The Museum 2020 (Promotion of historical and cultural cross border heritage through museum innovation) originally was a EU-funded project with 3 partner organisations from Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus. While the latter regrettably was forced to quit, the Latvian and Lithuanian partners, Preili Museum of History and Applied Arts and the Panevėžys Museum, have successfully completed the project by the end of 2022.
One of the outputs of this project is a handbook Museum 2025 which was commissioned from the Creative Museum. It is now available online in Latvian, Russian, English and Lithuanian.
The cooperation among the Creative Museum and the Preili Museum of History and Applied Arts as a lead project partner was established back in the late 2021 when the think tank was invited to reflect upon museums in the regions and propose workable solutions for promoting cultural heritage mainly through digital solutions. Besides, on 5 and 6 August 2022, Preili also hosted a design thinking and contemporary collecting workshop led by the Creative Museum team.
Before turning to the methodology of innovation implementation with accompanying examples of good practice, the handbook is introduced by an analytical part that addresses the global challenges of museums in a post-pandemic context and describes regional museums (or museums in regions) from a governance perspective in the overview period. A more targeted involvement of public and private players in the definition and achievement of the museum's strategic objectives, achieved through greater pooling of resources and openness to collaboration, is put forward as a prerequisite for the development of small and medium-sized museums.
In practice, digital tools in the form of ready-to-use platforms have been identified as an opportunity for small and medium-sized museums, which do not always have the means to develop original software tools through original coding, to be an equal player in the cultural consumption market and to live up to the motto Think globally, act locally, which is highlighted in the handbook.
Methodologically, as the biggest challenge for Museum 2025 is named coworking and eventually co-creating together with professionals from the creative industries and new technologies in digital and physical environments alike. Cultural heritage products and value-added services will increasingly require participation of the selected target group, content developers and technology experts as one team.
The guide includes the following examples of good practice:
- Free multimedia guide for the exhibition and the outdoors;
- Creating a free website with the web builder tool;
- Virtual reality as an advanced educational tool in the digital environment;
- Hackathon as an experimental method of co-creation with the potential to lead to an end product;
- Podcast as a digital communication tool not yet much explored in museums;
- The makerspace and the related competition for the best idea as a new revival of the well-known laboratory concept in the old museum tradition.
The guide concludes with a list of Museum 2025 trends, highlighting, among other things, the pressing need of representing the museum's interests through community involvement and strengthening the role of the public or advisory board, as well as the principle of tripartite cooperation in the development of new products and services: museum, creative professionals and technology provision (content, form and technology).
Designed by Edvards Percevs