The 2018 Swedish Digital Identities Programme for the cultural sector was launched on Friday, 26 January. This one-year development programme is in its fourth year. We continue our focus on storytelling for behaviour change.
This year we are based on Göteborg. We are pleased to announce this is our biggest intake so far – five teams will take important steps towards helping their organisations become resilient and digital-first. The participating institutions are Göteborgs stadsmuseum, Röhsska museet, Göteborgs konstmuseum, Sjöfartsmuseet Akvariet, Hallands konstmuseum, Hallands Kulturhistoriska Museum and Kulturmiljö Halland.
The goal of the Digital Identities programme is to enable legacy cultural institutions build digital capacity as well as a digital ecosystem that enables is it to cut through the white noise of social media to engage communities in powerful dialogue. We’re enabling these organisations to take bold, new steps to re-imagine themselves as centres for social innovation.
In 2017, Västarvet, Sweden’s largest cultural administration body, working with 49 local authorities, used the Digital Identities programme to embark on a groundbreaking storytelling project to find sustainability champions in towns, villages and cities across western Sweden. They’ve spent a year crafting fantastic stories with this community. The results of the first stage of this project are to be published on a new digital platform. The project will continue to evolve in the coming years with episodic content and new, multi-platform formats.
The Swedish edition of the Digital Identities programme is run in partnership with IdeK – a hub of excellence in digital media, with a focus on cultural heritage. This year, we have also added a new member to our team – Merel van der Vaart. She runs the Dutch agency Muse – Mensen & musea. Over the past 10 years she has worked with cultural organisations across Europe to build bridges between collections and communities. She uses technologies to explore concepts such as radical trust and knowledge sharing.
If you would like to find out more about the Digital Identities programme, please drop us a line at – contact (at) digitalidentities (dot) info.