by sensory stimuli – music, images, light – that evoke times prior to the individual's birth. Bhogal et al. [52] confirm that vicarious nostalgia has a significant and positive impact on memorable tourism experiences and behavioral intentions in heritage tourism contexts. On the other hand, Group 3, with more cultural baggage and previous experiences in nightclubs, says: "There have not been great sensations, actually. The exhibition does not work much on the sensible, although it tries. We believe that it works more on the informative/educational aspects" [7,8].

This contrast reveals that the bodily and emotional impact of immersive technologies is not uniform, but is mediated by previous life experiences, the visitor's cultural capital and their interpretive frameworks. As Zhang et al. [30] point out, immersive technologies (VR, AR, MR) are reconfiguring the way visitors access and experience cultural assets, but their effectiveness depends on pedagogical design and contextual mediation. The perception of dizziness, reported by participants from several groups (Groups 1, 4, 5), paradoxically functions as an indicator of effective immersion: "I got a little dizzy and it seemed like a trance that I think is what it must have felt at that moment" [2].

Cross-sectional finding: sensory experience acts as a gateway to historical knowledge, but its effectiveness depends on contextual accompaniment and prior mediation, as Trunfio et al. [53] argue when they point out that advances in mixed reality empower the museum's mission of heritage valorization and education [1].

Topic 2. Spectacle tension vs. critical reflection

The 6 groups address this tension with differentiated nuances. The following table 2 summarizes the positions:

This tension aligns with the contemporary debate in museology: innovation in heritage education through immersive technologies requires institutions to avoid succumbing to populist forms of edutainment or sacrificing social capital derived from institutional trust [54,55], in Heritage magazine, warns that museums have entered their post-digital era, where technology must be at the service of meaningful experiences and not replace educational mediation. The data from this study suggest that spaces where technology replicates the original experience (immersive room, car tour) are valued positively, while those where technology is perceived as ornamental or disconnected from content (collapse room, mirror room) generate critical rejection [3,9].

Topic 3. Represented voices and narrative silences

This theme constitutes the most solid convergence of the study: the 6 groups identify the absence of direct testimonies from the attending public and other invisible agents. However, they disagree in the assessment:

Active critics (G1, G4, G5, G6): "They leave out the people who lived it and the public"; "More personal stories are missing"; "It leaves out stories of less visible workers: cleaning staff, security and affected neighborhoods."
Comprehensive justification (G2): "It is positive that it is done this way because it shows you what was happening objectively", arguing that subjective experiences would not be representative.

In addition, Group 1 introduces a dimension of epistemic and gender justice: "Homosexual people were also still very persecuted and people were certainly not mentally prepared from one day to the next and that is not talked about"; "Also, thanks to these legal loopholes, they took advantage of many artists and that is not talked about." From Fricker's [56] perspective, these silences configure a form of hermeneutical injustice: the lack of collective interpretative resources that prevents certain social groups from making sense of their experiences, a gap conditioned by structural prejudice. In the museological field, Fuhrmann and Mannitz [57] point out that museums are central but contested sites to address the histories and legacies of political violence and memory, and that the selection of narratives implies decisions of power about which are prioritized and which are silenced [24,32,58].

Smith [28], through his concept of Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD), demonstrates that there is a hegemonic discourse that privileges monumentality, expert evaluation, and aesthetic values over the voices of "ordinary" people and their everyday heritage. The demand for plural testimonies expressed by the groups connects directly with this critique [26,59].

Topic 4. Construction and reconstruction of collective memory

All the groups start from a previous image of La Ruta made up of family, media and stereotyped stories (excesses, drugs, lack of control), and agree that the exhibition nuances and expands that image by incorporating the cultural, artistic and historical dimension. The participant of Group 6 (foreign) offers a comparative view: "my experience was less tinged by local nostalgia and more by the observation of how a collective memory is built in a museum."

Halbwachs [60] established that collective memory is society's reconstruction of the past, retaining only what is still alive or capable of living in the group's consciousness. The exhibition operates as a device for reconfiguring memory: it transforms a sensationalist narrative into a culturally contextualized understanding. However, as Hakoköngäs [61] warns, collective nostalgia and vicarious nostalgia (anemoia) coexist in the processes of museum reception, generating tensions between experiential memory and mediated memory. Group 1 corroborates this tension by pointing out that "it is so recent that the public knows that something is missing" [26,27].

