This period of confinement due to COVID-19 marks a media frenzy on web actions and social networks of museums. This situation has given rise to some excellent initiatives. However, it will take some time to assess the changes in online usage by museum visitors (of course, we’ll come back to this later). In the light of all this, it seems worthwhile to take a look at non-technological museum innovation from the opposite angle. There will come a time when the physical world will once again take its rightful place, and once again offer exciting extensions to museums’ web presence!
As a preamble, let’s return to the term innovation. According to Patrick Brézillon, it can be broadly understood as “the realization of a new idea that is appropriated by a public because it corresponds to their explicit or previously unsuspected needs or expectations”.
This appropriation by the public can be achieved by digital means (proof of this is the current success of online tours, resources and communications offered by cultural venues), but also by new proposals from museums, which contribute to renewing their mediation and cultural actions, simply by self-diagnosis or by opening up to new partners.
1.Towards a simplification of public procurement, an opportunity to work more closely with innovative partners.
Among the 165 exhibitors at SITEM, a wide range of professions and intervention models are represented. These include :
- Rendering services: this is the case for agencies or studios specializing in scenography, museography, cultural engineering, audience research or multimedia consulting,
- Providing solutions or equipment: this is what start-ups, audioguide companies, lighting designers and glaziers offer.
Given the structure of the museum sector in France (of France’s 1,218 museums, 82% are run by local authorities and 5% by the State), the various private players must regularly comply with public procurement rules.
These rules differ according to the amount and purpose of the expected service. A contract with a public facility can therefore be :
- Consultation,
- Competitive bidding,
- A public procurement contract (above a threshold set since January 1, 2020 at €40,000 excluding VAT),
- Or an order (as part of a framework contract).
The administrative procedures involved in public procurement are often considered too cumbersome, ill-adapted and risk-generating by practitioners in the field. In recent years, however, they have been simplified in order to reduce the administrative burden associated with invitations to tender, as well as the time taken to pay suppliers, through the dematerialization of exchanges and the raising of contract thresholds.
More specifically, for innovative projects, A number of experiments have recently been launched to enable public establishments or authorities to enter into contracts with partners based on a set of clearly defined criteria (see the grid below and the guide to innovative public purchasing). It is now possible to conclude a direct contract with a service provider up to 100,000 euros excluding VAT.
In the cultural sector, this system could be particularly appreciated by Young Innovative Companies from the research sector, such as the initiatives represented at SITEM by the CNRS: a fascinating article was published for the occasion on the CNRS website: ” In search of the museums of tomorrow “.
These developments are particularly conducive to the kind of public-private partnerships that foster innovation in the museum sector. However, this simplification needs to be qualified in the light of other challenges and constraints facing the vast majority of heritage establishments. Among these, the budgetary stakes are particularly high when it comes to implementing ambitious projects. To put it more trivially, being able to contract with an innovative partner for up to €100,000 by mutual agreement is appreciable, but you still need to be able and willing to release such budgetary envelopes to carry out innovative projects.
2. Revisited collaboration models to facilitate innovative partnerships: freemium offers, subscriptions or public/private partnerships.
Faced with the budgetary frugality of the museum and heritage sector, innovative companies have had to revisit certain models of economic collaboration (some of which already existed). The diversity of models revisited and invented is such that this article is unlikely to be exhaustive. As a complement to this article, please refer to two Médium articles published a year ago, one on sponsorship and the other on public funding.
FREEMIUM” OFFERS: to suit the different budgets of cultural establishments.
A first model for collaboration could be to offer a wide range of prices, from free to paid. Similar to the Linked In social network, this type of “Freemium” offer enables cultural institutions of all sizes to tailor their pricing policies to their budgets.
As an example, Skyboy recently launched an “off-the-shelf” augmented reality solution for cultural institutions: Motionspot. Different offers are available, depending on the budget and customization required by a cultural institution.
Skyboy recently collaborated with the Centre des monuments nationaux to enhance the mediation of Clémenceau’s house in Saint Vincent sur Jard. Visitors can use their smartphones or tablets to access re-enactments of the end of Clémenceau’s life, superimposed on the tour of the house.
The MIXED MEDIA/AGENCY MODEL: to combine a free media model for the general public with an agency model to monetize activities with institutional clients.
Inspired by social networks, the aim of this model is, on the one hand, to develop a large community with a medium and, on the other, to monetize activities with institutional clients.
This model is, for example, that of Artips, the free daily newsletter that revisits the history of art through anecdotes:
- Which, on the “general public” side, claimed more than 500,000 subscribers in 2017 (cf.. this presentation article published in Les Echos).
- Who, on the “institutional” side, offer cultural establishments (Philharmonie de Paris, Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Musée Picasso…) the opportunity to sponsor their publications to develop their audience.
Inspired by sponsored publications on social networks, Artips is a privileged access channel to a particularly qualified community (made up of art history enthusiasts). What’s more, the anecdote format provides a rich and original way of telling the story of such a space purchase.
This model, combining media and communications agency, is rather similar to that proposed by Ask Mona, a chatbot in the cultural sector which, via Facebook Messenger, enables users to receive personalized advice on cultural outings (exhibitions, museums, monuments and live shows).
Ask Mona has a dual model:
- Which, on the “general public” side, claimed 40,000 followers in October 2018 (see attached article).
- Who, on the “institutional” side, creates personal assistants for cultural venues to better communicate or inform their audiences, or even mediate with them.
The start-up was also a partner in the Heritage Incubator, which we’ll be talking about later in this article.
The richness of this type of model makes it possible both to contribute to the referencing and communication of cultural establishments to dedicated communities, and to offer original services to the cultural sector.
