Open Atelier: a Creative Europe project

“Open Atelier: Building new innovative formats for active audience participation and interaction with cultural heritage within European House Museums”

is an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral network of four European House Museums, one creative performance organisation and two universities, which aims at enhancing the capacity of museum professionals in relation to audience engagement and interaction, by creating new ways to actively involve audiences in the exploration, interpretation, mediation and presentation of cultural heritage and of its uses in the contemporary world.

Inspired by the artist colonies of the past, the project draws on the concept of the Atelier and turns it into an open space that operates as an interactive, co-creative, dynamic and participatory environment, where cultural heritage becomes the point of departure for new interplays among the public, the museum, its contents and its professionals.

Through a workshop-based approach built on interdisciplinary collaboration and co-creative processes, Open Atelier intends to develop, implement, test and evaluate a set of Experiences, that will be facilitated and realized in the four museums involved and that will allow for the outline of nine new Formats, which will consist of innovative, operative blueprints for new audience centered participatory museum experiences.