Topic 5. Heritage dialogue: industrial space and intangible heritage

Positions are polarized between those who perceive dialogue and those who do not:

Perceived dialogue (G3, G5, G6): Group 3 articulates the most elaborate connection: "the exhibition of La Ruta at Bombas Gens represents an intangible heritage —the youth culture, music, urban sociability of the time—" as opposed to the material heritage of the environment. Group 5 connects farmhouses, factories and La Ruta as "different layers of memory that coexist in the present".
Total disconnection (G1, G2): "No way because you can't see the building anywhere. It's like entering a white warehouse with walls of lights"; G2 considers it "irrelevant".

This contrast suggests that the ability to perceive heritage dialogue depends on the degree of heritage literacy of the visitor. Fontal [58] defines heritage education as a process that goes beyond simple observation: it seeks to develop skills of interpretation, critical analysis and cultural appreciation, understanding heritage not as an object but as a link between people, goods and values. Fontal and Ibáñez-Etxeberria [59] showed that Spain has become an international benchmark in heritage education thanks to instruments such as the National Plan for Education and Heritage and the Observatory of Heritage Education in Spain. The disparity between groups reinforces the thesis that museums need to make explicit the relationship between heritage container and exhibition content for visitors with different levels of literacy [12,26,36,62].

Topic 6. Educational potential and didactic proposals

The key questions asked by the groups reveal four axes of didactic thinking:

Historical-political axis (G2, G3): "How does the mentality and openness of La Ruta reflect the repressive historical context?"
Transdisciplinary axis (G1): "How are artistic disciplines interrelated when there is a great cultural change?"
Ethical-critical axis (G4, G6): "How can an experience that is born as a space of freedom and creativity end up leading to lack of control?"; "How to balance the celebration of a cultural scene with the critique of its social effects?"
Updating axis (G2): "What is happening today at the social and cultural level? History must be made visible so that it does not repeat itself."

4. Discussion

The results corroborate the hypothesis that technological immersion, by itself, does not guarantee learning or critical reflection, but that its educational value depends on the articulation between device, narrative and pedagogical mediation. This interpretation coincides with the literature on museum pedagogy, which stresses that learning in museums does not automatically come from technical innovation, but from the quality of the interpretive experience and the conditions of participation that the institution generates [37,63]. In this sense, the exhibition reaches its greatest impact when technology replicates or intensifies constitutive dimensions of the phenomenon represented, as is the case with the immersive room or the VR car tour, while it loses effectiveness when the digital resource is perceived as decorative or detached from the narrative content. This observation reinforces the warning that technological spectacularization can displace the educational sense of the exhibition if the immersive resource does not contribute to deepening the story, but only to producing an ephemeral experience focused on sensory impact [37,64].

The thematic coherence between technology and content emerges, therefore, as the central mediating variable. In the case of La Ruta, immersive technologies are particularly relevant because they dialogue with a culture marked by electronic music, visual experimentation and the sensory experience of space, which favours a significant relationship between exhibition form and heritage object. From this perspective, the results not only confirm the initial hypothesis, but also broaden its scope by showing that the educational effectiveness of technological immersion depends on its cultural inscription in the symbolic universe of the exhibition, and not only on its ability to generate presence or perceptual realism (see table 2) [63,64].

4.1. Vicarious Nostalgia as a Heritage Learning Mechanism

The vicarious nostalgia identified in the data – understood as the emotion of longing for an experience not directly lived – is a relevant finding for heritage education, as it shows how recent heritage can be activated through forms of affective and intergenerational connection. This reading can be put in dialogue with studies on reflexive nostalgia and cultural memory, which understand the relationship with the past not as a mere reproduction of facts, but as a symbolic, imaginative and emotional elaboration of inherited experiences [65]. Although the concept is not formulated in the same way in classical heritage studies, it is compatible with approaches that defend an understanding of heritage as a process lived and interpreted by subjects through shared cultural practices and frameworks of meaning [66,67].

