The 1st eCHOing project hybrid event will provide an overview of the project and the partnership behind it and will showcase some examples of innovation in small cultural heritage organisations.

This event is designed to meet the needs of Higher Education staff and students who deal with Cultural Heritage and Medium-sized and small cultural organizations.

What does a small cultural heritage institution mean?

Here we give an example of what a small museum is, based on criteria suggested by the American Association for State and Local History Museums:

• Budget: in the US case, it is less than $250,000.
• Staff responsibilities: Operate with a small staff with multiple responsibilities.
• Volunteers involvement: volunteers are performing key staff functions.

Defining museums as ‘small’ is not based on the size of their premises or the number of their holdings; in many cases, ‘small’ museums handle sizeable collections. The main features which identify museums as small are related to their budget and to the human capacity.

Fig.1. Small museums are about restricted budget, multitasking staff and volunteers’ involvement. CC-BY-ND. DISTILL project (https://distill.page/). Image by Radostina Peneva.

Programme of the event

13.30-13.35: Welcome by host organization, Federation of Women’s Association in Cyclades

13.35-14.00: Presentation of the eCHOing  project, and eCHOing partners Alexandra Angeletaki, Coordinator, NTNU

14.00-14.30: eCHOing Associated partners introduce their organizations 

14.30-14.55: Presentation of the open access publication showcasing practices for the revival of European cultural organisations through open innovation, Anna Mavroudi, OSYGY, PR1 leader

Coffee Break 5 minutes

15.00-15.30: Paintings talking to children: the development and the impact of a co-created augmented reality application connecting students and paintings from the Corfu Art Gallery, Greece, George Papaioannou,  University of Aegean, Corfu, (via zoom) with Q & A

This presentation relates to the digital application of augmented reality ” Paintings talking to children…”, which was generated on the AURASMA platform via a co-creation process involving the Ionian University, the Corfu Art Gallery and elementary-school students from Corfu. Five well-known paintings come alive and talk to visitors/students on the screen of their mobile phone or tablet. We discuss the co-creation process in terms of successes, pitfalls and impact.

15.30-15.50: Promoting active citizenship through Higher education and communities, Dr. Stella Sylaiou, Adjunct Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Hellenic Open University (via zoom) with Q & A

The paper draws experience from an ongoing project promoting active citizenship. Come2Art is a Eramus+ project where art university students and society work together to co-create hubs connecting community members and artists / cultural workers for life skills application, boosting creative resilience (O3), including delivery of training and mini artistic collective projects but also through an inclusive approach, promoting active citizenship.

15.50-16.00: Conclusions by Milena Dobreva, Sofia University.

About eCHOING

eCHOing is an Erasmus+ project that aims to create collaborative opportunities between Higher Education Institutions and Cultural Organizations through Open Innovation. Milena Dobreva from DISTILL is collaborating in eCHOIng as a contributor from Sofia University.