The intention of the project was to exchange experiences and gain know-how to innovate the educational programmes of UPM and to enrich them with a more interactive component, to support the creativity of the adult audience, multi-sensory perception and activity in general. We wanted to gain inspiration on how to activate the audience, how to enter into a creative dialogue with them - we lacked experience in this respect, as the UPM has so far organised active programmes exclusively for children's audiences. We also wanted to include in our educational activities those workers who had never been involved in this field before and who are professionals in their field - restorers and collections managers, who have a great potential to bring the specifics of their profession closer to the public. For the cultural heritage artefacts we preserve, this way of education is particularly suitable - not only visual but also tactile acquaintance with individual materials, or participation in a demonstration of production technology, as well as in a presentation of restoration procedures, is often the only way to understand the material nature of applied arts and crafts and their materials and techniques.
The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague (UPM) is the most important Czech institution that has been preserving and making available to the public artefacts of applied arts for almost 150 years. Since the beginning of the museum's existence, emphasis has always been placed on educational activities, both by educating public through exhibitions and lectures, publishing activities, as well as through the activities and accessibility of its library, whose collection is the most valuable resource in the field of design and crafts. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in public interest in educational activities that extend the established core programmes relating to current exhibitions. Current trends in education based on virtual media, which have spread massively especially in the context of the pandemic, are one of the relevant ways to make museum education accessible to the widest audience without the limitations caused by inaccessibility or physical immobility. It is precisely the abundance of virtual sensations that is generating considerable interest in society for activities in real time and space with the possibility of immediate experience, triggered by the diverse sensations of multisensory perception.