Even though cultural heritage is a crucial economic and social resource for many European countries, most cultural heritage institutions do not have teams with entrepreneurial and audience development skills to fully exploit its potential.
The objective of AHEAD is to strengthen the heritage sector to make it more capable of creating opportunities for social, cultural, and economic growth by innovating cultural participation practices.
The vision inspiring the project is that of a community of workers and professionals with a mindset and tools based on human-centered design and motivated to manage and enhance heritage starting from people.
Born out of the research and practices shared with the ADESTE+ project, AHEAD develops an innovation model tailor-made for the heritage sub-sector, to respond to its specific needs and challenges, involving the participation of artists, creative people, organizations, and enterprises from the social and productive fabric.
Parallel to the development of the capacity building program, AHEAD opens with a networking and exchange phase to activate actors and institutions linked to heritage and interested in experimenting with design thinking.
After defining methodologies and training contents, the experimentation phase involves teams from three archaeological institutions in Italy, Spain, and Greece. In its final phase, AHEAD will use the results of the experimentation to finalise and scale up the capacity-building model, launching it in the wider group of professionals and institutions progressively joining the project.
For more information on the project, contact Project Manager Giulia Fiaccarini, g.fiaccarini@meltingpro.org
