In the past few months the Textile Museum of Prato has worked hard to design, develop and populate its future e-shop. We are happy to announce that the museum is about to release it!In our last diary entry dedicated to the Textile Museum of Prato we have indeed described the bilateral co-creation workshops held by its team to co-create and co-select locally and ethically sourced, sustainability-oriented quality items for the e-shop. Artisans, designer and local companies have been involved in th…

Another day another RECHARGE Keyword. Discover what we mean by Sustainability within the context of cultural heritage institutions.What happens when a project ends, when the results are captured, and the value is measured? Sustainability is key to understanding the resonance and resilience of a business plan, and above all its role in the growth of the institution. The United Nations defined sustainability as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation…

One of the words that RECHARGE members use more often is Value. What does Value mean in the RECHARGE context? Let’s unpack all its nuances.In general terms, Value means a location in a specific categorical scale (such as price, temperature, or size). Value refers to the preference based on socially constructed, dynamic, variable, and multiple notions that inform our understanding of goods and services and therefore inform our choice. To put it simply: value defines what we do or like.According t…

An overview of the steps the team at the Estonian Maritime Museum Living Lab took to make the project take off and fly!The Estonian Maritime Museum's participatory business model is focused on museums as co-creators in the collaborative innovation process to develop digital education solutions. The museum decided to further develop a digital educational solution using Augmented Reality (AR) to enrich both the museum and the classroom environment through the use of the Reality Maker AR platform.T…

Here is a taste of the willow workshops held by the Hunt Museum as part of their Living Lab. These workshops served to connect people with an ancient heritage craft, using a natural material native to Ireland. They would do this while learning new skills, and learning about biodiversity – and then taking home a beautiful objects they made themselves!

On August 17, a part of the RECHARGE team went on tour to Limerick, to take part in The Hunt Museum RECHARGE Living Labs business model testing process: a willow weaving workshop.The workshop was structured as an all-day drop-in session, where people could come, register and take part in the activity experienced willow artist Lynn Kirkham devised for the audience: weaving a reproduction of a significant object part of the museum collection: a Mhuc Dhubh, a fantastic animal - a black pig - that h…

The 22nd International Conference on Cultural Economics, organized by the Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI) on a biennial basis, is consolidated as the main academic forum in the field of Cultural Economics.This year, the event took place in Bloomington, Indiana, US, with the Centre for Cultural Affairs of Indiana University as the local organizer. The scientific program was coordinated by Luis César Herrero, President-Elect of the ACEI and head UVA team in the RECHARGE pro…

Participation is one of the key components of RECHARGE’s practices aimed at involving communities in defining the most viable and valuable business model for a specific institution. Participation refers to taking an active part in a project, an activity, or a process in which the participants’ contribution has an influence on the process and/or the outcomes of the entire endeavour. Participation can take a form of various levels of involvement — from small short-term contributions, through large…

EMM’s third Living Lab workshop took place in Laulasmaa, a peaceful seaside resort near Tallinn, on 17th and 18th August. The workshop was called Empowering Learning with AR, and it focussed teachers' involvement in the work of the museum. EMM set out to chart the needs of teachers and collectively generate ideas for an AR (augmented reality) solution that could bring museum content into the classroom in captivating and educationally effective ways. The goal of the EMM Living Lab pilot is for mu…

On June 15, EMM held their second LivingLabs workshop, this time in the studios of the VIVITA Creativity Accelerator for youth. The workshop was carried out in cooperation with VIVITA. Children and young adults between the ages 11-23 were invited along as co-creators (and eventual end users) of the designed pilot product. Other workshop participants included GLAM sector representatives and three digital innovators, companies that engage in extended reality solutions.The aim of the second LL work…

Between May and June, the team at Museo del Tessuto di Prato held a series of bilateral co-creation workshops to engage more people in the definition and implementation of the proposed business model the museum is working on in the context of the RECHARGE project. The meetings saw the participation of seven artisans, designers and companies working with upcycling, circular materials and sustainable production processes, engaged with creative recovery and reuse of discarded fabric, with social su…

Thoughts after the field trip carried out by Sound & Vision's RECHARGE team-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------At Sound & Vision's we believe that understanding the ins and outs of the daily work of cultural heritage spaces, such as museums, is important to better develop the work and the team contributions to the project. So, on the 5th of April 2023 we set out on our fir…

The concept of ‘business model’ has more haters than lovers, especially in the cultural sector (we analysed some of the reasons here). Still, looking at how it has been framed by scholars, it may resonate with many institutions and people. Within RECHARGE, we aim at a clearer and fairer use of the terms, and this is why we want to define it for CHIs, in all its nuances.In general, a business model is defined as a (logical) story that explains who the customers of an organisation are and what the…

