ABSTRACT
In response to a changing society and new audience behaviours, European cultural institutions are turning towards digitisation to become more accessible. However, they face fundamental challenges in becoming digitally enabled institutions. smARTplaces was conceived to address these challenges. smARTplaces is a four-year European audience development project funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, which was delivered by a partnership of eight cultural institutions and two universities. From June 2016 to July 2020, the partnership comprised more than 57 activities to develop new approaches to audience engagement, co-creation and new methods of cultural production. With the use of diverse digital technologies – social media tools, adaptive storytelling techniques as well as joint exhibitions and on- and offline activities – partnering institutions learned to shape the (digital) transformation process they were going through. To meet its overall objectives, the project also focused on change management and emphasised the inclusion of cultural education, capacity building and knowledge exchange (Lerch and Vogel 2015, p.3). This chapter introduces the project's approach and work programme and presents our key findings from the project; it also provides examples and recommendations for audience engagement.
