Prato Living Lab

New participatory business models are needed for museums to achieve economic sustainability and serve local communities. As part of its RECHARGE activities, the Prato Textile Museum aims to study how e-commerce can be the ideal channel to market products online in a sustainable and participative way for cultural institutions and museums in particular.



Since the end of January, the Prato Textile Museum's e-commerce has officially been online and in just a few days has captured the interest of many potential customers, already receiving the first purchase orders and positive feedback. The e-commerce of the Prato Textile Museum is a space dedicated to design and craftsmanship. Its core concept is the enhancement of sustainability through its product catalog and the promotion of the city of Prato and the region of Tuscany. For the Textile Museum and its community, the e-commerce is the result of one year as a RECHARGE Living Lab and a fully participatory approach. Indeed, several co-creation sessions have been organized to involve local creative communities to ideate, design and select the e-commerce products. These local communities include artisans, designers, small businesses and other museums who have sustainability at the core of their mission.

On the 16th and 17th of February, the Textile Museum of Prato hosted two community workshops in which different groups of users have been invited to test the e-commerce experience, giving their feedback for future implementation directions and suggesting other artisans to be included in the museum’s network.The workshops have been very insightful and they gave the Textile Museum new interesting input to tell the stories behind the products and to communicate the unique value co-created by the museum and artisans’ synergy. We will keep you updated here!