The results also suggest that this mechanism is strengthened in visitors without direct experiential referents and is attenuated when the participants have similar experiences of their own, as occurs in Group 3. This difference allows us to interpret vicarious nostalgia as an affective mediation that is especially effective when there is a generational distance from the heritage object, which opens a line of analysis on the role of embodied historical empathy in the appropriation of contemporary heritage. In a broad sense, the study expands on the previous discussion by showing that emotional activation should not be considered an accessory element of mediation, but a legitimate way of accessing heritage knowledge when it is critically integrated into a structured educational experience [66,67].

4.2. Narrative Silences and Epistemic Justice

The agreement of the six groups in pointing out the absence of voices from the public, workers, neighbors and vulnerable groups constitutes the most robust finding of the study and can be interpreted from critical museology as an effect of narrative selection. The exhibition privileges the aesthetic and productive dimension of the phenomenon – artists, DJs, designers, visual innovation – and leaves the receptive, social and conflictive dimension in the background, which generates a partially authorised and scarcely plural heritage narrative. This reading aligns with works that have shown how museums and heritage devices not only represent the past, but also distribute cultural legitimacy, determining which voices are visible, which are marginalized, and which memories are recognized as valuable [37].

From this perspective, the silences detected can be read in terms of epistemic justice, insofar as they restrict who can be recognized as a subject of knowledge and testimony about La Ruta. The demand for direct testimonies expressed by the groups reinforces the idea that collective memory needs to be activated through diverse voices, situated narratives and forms of mediation that allow the social complexity of a cultural community to be reconstructed. In the broader context of the contemporary heritage debate, this finding points to the need to move towards more participatory museography, capable of incorporating subaltern memories and narratives in tension, especially when the heritage object is crossed by controversies, stigmas or inequalities of representation [64].

4.3. Heritage Literacy as a Mediating Variable

The disparity between the groups that perceive the dialogue between industrial and intangible heritage and those that do not detect it places heritage literacy as a fundamental mediating variable. In this line, heritage is not limited to being content that is transmitted, but requires interpretative skills to recognize relationships between space, memory, social uses, materiality and cultural narratives. Approaches to heritage literacy have insisted precisely on this dimension, defining it as the ability to experience, interpret and critically analyse heritage meanings beyond their mere superficial identification [66,67,68].

The results confirm this hypothesis by showing that groups with greater training in visual arts and heritage articulate more complex readings, while others need museography to make more clearly explicit the connections between heritage layers. In educational terms, this implies that expository mediation should also be conceived as a tool for heritage literacy and not only as an informative support. In the broader context of arts and heritage education, the finding reinforces the need to design devices that teach how to critically read cultural space, making visible both its continuities and its historical, social, and symbolic tensions [67,68].

4.4. Implications for Teacher Education

The four didactic axes identified in the educational proposals of the groups show that students of the master's degree in research in specific didactics are able to transcend the immediate aesthetic experience to formulate complex questions about learning, memory, mediation and participation. This result coincides with studies that underline the potential of museum environments, including virtual ones, to promote critical thinking, interpretive observation and collaborative construction of meaning when the experience is accompanied by appropriate reflective strategies [64]. From the field of art education, this allows immersive exhibitions to be interpreted as laboratories of didactic thought that are particularly valuable for training teacher, as long as the visit does not close in technological fascination and is prolonged in spaces for dialogue, analysis and pedagogical reworking.

In the broader framework of teacher training, the study suggests that this type of experience can contribute to the development of competencies to design interdisciplinary proposals that articulate heritage, visual culture, digital technologies and educational research. In addition, the results indicate that immersive exposure should not be understood only as a resource for methodological innovation, but as an opportunity to test forms of critical mediation that prepare future teachers to read and problematize contemporary cultural devices from an educational perspective [37,64].

Taken together, the findings confirm the initial hypotheses and allow them to be interpreted in a broader framework where art education, heritage education, museum mediation and digital culture converge. On the one hand, it is confirmed that technological immersion has pedagogical potential when it is coherently integrated into the story and linked to meaningful mediation; on the other hand, it is shown that the educational experience also depends on affective, epistemic and formative variables, such as vicarious nostalgia, plurality of voices and heritage literacy. This combination of factors broadens the understanding of immersive exhibitions as complex learning spaces, in which technology acts as a mediator, but never as an autonomous guarantee of critical understanding [37,63,64].

