Immersive Storytelling Driven Cooperation for Cultural Heritage Dissemination in Western Balkans

Immersive Storytelling Driven Cooperation for Cultural Heritage Dissemination in Western Balkans

Project Leader: Association centre for Socialinnovations Blink 42-21, North Macedonia

Arheološki institut, Serbia

Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis, Greece

Balkan Heritage Foundation (Fondatsiya “Balkansko nasledstvo”), Bulgaria

Muzej in galerije mesta Ljubljane, Slovenia

Navipro d.o.o., Slovenia

Nacionalna ustanova za upravuvanje so arheološkiot lokalitet Stobi, North Macedonia

Maximum grant awarded: 338.055 €

Cultural heritage represents an incredible meeting point for collaboration of the cultural and creative sectors. Its value lays in the storytelling potential it offers. Visitors often lack engagement, learning opportunity, as well as shearing the relevant information in a creative and concise manner. General information sharing is problematic on cultural heritage sites in the Western Balkans, since they lack good visual presentation and audience engagement. The needs, as well as the attention span of the audiences are drastically changing so the aforementioned institutions must adapt to the new environment and the contemporary digital shift. The specific needs of these sites, due to their more conservative, historically preconditioned concept of presentation, provide a bigger challenge for innovation and joint collaboration with creative industries. The highly competitive market for attracting audience demands from them to develop new strategies and foster progressive collaboration that allows them to stand out and succeed. This requires creation of an innovative dissemination cooperation, based on the use of advanced technologies and the enhancement of user experience. These challenges are not unique to cultural heritage institutions of a particular country but rather distinctive to the whole Western Balkans. Therefore, a new Storytelling Driven Cooperation designed with the intention to build up capacities of the aforementioned institutions with a final goal to develop more immersive storytelling experiences for the visitors of cultural heritage sites is essential. This project will further extend the cooperation between the project partners and provide a base for development of the capacities of cultural institutions to explore the capabilities of immersive storytelling in creating narratives and experiences that will attract new audiences and disseminate the values of cultural heritage further.