The situation most museums are currently facing remains compromised by the global health crisis, which has hit the sector particularly hard and accelerates the importance of digitalisation in the museum sector. But technology is not a solution in itself; particularly when not constituent to a larger strategy and equipped with comprehensive goals. DOORS (Digital incubator fOR muSeums) focuses on digital maturity of institutions and empowerment of their teams. The central question is how the museum sector can develop digital strategies and values to adapt and reinvent themselves to strengthen their performance, reach their audiences and develop new ones, and ensure financial recovery and sustainability.
The overarching aim of DOORS is to become a truly European incubator for small and medium-size museums that will support them in their digital transformation journeys. The incubator will seed and nurture digital thinking in forty institutions resulting in a continuous network of DOORS digitally maturing actors. Through a two-stage pilot scheme, DOORS involves 40 museums in 20 innovative pilots developing digital transformation experiments in 4 concrete innovation areas.
The resulting active network of European museum and innovation stakeholders will form a synergetic collaboration platform, share lessons & partner experience and publicly highlight Europe’s digital excellence for museums.
DOORS has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement no. 101036071.
List of project partners
- Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG, Austria (Coordinator)
- Museum Booster, Austria
Resources
This first part of the DOORS project Sparkle report seeks to allow small and medium-sized museums across Europe to steer the direction of the sector's digital transformation.
We want to reduce the digitalisation gap by creating the space for small institutions to voice their needs and offering them access to knowledge, resources, expertise, and an incubation programme.
The second part of the DOORS Sparkles Report looks into the ingredients for healthier partnerships, the possibilities and challenges of collaborative processes, and the prerequisites for the (re)development of business and revenue models within the museum sector through inspiring stories of institutional creativity, courage, and vulnerability.
The DOORS consortium developed a specific tool to help museums understand the digital maturity levels of their organization. This tool, called the Self-Reflection Tool for Museums, is shaped like an engaging card deck.
The card deck facilitates a collective self-reflection exercise in which everyone within the museum is invited to participate. Each card includes a question that encourages an in-depth reflection on the status quo and potential enablers and blockers as a first step toward formulating more sustainable digital strategies.
The DOORS Breaking the Digital Ceiling publication is a roadmap that gathers the voices of the DOORS project team, the experts, and the museums that have participated in the project. All of them come together to outline, comment on, and contest the project's methodologies and practices.
The document aims to spread the used knowledge-sharing practices and frameworks and the design of the incubation programme to create long-term impact, hopefully inspiring granular changes at a museum level, and more attuned funding schemes.