RECHARGE

RECHARGE is about participation and the value of cultural heritage and its institutions. RECHARGE is about participation and the value of cultural heritage and its institutions. Emerging from the pandemic, the role played by many CHIs in keeping citizens engaged and mentally healthy through a variety of creative initiatives is widely acknowledged; however, this was also a time of financial loss. Turning that creativity into money that keeps the institution afloat is the challenge RECHARGE is set to answer. Participation is core to the value proposition of cultural heritage institutions and can be the means through which communities - whether corporates, citizens or other CHIs - become CHIs’ stakeholders. RECHARGE will set up an iterative and intrinsically participatory environment -the Living Labs- as means to co-create and prototype participatory business models. The consortium will actively document and analyse this process, which will result in economic measures of effectiveness, indicators of sustainability and participation, museologic reprofiling of social and cultural spaces, cultural and social valuation, and managerial development of participatory business models. Combining both rigorous academic research and hands-on analysis through the Living Lab, RECHARGE will deliver a Playbook containing the ingredients and recipes that can be adapted to local environments to create participatory business models for their communities. The online Knowledge Base, populated with research results, will support the uptake in the sector and among interested communities, while the Academy will engage the CHI networks and build capacity to make a real difference in the landscape of CHIs. RECHARGE boasts a multidisciplinary team bringing together different university departments, independent research organizations and CHI representatives from six EU countries. Together, we will make the CH sector more resilient and better equipped to deal with future challenges and transitions