The CHARTER Alliance Rome General Meeting reunited the consortium for the last time in 2022, hosted by our full member Fondazione Scuola dei beni e delle attività culturali. This general meeting was of special importance to jointly assess the project’s results and next steps, as CHARTER is completing two years of activity. Some work packages are finalising and presenting their last deliverables next months, and some will start their activities in January 2023.
This meeting was also an opportunity to host a new open day conference for interested stakeholders under the theme “Present and Future Digital Strategies for Cultural Heritage”. We are very proud and happy that 250 external stakeholders joined us during the conference in presence and via live-streaming. Find in this article a summary of all activities taking place each day.
DAY 1 – The Italian cultural heritage ecosystem
Before the official start of the General Meeting, the work package’s (WPs) leaders and co-leaders met with members of the Expert Advisory Board (EAB). This meeting gave the opportunity to assess their feedback and discuss improvements. The meeting was also the opportunity to welcome our new EAB member Conxa Rodà, co-director of Curso de especialización en Estrategia Digital en Organizaciones Culturales at Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).
The official programme started with welcoming speeches by Alessandra Vittorini (Director of Fondazione Scuola dei beni e delle attività culturali); Vittorio Calaprice (Representative of the European Commission in Italy); Lluís Bonet, Coordinator of the project (University of Barcelona) and Mario Turetta, Director General of Direzione Generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali (Ministero della Cultura).
DAY 2 – General Assembly and WPs progress
The General Assembly opened our second day of work, where each WP shared its results, current work, challenges and next steps. This was the opportunity to also share internal calls for new developments within the project, as well as a very insightful presentation on artificial intelligence by our Expert Advisory Board member Ana Schoebel.
Afterwards, WP2 hosted a milestone presentation on their mid-term results by Elis Marçal (E.C.C.O.) and Bosse Lagerqvist (ICOMOS). WP2 successfully portrayed their 2 years journey around the CHARTER model for cultural heritage and the CHARTER Spiderweb Diagram; both responding to a change of paradigm in the sector. Now the focus is centered on how to present heritage as a vector, looking to answer why heritage is important?
Credit: Davide Palmieri.
DAY 3 – Present and Future Digital Strategies for Cultural Heritage Conference
CHARTER opened the last day of the General Meeting to welcome interested stakeholders for our conference on digital strategies. The conference aimed to showcase which digital competences are needed by the cultural heritage professionals and how the digital transition will shape the way we work in the near future.
The conference was kicked off with welcoming speeches by Vincenzo Trione (President of Fondazione Scuola dei beni e delle attività culturali) and Lluís Bonet, Coordinator of CHARTER (University of Barcelona). Tiziana Mancinelli (Institute for Digitisation of Cultural Heritage – Digital Library (Ministero della Cultura) continued by introducing the National Digitisation Plan (PND), promoting and organising the digital transformation process for the next 5 years. The PND addresses museums, archives, libraries, central institutes and cultural spaces that own, protect manage and enhance cultural assets. Access more information here: https://bit.ly/3EQqH3D
- Mariachiara Esposito (DG EAC) started by giving the EU perspective on digital strategies for cultural heritage. Among them, Esposito shared the initiatives and opportunities within the framework of the Horizon Europe programme and what’s ahead for the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage.
- Margherita Sani (NEMO – Network of European Museum Organisations) presented new emerging profiles mapped through the Mu.SA and Biblio projects, including the Digital Strategy Manager, Digital Collections Curator, Digital Interactive Experience Developer, Community Manager, Digital Transformation Facilitator and Community Engagement and Communications Officer.
- Conxa Rodà (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) presented the current digital profiles/skills in museums. Rodà issued a series of actions to move forward in relation to the digital field in museums, calling for a “planned agility” instead of improvisation; focusing on quality and engagement; enriching digital interpretation; launching more digital-born projects; improving accessibility; forging alliances and training internal digital skills.
- Cristina Ortega (HKU) introduced the Cyanotypes blueprint for CCIs, which started its activity last September.
- Delphine Jasmin-Belisle (The Heritage Alliance) shared the results of the DASH survey on digital skills of UK staff and volunteers in the field of heritage. Some of the key findings of DASH include that digital attitudes are still focused on problem-solving but digital confidence has grown; organisational support has increased for staff but not for volunteers; business-critical skills have improved but digital is not much used in transformative ways; teams miss informal face-to-face interactions to support skills sharing and innovation. Overall, results point out that the needs of individuals and organisations have not changed much since 2020.
- Flavia Massara & Nicola Barbuti presented the Biblio Project, which addresses the skills gap in the library sector due to digital transformation and facilitates the acquisition of digital and transversal skills for library professionals. Biblio’s research points out the need to develop skills to create digital content, to communicate with users and to analyse users’ needs.
- Francesca Traciò (Fondazione Scuola dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali) presented a model for skills development and a tree diagram for digital skills for cultural organisations.
After this very insightful round table, Lluís Bonet (University of Barcelona) and Alessandra Gariboldi (Fondazione Fitzcarraldo) shared final remarks to close the conference. Conclusions pointed out the need to increase digital ambition. Digital presents a huge potential for the sector, but certain aspects need to be addressed: lack of digital leadership; developing and enhancing digital vision; not only training people, but training organisations as a whole.