The implications of the study are relevant in the museum, educational and cultural spheres. From the point of view of museology, the results support the need to design immersive exhibitions that avoid empty spectacularisation and are committed to pluralised and pedagogically mediated narratives. From heritage education, they underline the importance of considering the link between emotion, memory and critical interpretation. And from teacher training, they show that technology-based centers and exhibitions can function as privileged scenarios to investigate how learning is constructed in hybrid, sensory, and socially situated contexts [37,68].

Table 3. Relationship between the dimensions, the theoretical contributions and their contents.

Dimensions	Authors (year)	Main contents
Immersive Technology and Critical Learning	Hooper-Greenhill [37]; Parry [63]	It analyzes the relationship between immersive devices, pedagogical mediation and the construction of critical learning; warns of the risk of technological spectacularisation when the digital resource is disconnected from the exhibition narrative.
Vicarious nostalgia as heritage learning	Boym [65]; Babic y Miklosevic [66]; Santini et al., [69]	It examines nostalgia for unlived experiences as an intergenerational bridge and as an affective mechanism to activate historical empathy, cultural memory, and understanding of recent heritage.
Narrative silences and epistemic justice	Smith [28]; Sandell [70]; Fricker [71]; Lynch [72]	It studies the absence of subaltern voices in the museographic narrative, the unequal legitimization of memories and the need to incorporate plural perspectives from critical museology and epistemic justice.
Heritage literacy as a mediating variable	Rumsey [68]; Babic y Miklosevic [66]; Bhatt [67]	It defines heritage literacy as the ability to recognize, interpret and critically analyze the layers of meaning of a space, articulating tangible and intangible heritage, memory and social context.
Teacher training and immersive exhibitions	Marín-Viadel and Roldán [46]; Pitonakova and Augustínová [73]; Silina-Jasjukevica & Rancane [74]	It approaches immersive exhibitions as laboratories of didactic thinking, useful for developing critical observation, design of educational proposals and research in didactics of the visual arts.
General discussion and implications	Hooper-Greenhill [37]; Parry [63]; Smith [28]	It integrates findings on technology, memory, mediation and heritage to interpret their implications in the museum, educational and cultural fields.
Lines of future research	Bhatt [67]; Parry [63]; UNESCO [41]	It proposes comparative studies on participation, digital mediation, heritage literacy and the design of inclusive immersive experiences in educational and museum contexts.

5. Conclusions

The review of the theoretical framework in this study suggests three main conclusions. First, that art and heritage education today shares a common basis focused on experience, mediation and the construction of meaning, both in face-to-face and digital contexts [1,48,75]. Second, that digitalization does not replace these principles, but rather reconfigures them and makes them more complex, by adding layers of data, interaction, algorithms, and transnational circulation of cultural content [63,76]. And third, that digital arts centres can act as privileged laboratories to explore participatory, interdisciplinary ways of learning that are consistent with UNESCO's international framework on culture, education and emerging technologies [38].

Regarding the research carried out at the Bombas Gens Digital Arts Center (Valencia-Spain), the following arguments are refuted after reflections carried out with 30 expert professionals on the experience:

Technological immersion works as a catalyst, not a substitute

Immersive technologies (VR 360, laser mapping, surround sound) catalyze heritage learning when they are thematically linked to the content and generate a bodily experience coherent with the phenomenon represented; when they operate in a disconnected way, they produce rejection and superficiality. This conclusion implies that immersive museum design must always be subjected to a prior pedagogical question: what understanding, questioning or memory does each technological resource aim to activate?

Vicarious nostalgia as a tool for intergenerational heritage education

The research identifies vicarious nostalgia as an affective mechanism that allows young visitors to emotionally access unlived historical experiences, facilitating an embodied historical empathy that complements cognitive learning. This finding opens a specific line of work for heritage education: designing experiences that deliberately activate this type of nostalgia as a mediation strategy.

