Amongst the many effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the cultural heritage sector developed a heightened awareness of the importance of engagement and collaboration in times of global crisis. Institutions also realised their pivotal role in connecting social groups and strengthening communities, and the subsequent necessity to evolve in order to maintain their relevance, provide accessible knowledge to future generations and keep creating cultural and economic value through the development of new initiatives.
But how to capitalise this value and successfully turn it into a successful business model? This is what the RECHARGE project sets out to do: support cultural heritage institutions in diversifying their funding through a replicable and sustainable participatory business model, allowing them to acquire the necessary tools for its future developments, both in the digital realm and onsite.
The first space where to experiment new ways of recharging the cultural heritage sector – and indeed, the beating heart of the project – are the Living Labs: dynamic spaces where ideas and solutions can be co-created, tested, and iterated by collaborating stakeholders. We plan to have 9 Cultural heritage institutions setting up Living Labs, developing activities such as co-creation workshops, collaborative sessions, roundtable engaging different communities to create and capture value, collaborating with the different stakeholders involved in their ecosystem. We believe that the participatory processes enabled by the Living Labs approach will bring innovation to the business models of cultural heritage institutions while also benefiting their network of stakeholders.
Another important part of the project is the development of a Playbook: a methodological tool with clear and easy-to-follow instructions on how to facilitate co-creation. As both a theoretical and practical tool composed of exercises and templates for running collaborative ideation activities with stakeholders, the Playbook will detail approaches for online and offline activities.
Apart from contributing to the set-up of the Living Labs and the development of the Playbook, EFHA leads the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities of the project. We are in charge of setting out and maintaining the communication plan, managing the Diary of the RECHARGE participatory platform and the social media accounts of the project, engaging with all the other partners to communicate the results of the different phases and also promote the outcomes of the initiatives related to the project, sharing them with different stakeholders and professional networks, as well as with the general public.
