Co-creation Toolkit
In a dynamic European context, cultural heritage institutions are redefining their roles and indeed themselves. The challenges that institutions face today – technological innovation, sustainability, citizenship, lifelong learning and cultural diversity – are complex and almost always impact upon more than one domain. Traditional means of innovation do not always work anymore and instead new approaches emerge that involve end-users and professionals at all levels, to enable a collective imagining, building and experiencing of new futures.
At its core, co-creation is about involving parties outside of your company or organisation (users, stakeholders) to create value jointly, e.g. during the ideation phase of a new product or service development. Through a series of steps, people are invited to contribute, evaluate, and refine ideas and concepts. The result provides fresh perspectives and useful inspiration. Sounds good, right?
Within the RICHES project, we’re doing the same thing with young adults, museum staff and designers, taking the notion of co-creation literally and trying to move beyond the use of mere words. The goal? Designing potential intervention strategies together.
In this framework, a website was developed by Waag Society especially for heritage professionals that aim to explore the possibilities and challenges of co-creation. We hope it inspires you through the case studies and toolkits to start thinking about co-creation in an informed and concrete way. Enjoy the site and please send us your examples and ideas to enhance the content of the site!
Further Reading
Download here the RICHES co-creation flyer.
The RICHES team started an interview series in which they ask several museums and team members of the project about their vision on co-creation within the heritage sector. The first interviews are now online in the RICHES blog: interview with Douwe-Sjoerd Boschman, interview with Merel van der Vaart, interview with Dick van Dijk, interview with Janine Prins.
Have a look behind the scenes of the work-in-progress at the following post.
The experience of the co-creation sessions was presented at the RICHES First International Conference. The papers linked to the co-creation activities are available to download here.
Further information about the first co-creation sessions, held in the Netherlands between the 27th of September and the 15th of November 2014, can be found at the RICHES blog.