The narrative silences shape the story as much as the voices present

The unanimous convergence of the 6 groups in identifying absences – public, workers, neighbours, LGTBI collective, negative consequences – reveals that young visitors with critical training actively detect and question institutional narrative frameworks. For educational museology, this implies that the inclusion of plural testimonies and counter-hegemonic perspectives is not an optional complement, but a condition of credibility of the heritage story.

Heritage literacy determines the depth of reading of space

The ability to perceive the dialogue between tangible heritage (Art Deco factory) and intangible heritage (culture of La Ruta) varies significantly between groups, being associated with the level of heritage literacy and previous training in visual culture. This reinforces the need to integrate heritage education in a transversal way in teacher training programmes.

Immersive exhibitions as didactic research laboratories

The post-visit discussion groups reveal themselves not only as a research technique, but as a formative device in themselves: the participants, by debating collectively, construct more complex interpretations than individual ones, develop critical thinking and formulate transferable educational proposals. This dual function – research and training – positions the discussion group as a privileged tool in research in the didactics of the visual arts. Immersion as a means, not as an end.

Future lines

Future research could delve into at least four directions. Firstly, it would be advisable to develop comparative studies between different immersive exhibitions to analyse how the relationship between technology, narrative content and learning varies according to heritage contexts. Second, it would be pertinent to explore vicarious nostalgia in greater detail as a mechanism of affective mediation, especially in audiences of different ages and cultural trajectories. Third, it would be relevant to investigate participatory methodologies that effectively incorporate voices from the public, workers and local communities, in order to reduce narrative silences and expand the epistemic justice of the exhibition story. Finally, it is recommended to study more systematically how heritage literacy can be taught, evaluated and strengthened in teacher training programmes and museum experiences supported by digital technologies, in line with the international debates on educational innovation, digital competences and the future of learning promoted by UNESCO [77].

6. Patents

Author Contributions

The three authors have contributed substantially and in an equal manner to the conception, development and writing of this research article. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the R&D project “DECHADOS digital. Inclusive Creativity in Museums and Heritage,” reference PID2024-155552OB-I00, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the European Union's ERDF funds. A way of building Europe. Is a Type B oriented research project. The study is directly related to thematic priority 2, “Culture, creativity and inclusive society,” of the State Plan for Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research 2024–2027. It focuses on the identification of heritage in digital environments and how it promotes the development of creativity. The proposal is a continuation of the project “DECHADOS. Inclusive creativity in secondary education through the relationship between schools and museums” (PID2021-123007OB-I00), in which face-to-face activities were analyzed through qualitative analysis based on triangulated observation with secondary school teachers and museum educators, identifying creativity strategies in 17 museums. We propose to analyze the digital resources and educational activities used by museums that incorporate digital environments, thus expanding the research into the digital context. The project is also related to the strategic line of Demographic Challenge and Social Cohesion in the areas of intervention of gender equality and diversity, as well as Dependency and Accessibility, and Education. It complies with the objectives outlined in Science Law 17/2 regarding gender mainstreaming for real and effective equality. The research team is composed of 9 female researchers and 8 male researchers.

Data Availability Statement

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Acknowledgments

The authors have reviewed and edited the output and take full responsibility for the content of this publication. It is hereby stated that, in the preparation of this manuscript, language models such as Perplexity Pro Investigation (versions consulted between October 2025 and July 2026) were used as support for information retrieval, the initial synthesis of some texts, and linguistic revision. The final content has been reviewed, reworked, and validated by the authors, who bear full responsibility for all statements, analyses, and conclusions. No AI tools were used to generate data, manipulate results, or replace processes of critical reading and methodological evaluation.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

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Table 2. The position is articulated through clearly defined groups and supported by well-structured key arguments.

Position	Groups	Key arguments
Balance achieved	G2, G3	"It achieves a successful middle ground between entertainment and history"; "If it were more traditional, it would attract less attention"
Risk of spectacularization	G1, G4, G5	"There are things that reminded me of a crazy fairground house of mirrors"; "The collapse room looked like a screensaver"; "When it imposes itself on the content, it can take you away from reflection"
Middle position	G6	"Spectacularity attracts and excites, but there is a risk that the format will turn the story into entertainment if it is not accompanied by a critical context"

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