Origin of the project

The recent global economic downturn has impacted youth and adult populations The Creative Museum Project seeks to explore and inform the connections between our cultural organisations and their communities by capitalising on the emergence of new and democratising digital technologies.  Seeking to extend the language of engagement through the medium of accessible, customisable, and personal digital experiences.  The project sees museums as dynamic learning environments in which staff and visitors can use accessible digital tools to explore and reason about collections in new and creative ways.

 

The Creative Museum is a three-year Strategic Partnership running from 2014-2017  funded via Erasmus+, Key Action 2 (Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices) – Vocational and Educational Training (VET).

 

Throughout the three years of the project, museum professionals will be encouraged to learn from each other, test new ways of interacting with audiences; create partnerships; share practices and experiences as well as disseminate the processes and outcomes.

 

Digital technologies pervade modern life and the computing power at the fingertips of the average consumer today vastly outweighs the power of supercomputers from the 1960s.  The potential for this technology to affect delivery of information and entertainment has never been more significant.

 

Many museums have long been proactive in the search for a role for digital concepts within their walls, from information kiosks, to animated panels, to sound-and-light augmentations of exhibition spaces, to engineered simulations of large-scale phenomena.

 

However the production of these experiences has tended to be somewhat costly and the result of complex supplier relationships with professional software companies.  With the increasing miniaturisation and attendant cost-saving of customisable technology there is now a groundswell community of inventors who have at their disposal a tremendous potential for digital expressivity.

 

This project explores the potential and value of personal impact on small-scales and seeks to connect the Maker Community and digital industries with museums and museum practitioners to break down barriers, open the doors of the museum and explore new ways of interpreting collections.

 

The Creative Museum will develop conduct an analysis of good practices; produce recommendations guidelines for creative practices; provide training for partner museum staff ; fund opportunities for Maker-in-Residence programmes; run dissemination events in partner countries to share learning from the project with a final conference in Zagreb 2017.

 

Beneficiaries

• The project is aimed at museum professionals to build their capacity to create modules based on creativity and innovation using both traditional and new methods.
• These will provide museums much-needed ‘know-how’ in how to engage with diverse communities.