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Resilient heritage institutions

active 3 weeks, 5 days ago

Background and challenge / problem
The resilience of the society has been greatly tested during the ongoing COVID pandemic. Although the lockdown and restrictions are being gradually removed, we must prepare ourselves and the societies that such events may reoccur in the coming years. The restrictions were not only inconvenient but caused a lot of mental health problems among the people that were not accustomed to lengthy spans of solitude and lack of contacts. Another phenomenon that became apparent during the last two years in every country was the thirst of the people for culture and entertainment (edutainment). The number of e-exhibitions in galleries and museums increased, artists organised pop-up concerts from their home studios, online training courses fostered and so forth. But by and large the institutions were unprepared for the new situation and the solutions implemented were often ad hoc and lacked in terms of quality, means and methods (including technology), chosen approaches etc. The content or focus of the solutions was often quite sporadic and did not consider sufficiently the local / regional context, cooperation between the institutions was low and the involvement of audience was often limited or not considered at all. Thus we may say that although new solutions and approaches were introduced and implemented, they did not fully help: the edutainment aspect was not achieved and their role in supporting the people in their solitude was only limited and the positive effect on mental health issues also small. Although this seems quite harsh criticism, EWM fell itself into the same trap – and we must bear in mind that the situation was unique for all and none of the cultural / heritage institutions had the experience to cope with.
Today we are in a much better situation in terms of understanding the processes of what happened and how the cultural / heritage institutions ought to have (re)acted. We hope that we do not have to face such a pandemic ever again, but there is a lot to learn from the experience that could be used for being ready for any possible forthcoming crises in terms of resilience development in the society – but also for the development of the core activities of the cultural / heritage institutions to foster inclusion and participation.
This is what the proposed project aims to achieve: developing and testing a pilot model for cultural and heritage institutions that would enable to provide means for societal resilience during a wide-spread crises but serves as an integral part of the institutions core activities during periods of stability.
Objective
A pilot model developed and tested among cultural and heritage institutions focusing on the ad hoc innovations created and implemented during the COVID pandemic for integrating them into the core activities of the institutions and widening thus the capacity for societal resilience during possible future crises.
Activities
1. Analysis of the solutions implemented in the cultural and heritage institutions during the COVID pandemic and assessing their suitability in the context of resilience building, social inclusion and participation and innovation.
2. Classifying and grouping the solutions, selecting the most appropriate and suitable classes / fields of intervention bearing in mind the project objective. Developing an “ideal model” for the selected classes.
3. Adjusting the “ideal model” to be piloted in the partner organisations as cooperative and inclusive pilots.
4. Project management and information dissemination.

Resilient heritage institutions

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