SUBSCRIPTION: to reduce the investment costs involved in developing a digital project.
Subscriptions are often favored by innovative companies wishing to provide cultural institutions with affordable solutions.
This model makes it possible, for example, to offer augmented reality or virtual reality solutions, which can be particularly costly to design.
This is the case, for example, of RENDR, which regularly develops projects with tourist sites, such as the project carried out in Les Andelys in 2018 to reconstruct the town and its castle in 3D in the 13th century.
Tourists can access this experience on their phone by downloading the Legendr application. The tourist information office also provides them with Cardboard cases to immerse themselves more easily in this reconstruction. While the company offers communication support to the community, it is also an opportunity for the latter to develop its own economic model to cover the costs generated by this collaboration, and even to collect new revenues. The tourist information office in Les Andelys is therefore offering visitors access to the system at a cost of between €9 and €15, depending on the type of visit chosen.
In the field of augmented and virtual reality, like RENDR, Minsar also offers a subscription-based solution for publishing 2D and 3D content.
This means that client cultural institutions no longer have to bear the development costs associated with this type of project, and can concentrate on enhancing or re-exploiting their archival resources and collections in 3D. An experiment was recently carried out at the Château de Pierrefonds.
In addition to start-ups specializing in virtual or augmented reality, other companies also offer this type of subscription, such as Vox Culturae, which offers a solution for interactive storytelling using cartography.
By providing turnkey solutions on a subscription basis, innovative companies enable :
- In the design phase, cultural institutions can concentrate on developing their own itineraries, researching and/or designing dedicated resources.
- In the operating phase, to delegate maintenance and technical upgrades to service providers. These technological evolutions or updates can be more easily integrated into the benefits of all solution customers.
These advantages are therefore certain, even though this type of model is at odds with the practices and payment habits of “service-based” cultural institutions. The fragility of some of these structures may also lead public-sector bodies to fear the risk of shutting down operations in the event of the service provider’s economic failure. Dialogue is therefore essential between public establishments and private companies, in order to anticipate as far as possible the risks inherent in any contractual arrangement. This is all the more true in the case of public/private partnerships.
PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: to develop ambitious projects in collaboration with cultural establishments.
Some technology companies, for example, have drawn inspiration from the long-standing practices of audio guidance companies such as Sycomore, Orpheo or Audiovisit.
This is the case withHistovery, which uses a tablet to explore the reconstruction of a monument from different eras, modeled in 3D.
On the strength of numerous collaborations with Le Palais des papes d’Avignon, the Château de Chambord and the Palais de la Conciergerie, the company offers to take charge of all the costs involved in designing a tour. These costs are relatively high, given the documentary research to be carried out, the tour scenarios to be proposed, the computer graphics and 3D animation to be produced, and the scientific validations to be obtained.
Once designed, this “ready-to-rent visit solution” is managed directly by Histovery teams on behalf of the partner venue. They ensure that the tablets work properly, and that they are maintained and communicated with.
To repay this substantial investment, Histovery proposes :
- Or, a system for renting Histopad tablets(for which a fee is paid to the public institution)
- Alternatively, a more advantageous model would be to systematically recoup a portion of all tickets sold to visitors.
Public/private partnerships can also take the form of co-productions.
This is what we’re proposing Iconem (to find out more, see the restitutive article on the meetings organized by {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES] in 2019 at 11 Conti-Monnaie de Paris where Iconem took part).
Like more traditional traveling exhibitions, the company works in partnership with cultural institutions to produce immersive exhibits that can then be offered to other museums. These exhibitions can thus generate new revenues for museums that have invested in their design. This model was recently recognized by the Cour des Comptes in a fascinating report on the international promotion of engineering and cultural brands.
By way of illustration, the “Cities of a Thousand Years” exhibition, created in 2018 by Iconem, the Institut du Monde Arabe in partnership with UNESCO and Ubisoft, will be installed in 2020 in the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery in Washington.
3. Experimentation, a model for testing collaboration and collaborative innovation.
Beyond the purely budgetary aspect, public/company relations are not always obvious, and sometimes deserve to be the subject of experimentation to discover their challenges and limits. Collaborating with the private sector, sometimes importing new practices or working methods, clearly has not only regulatory and financial implications, but also strategic and organizational ones.
It was with this in mind that the Centre des monuments nationaux decided to set up theHeritage Incubator. By forging closer ties with private enterprise , we can engage in fruitful dialogue to test and implement innovations that are initially technological, but also social and societal.
The incubator will soon be celebrating its 3rd anniversary. Originally, it was the fruit of a collaboration with the Créatis residence, which since 2011 has been developing initiatives to support innovation and entrepreneurship in the cultural sector.
Its aim is to communicate widely on the Centre des Monuments Nationaux’s innovation strategy, but also to facilitate the development of experimentation by acculturating both CMN’s in-house staff and start-ups in their approach to the public cultural sector.
This acculturation logic therefore involves :
- On the one hand, by helping cultural project managers to discover the CMN’s heritage issues, and more generally, in their approach (particularly economic) to the cultural sector, by raising awareness of public procurement codes.
- On the other hand, these experiments are an opportunity to raise awareness among in-house staff of the challenges faced by these project leaders: their need for profitability, understanding of their offers and the ways in which they communicate.
While we’ve talked a lot about technological and digital innovation, the Heritage Incubator initiative demonstrates that this technical input is a source of organizational and managerial innovation within public cultural structures. We’ll be coming back to this subject shortly at the 3rd edition of the IESA X meetings. {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES]. These will take place all day on Tuesday June 30 at the Hôtel de Sully, headquarters of the Centre des monuments nationaux.
