Innova Museums

In-Nova Partnership MusEUm experimented with new methods and approaches of audience development by developing concrete actions that aimed to build audience capacity within the Art & Food concept.

– The aim of the In-NovaMusEUm project was to create interaction approaches with museum visitors and to start a pilot phase that allowed the audience to be diversified.

Art and food are two necessary things for life. Visual arts have always had a special connection with the theme of food and the ritual of eating together. Rituals and symbols of food products have transcended all forms of art, from antiquity onwards.

Milan 2015 which, among other things, has inspired the exhibition “Arts and Foods”. Rituals since 1851 dedicated to places of food and its representation in paintings, sculptures, furniture and objects. This helped us to build a project about the importance of food for art. We decided to focus our project on European museums with outstanding collections that, due to their peripheral location or lack of audience development strategies do not take advantage of the tourist advantages of their location, therefore remain outside the main tourist flows and not very often affect the participation of the local community and inclusion in their cultural services. These museums (hereinafter referred to as “suburban museums”) face two levels of issues:

– Lack of approaches and methods of audience development to meet the needs of existing and potential audiences:

1 – low number of annual visitors

2 – low participation of the local community in museum programs.

The project, which lasted 18 months, was structured in five main points, including: training and research activity for the peripheral audience development strategy, the participatory event with the local and artistic community, digital engagement, European networking activities, and dissemination.

The partnership was made by 5 organizations, each of them with experience in a specific field related to the project area. In particular, the Innova Museum directly includes 2 partner Museums (Skoklostersslott Castle in Sweden and Theodoros Papagiannis Museum of Contemporary Art in Greece) and 5 affiliated Museums: Palazzo Chigi di Ariccia (Italy), Bordalo Pinheiro Museum (Portugal), Museum Greece), Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu National Museum (Kruja, Albania) Durres Archaeological Museum (Albania).

Museums of interest in Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Albania and Greece are indirectly involved.

Creative and participating laboratory Tirana Ekspres (Albania) and C&K R&D Unit of Lusofona University of Lisbon act as technical partners together with the Department of Cultural Heritage Management (University of Patras).