Improving digital literacy and giving a global stage to Scotland's smaller museums

The challenge

XPONorth is the Highlands and Islands Enterprise Council mechanism for specialist digital support in the creative industries across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

They were keen to see how digital initiatives, usually only accessible for major museums, could benefit smaller museums to enhance their positive roles in the communities they are located in. They wanted to support small museums across the Highlands and Islands to use Smartify.

XPONoth recognised that small museums have the potential to create meaningful contributions to the community through digital engagement: they are creating a need for skill development; creating new forms of engagement that can encourage greater community cohesion; and providing exciting new levels of visibility for the region on a global stage.

Our solution

We worked with XPONorth to provide five museums access to the Smartify platform, offering them:

• Instant object recognition across 2D and 3D objects
• Best-in-class digital storytelling
• Detailed visitor usage analytics
• Global marketing and engagement campaigns

Specifically, each museum would be allocated 200 objects that would be mapped from their own collection, and up to 15 minutes digital storytelling capacity to create an authentic, innovative production that brings to life their collections in exciting ways.

In addition, XPONorth funded the creation of a part-time digital coordinator, mentored by Smartify, who would not only develop their skills in digital storytelling for cultural heritage, but would also transfer them to the volunteers and employees in the museums themselves.

The results

Together with XPONorth, we wanted to ensure the digital initiatives were sustainable in the long term.

Each museum worked with Smartify to develop a plan that would show how the initiative would be self-sufficient – either as a source of revenue in itself, or as a value-add for wider sustainability initiatives.

This, along with a vision for the kinds of experiences the museums wanted to create, were presented by museums applying to participate in the programme.

The results have exceeded all expectations.

Each of the museums have been able to consider exciting and compelling ways to present the objects in their collections, some of which are of genuine, global importance. Putting them on the Smartify platform transforms the conversation from considering community presentation to what it means to provide a truly global audience of millions of people.

The stories that were generated as part of the process are also proving to be a fascinating blend of the locally curious and grand narratives that show how these often small locations have played major roles in significant historical events: from being rare windows into the culture of long-vanished societies, such as The Picts, to the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the repercussions of the Second World War and Industrialisation.

Equally important has been the widespread engagement with community members in new digital tools; the highly successful skill development facilitated by the Digital Coordinator; and the confidence given to thinking about commercial approaches to making audio guides economically sustainable.