A guest post by Ance Skolniece and Maisie Nijveen, students at Erasmus University Rotterdam, reporting on the Concept Harmonisation workshop the project held in March to align the activities and views of our researchers and partners.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hi there, we are Ance and Maisie, two students participating in the Arts & Culture Honours Programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam. For our Honours project, …

Finding and testing innovative business models for cultural institutions is what we do at RECHARGE, with our Living Labs as core functioning units. What is Museo del Tessuto di Prato working on and how is the institution establishing its own ad-hoc procedures?-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------MdT's position stems out of a firm belief: museums need new revenue streams and they also need to ser…

RECHARGE wants to individuate, study and develop sustainable business models for cultural institutions, and our three Living Labs - The Hunt, Museo del Tessuto di Prato and Estonian Maritime Museum - are the very first places where these models are shaped and trialled. Time to learn more about them - first off: The Hunt Museum.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The participatory business model…

The first co-creation workshop held at the Living Lab of the Estonian Maritime Museum took place on Thursday 11 May at the historic Tallinn Seaplane Harbour. It saw the participation of 20 people: museum professionals, librarians and representatives of tech companies we want to involve in the project.The event was moderated by Ragnar Siil from Creativity Lab. First, Ragnar introduced the RECHARGE project and went into details explaining the concept of our core operating system, the Living Labs. …

RECHARGE stemmed out from an urgency: understanding how business models can be developed that fit the cultural heritage sector, to help CH institutions shape their activities and plans to retain their central role for the social and cultural life of global and local communities. For that to happen, the concept of ‘business model’ needed to be understood and embraced.As we started brainstorming, the conversations within the consortium and also with other professionals in the sector made clear how…

As we reported on this diary a few weeks ago, on March 15, The Museo del Tessuto di Prato held its very first co-creation workshop in the context of RECHARGE Living Labs.To document the workshop, the MdT team produced a video, which we are thrilled to present as one of the outcomes the Prato Living Lab. The video offers a sneak-peak of the mythologies we are using to engage communities and stakeholders and produce something meaningful together. Moreover, and very importantly, the video allows ev…

As we have reported in our RECHARGE Diary, during the co-creation workshop on the 10th February at The Hunt three ideas were discussed. The one that has become the most feasible for the Living Lab is related to the use of green spaces in Limerick City and County, including the Hunt Museum Garden, to create sustainable sculptures made from native Irish Willow, which will enhance local biodiversity and serve as pollinators. This is how the project Weaving Willow was born. With a very exciting coll…

At the turn of February and March 2023, Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation, in cooperation with the three Living Labs carried out 6 focus group interviews to investigate and analyse key motivations behind participatory involvement in Cultural Heritage Institutions’ activities, making a case to better understand their potential to constitute relations and partnerships with relevant stakeholders.The RECHARGE project is vastly focused on the participatory models and as such it was our imperative to not onl…

On March 20th, a team from Centrum Cyfrowe in Poland visited The Hunt Museum to meet the community in Limerick and learn about participation.The fifteen participants came from different backgrounds and age groups: museum docents and museum interns; corporate partners involved with the RECHARGE Living Lab; corporates who have not worked directly with the museum before; artists that have worked/collaborated with the museum before and representatives of the local community who regularly collaborate…

On March 15, The Museo del Tessuto di Prato held its very first co-creation workshop in the context of RECHARGE Living Labs.The workshop saw more than 30 people participating, from museum professionals, artists and craftspeople, educational institutions, and representatives of all the professional communities relevant for the museum’s Participatory Business Model, which is constantly updated according to the institution’s needs and considerations.After an introduction on the project and explanat…

Co-creation of value starts from meeting up, sharing practices and being honest about the needs different institutions and stakeholders in general, might have, to come up with a plan to reach common goals. Understanding the importance of working together is at the basis of what we do in our Living Labs. So, we asked members of the corporates that took part in the Co-Creation workshop at the Hunt Museum on February 10. Here is what they fed back to us:EDCThe Recharge workshop was a great opportun…

Living Labs are at the core of the RECHARGE project, where cultural heritage institutions experiment and co-create with their network of stakeholders. Within the context of RECHARGE, we plan to have 9 museums setting up Living Labs to engage with different communities and innovate their business models in order to create and capture value, collaborating with the different stakeholders involved in their ecosystem.Mapping out the scholarship related to collaborative practices in the CH sector, we …