End of DOORS research programme
Digital Incubator for Museums
In November, IMPAKT started with the second phase of DOORS – Digital Incubator for Museums. Our goal was to research ways to increase audience engagement at hybrid events and to develop a new Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). Within this programme, three pilots have been organised in the last few months: The IMPAKT Hybrid Wine and Art Tasting Event, Project Stargaze and The Great Idle.
Ever since the COVID pandemic, IMPAKT has been at the forefront of experimenting with online and hybrid event formats that connect both onsite and online audiences. In 2022, we joined the collaborative research project Going Hybrid, and we organised the hybrid International Art & Wine Tasting Event and the IMPAKT Festival 2022: The Curse of Smooth Operations. Our biggest takeaway from our experience with new hybrid formats is that they offer interesting new ways of communicating with our audience. Within the DOORS research programme, we have further explored this in the last year and a half.
DOORS is an initiative by Ars Electronica, MUSEUM BOOSTER and Ecsite, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020. The programme supports smaller and medium-sized museums and cultural institutions in the process of digitalisation and the challenges that come along with it. Consisting of two stages, the Incubation programme helps organisations in formulating and implementing digital pilots to improve their digital strategies. Phase 1 took place from April to June 2022. Phase 2 has enabled 20 organisations to test their plans under the guidance of industry experts. You can read more about our research during phase 2 here.
In September, we will publish a report to share our DOORS process and its results, detailing our choices, struggles, findings and possible further research. For now, we can say that this project has allowed us to explore a variety of new ways of engaging with our audiences before, during and after events. Although the DOORS project ends in September, it has helped us lay the foundation for further research into our audience and our communication strategies. Furthermore, the many workshops, presentations and mentor sessions have been hugely informative and inspiring.
We are very grateful to the DOORS team for giving us this opportunity to develop a new CRM and experiment with new ways to reach our visitors, all under the guidance of fellow industry professionals. In this process, IMPAKT was helped by, among others, audience research and development bureau Ask your Audience, software developer Loggix, our DOORS mentors Dr. Lauren Vargas and Vanessa Mignan, and the other DOORS participants.
DOORS has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101036071.