Design, craftsmanship, sustainability and participation are the key pillars of the newly opened Textile Museum e-shop.The Museo del Tessuto e-commerce is indeed a project dedicated to design, craftsmanship, sustainability, and the promotion of the city of Prato and Tuscany. The creative communities involved include artisans, designers and small businesses - mainly local - who make sustainability their mission. The e-shop features i) products co-created by MdT, designers and artisans, these produ…

How can a museum become a bridge between different areas of knowledge, from history and culture to technology? The Estonian Maritime Museum wants to respond to this western, and is developing a business model that will help them connect with both the education and technological sectors.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In cultural heritage institutions (CHI), there is a need for various serv…

In the past few months the Textile Museum of Prato has worked hard to design, develop and populate its future e-shop. We are happy to announce that the museum is about to release it!In our last diary entry dedicated to the Textile Museum of Prato we have indeed described the bilateral co-creation workshops held by its team to co-create and co-select locally and ethically sourced, sustainability-oriented quality items for the e-shop. Artisans, designer and local companies have been involved in th…

Another day another RECHARGE Keyword. Discover what we mean by Sustainability within the context of cultural heritage institutions.What happens when a project ends, when the results are captured, and the value is measured? Sustainability is key to understanding the resonance and resilience of a business plan, and above all its role in the growth of the institution. The United Nations defined sustainability as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation…

One of the words that RECHARGE members use more often is Value. What does Value mean in the RECHARGE context? Let’s unpack all its nuances.In general terms, Value means a location in a specific categorical scale (such as price, temperature, or size). Value refers to the preference based on socially constructed, dynamic, variable, and multiple notions that inform our understanding of goods and services and therefore inform our choice. To put it simply: value defines what we do or like.According t…

An overview of the steps the team at the Estonian Maritime Museum Living Lab took to make the project take off and fly!The Estonian Maritime Museum's participatory business model is focused on museums as co-creators in the collaborative innovation process to develop digital education solutions. The museum decided to further develop a digital educational solution using Augmented Reality (AR) to enrich both the museum and the classroom environment through the use of the Reality Maker AR platform.T…

Here is a taste of the willow workshops held by the Hunt Museum as part of their Living Lab. These workshops served to connect people with an ancient heritage craft, using a natural material native to Ireland. They would do this while learning new skills, and learning about biodiversity – and then taking home a beautiful objects they made themselves!

On August 17, a part of the RECHARGE team went on tour to Limerick, to take part in The Hunt Museum RECHARGE Living Labs business model testing process: a willow weaving workshop.The workshop was structured as an all-day drop-in session, where people could come, register and take part in the activity experienced willow artist Lynn Kirkham devised for the audience: weaving a reproduction of a significant object part of the museum collection: a Mhuc Dhubh, a fantastic animal - a black pig - that h…

The 22nd International Conference on Cultural Economics, organized by the Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI) on a biennial basis, is consolidated as the main academic forum in the field of Cultural Economics.This year, the event took place in Bloomington, Indiana, US, with the Centre for Cultural Affairs of Indiana University as the local organizer. The scientific program was coordinated by Luis César Herrero, President-Elect of the ACEI and head UVA team in the RECHARGE pro…

Participation is one of the key components of RECHARGE’s practices aimed at involving communities in defining the most viable and valuable business model for a specific institution. Participation refers to taking an active part in a project, an activity, or a process in which the participants’ contribution has an influence on the process and/or the outcomes of the entire endeavour. Participation can take a form of various levels of involvement — from small short-term contributions, through large…