The weekend of November 11 saw Museomix, a 3-day creative marathon held in 8 museums in France and abroad. Created in 2011, this initiative is an opportunity for {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES] to look back on a series of collaborations in the heritage sector that foster innovation: between peers, with universities or schools, or with companies.
1. Collaborate with other cultural facilities: innovate among peers.
For example, the Centre des Monuments nationaux (CMN) has supported the Musée du Louvre in setting up digital cartels.
Initially deployed at the Château de Champs-sur-Marne, these labels feature a range of complementary resources to enhance visitors’ experience: photos, history, film extracts shot at the monument.
As part of the redevelopment of the Pavillon de l’Horloge (historic Louvre), the museum called on CMN for their expertise in carrying out this project.
This type of partnership has the virtue of disseminating knowledge, skills and expertise between cultural facilities and, not least, of pooling a number of costs linked to the design of these systems.
2. Collaborating with higher education: framing, testing and evaluating projects.
Museums and monuments are great places for schools and universities to learn and experiment.
A long-standing believer, {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES] carries out numerous projects in higher education in partnership with cultural venues.
These collaborations can take the form of workshops with students as part of their university courses, missions carried out by the junior councils of certain schools, or dedicated events: organization of conferences, prizes, hackathons…
These partnerships can address a wide range of issues, from reflection on an establishment’s digital strategy, to support for the technical or editorial design of a digital device, to evaluation of how it is used by the public and the mediation and promotion practices of professionals.
By way of illustration, here are a few recent projects:
- Support for the Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme (Museum of Jewish Art and History ) in collaboration with theEcole du Louvre, to reflect on the digital aspect of the overhaul of its visitor itinerary,
- Communications support for theSaint Étienne International Design Biennial with theInstitut d’Etudes Supérieures des Arts et de la Culture (IESA),
- Creation of a website for the Bardo Museum interpretation center in Tunis with Paris 8.
These exciting collaborations do, however, need to be supervised to ensure that the students’ skills are enhanced, and to define the conditions under which the partner institution can re-appropriate the results.
These projects are necessarily experimental, since they involve future apprenticeship professionals, so they need to be carefully thought through to ensure that everyone’s contribution is properly shared.
3. Collaborate with companies: experiment or build new projects, systems or services.
Cultural establishments have a wide variety of relationships with companies.
These can be involved in digital projects in the form of services, as in the case of scenography, cultural engineering or multimedia consultancy agencies. In view of the budget cuts faced by many cultural establishments, this type of intervention is in sharp decline.
Other young, innovative companies, improperly called start-ups (the development potential attributed to these companies is often limited in the museum and heritage sector), are increasingly taking over from these service providers. They offer museums a range of turnkey digital services. Less expensive but less “hand-crafted”, these services are more accessible to museums, and are therefore increasingly sought-after.
So much so that some cultural venues are organizing themselves to support these start-ups through incubation. This is the case for the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, with its Heritage Incubator (in collaboration with the Creatis cultural incubator), and 104, with the 104 Factory.
Last but not least, major companies in the telecoms, defense, consulting and communications sectors collaborate with museums and public monuments as part of their innovation programs or sponsorship programs. This philanthropic contribution may involve a company contributing its expertise, skills, financial or material resources to a cultural site. By way of illustration, Altran (an IT engineering company), Orange and Google Arts&Culture offer to support the development of numerous digital cultural projects.
Relationships between companies and cultural venues are complex. They can be the subject of a wide variety of collaborations, with business models that need to be understood and anticipated to ensure a balanced relationship. Another article on the Correspondances Medium account will soon return to this point.
In conclusion, the digital projects and strategies of museums and monuments, in the same way as other historical missions, are all opportunities to anchor themselves in their territories by calling on the economic, educational and cultural wealth of their territories in a logic of open innovation.
