The COVID Crisis accelerated the digital shift in every aspect of our lives, also in the way we access culture. Throughout 2020 most cultural institutions worldwide were forced to shut their doors while the Internet remained the only scenario to keep operating and engaging audiences. Museums reacted quickly and enhanced their digital activities through social media, virtual tours and others, while searching and generating alternative financial resources to cope with the loss of income caused by the visitor’s drop. Nevertheless, their reaction has proved to be uneven: according to the ‘Followup survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on museums in Europe’ issued by NEMO 93%, have increased or started online services during the pandemic while only 47% of smaller museums indicated that they did. Going digital is a sustained shifting process that needs trained staff, time and resources. So this project is aimed at medium and small museums that can not afford specialized teams in digitalization and digital transformation to give them basic training to do so in three aspects that we believe are essential: maintain a succesfull presence in social media; to create virtual tours and stablish an online store that will contribute to secure incoming funds. So the Open Museum project provided small and medium museums with the knowledge, skills and competences necessary to better cope with the unavoidable digital shift in which they are immersed. The training will enable these museums’ staff to create virtual tours, maintain museum’s social media and stablish an online store that will contribute to secure incoming funds. It has built its mission around these urgent needs for digital transformation in small and medium museums by providing quality, agile and flexible capacity-building training. This have been done through an open, blended and inclusive e-learning course and a Competence Guide, that is the basis for the MOOC, aiming to identify which are the competences and training needs in small and medium museums to leverage the opportunities brought by ICT. These are the concrete outputs and results produced by the project: - A Competence Guide to identify which are the competences and training needs in small and medium museums to leverage the opportunities brought by ICT. It collects good practices about the competences needed to create virtual tours, maintain museum’s social media and stablish an online store that will contribute to secure incoming funds. - An on-line course based on the Guide that enables museum staff to learn through practical, all inclusive modules, real life scenarios and exercises how to create a successful virtual tour, how to create an e-shop to secure funds and how to maintain effective social media for their institution. All this content has been published at our site (www.openmuseums.org) and It is available in English, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Dutch.
The Open Museum project aims to provide small and medium museums with the knowledge, skills and competences necessary to better cope with the unavoidable digital shift in which they are immersed. The training will enable these museums’ staff to create virtual tours, maintain museum’s social media and stablish an online store that will contribute to secure incoming funds. It has built its mission around these urgent needs for digital transformation in small and medium museums by providing quality, agile and flexible capacity-building training. This will be done through an open, blended and inclusive e-learning course and a Competence Guide, that is the basis for this MOOC, aiming to identify which are the competences and training needs in small and medium museums to leverage the opportunities brought by ICT.
The COVID Crisis accelerated the digital shift in every aspect of our lives, also in the way we access culture. Throughout 2020 most cultural institutions worldwide were forced to shut their doors while the Internet remained the only scenario to keep operating and engaging audiences. Museums reacted quickly and enhanced their digital activities, while searching and generating alternative financial resources to cope with the loss of income caused by the visitor’s drop. Nevertheless, their reaction has proved to be uneven: according to the ‘Followup survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on museums in Europe’ issued by NEMO 93%, have increased or started online services during the pandemic while only 47% of smaller museums indicated that they did. Going digital is a sustained shifting process that needs trained staff, time and resources. So this project is aimed at medium and small museums that can not afford specialized teams in digitalization and digital transformation to give them basic training to do so in three aspects that we believe are essential: maintain a succesfull presence in social media; to create virtual tours and stablish an online store that will contribute to secure incoming funds.