The Creative Museum Project is a three-year learning partnership launched under the Erasmus+ Programme that brings together museums, makers, and creative industries. The project aims to encourage visitor engagement with collections in new ways by testing how these organizations engage with each other and share best practices. This includes hosting maker-in-residencies and publishing guidelines for creative practices. The goal is to help museums develop new programs, partnerships, and opportunities for audiences to experiment. Creativity in this context refers to the ability to transcend traditional ideas and rules to create originality through making and doing.

1. Museum Makery
EVA / Minerva 2015
Museums as dynamic learning environments and their digital tools
The Creative Museum Project
Pier Giacomo Sola
The Creative Museum project has been funded under the Erasmus +
programme – Strategic partnership - n° 2014-1-FR01-KA202-008678

2. If I am boring you, the message that I would like to address
will not reach its objective. So the main question is:
A Communication Challenge
How can my talk stimulate you to be creative,
when I am using a traditional PowerPoint presentation?
I need someone well served in the art of torture –
do you know PowerPoint ?
To (hopefully) reach this goal,
I have asked for the help of some very creative people.

3. What is Creativity?
Creativity is a trendy word, probably abused in the political &
European jargon (i.e. by people who are not creative at all).
This gentleman is Giulio Tremonti.
He served several times as Italian
Ministry of Finance from 1994 to 2011.
In order to tackle the national crisis,
he launched the creative finance method.
He is also known for the sentence
“nobody eats with culture”, in order to explain his budget cut
to cultural policy.

4. Rebranding a country
History Out, Creativity and Innovation In
In 2013, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Mediterranean
area launched this slogan to change the image of its country.
Yes, it is Israel. There is
indeed a common feeling
about creativity as a cool
term, inspiring a sense of
novelty, attractiveness,
and improvement.

5. That’s a difficult question! It is easier to say what creativity is not:
- it is not divergent thinking,
even if divergent thinking is a component of creativity
- it is not serendipity (i.e. creativity by chance)
Creativity is just connecting
things. When you ask creative
people how they did something,
they feel a little guilty because
they didn't really do it, they just
saw something. It seemed
obvious to them after a while.
What is Creativity?

6. Creativity is a native characteristic of each person.
Several studies of cognitive and educational sciences report
that all the children are creative, but many of them lose this
quality going to school, where they are taught that there is
just one good answer to most questions.
Can you learn how to be Creative?
"I'll be happy to be your creativity thinker.
What are the guidelines?”
Plato said that
Learning is actually
Remembering.

7. Are Italians a naturally Creative people?
This is one of the (few) positive stereotypes about Italy.
However it is not clear if it comes from the high reputation of
our artists or from the surprise of foreigners who cannot
understand how Italians can survive in our national confusion.
We guess that Leonardo da Vinci was used to say:
When I ask Lisa
if she thinks
that I am
creative, she
just smiles…

8. … is a learning partnership launched under the Erasmus+
Programme. Started in September 2014 and lasting for three
years, it wishes to bring together museums, makers and
creative industries. best practice.
These organisation have different areas of expertise. All
together they can develop co-created programmes and
encourage visitors to engage with collections in new ways.
The project is testing the ways they engage
with each other and articulate
methodologies of shared best practice.
The project is testing the ways they engage
with each other and articulate
methodologies of shared best practice.
The Creative Museum Project…

9. Who are the makers?
Where do they live ?
According to the definition of Wikipedia:
The maker culture represents a technology-based
extension of the Do It Yourself concept, concerned with
physical objects and the creation of new devices.
Typical interests include engineering-oriented pursuits
such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing,
and the use of computer numerical control tools, as well as
more traditional activities, such as metal-working,
wood-working, traditional arts and crafts.

10. Who participates in the CM?
The following organisations are full members of the network:
- Cap Sciences (France)
- Association for Development of 'do-it-yourself' Culture
- Makerspace (Croatia)
- Association of Finnish Museums (Finland)
- Association Museomix (France)
- Chester Beatty Library (Ireland)
- Istituto Beni Culturali della Regione Emilia Romagna
(Italy)
- Steps (Italy)
- Museene i Sør-Trøndelag AS (Norway)
- Heritec (United Kingdom)

11. What Outputs?
- Study and analysis of best creative practices in Europe
- 6 Maker-in-Residencies, and documentation of Maker-in-
Residencies for analysis and contribution to guidelines
- Guidelines for the implementation of creative practices
- 7 conferences to showcase methodologies to museums,
science, maker, creative industries, science and education
- Acquisition of basic and transversal skills (digital, innovative
creativity, informal approaches to learning)
- Learning to develop new programmes for museum
audiences
- Develop new opportunities for experimentation in museums
- Create new partnerships with local maker communities and
entrepreneurs and the creative industry sector

12. What CM intends with Creativity?
Let one well known creative person explain what creativity is
in the project’s philosophy:
Creativity
is the ability
to transcend traditional
ideas, rules, patterns,
and relationships
to create new ideas,
originality
or imagination

13. The Creative Museum Definition
In the creative museum, the visitor engages with the
collection, the building, and the people to make something.
The Creative Museum project is about
opportunity: doing and making;
experimenting and innovating; making
connections; opening up museums; learning;
concrete results and interpreting collections.
By 'museum' we mean, museum, gallery,
living museum, historic site / building,
ship, archive.

14. Listen to the People Involved
https://www.youtube.com/v/nARPbj1eOOM&fs
=1&enablejsapi=1&color1=0x666666&amp
;color2=0xefefef
Here a short video, filmed in April, during the Creative
Museum event organised at the Science Gallery in Dublin.

15. It consists of the Compared
Analysis of Best Practice in
Creative Museums in Europe.
It is available in PDF and eBook
formats
(but not published yet
in the project web site)
In the conference held in Bologna on 8-9 October, the first
project output has been officially presented.
Collection of Best Practices

16. 29 case studies from 9 different countries, selected according to the
following typologies:
- Workshop or short project where visitors come and make
something facilitated by a member of museum staff or facilitator
- Space within a museum dedicated to creativity where visitor can
participate in creative processes
- Visitors engage with the museum over a
period of time, work collaboratively with
museum staff
- Visitors to the museum remix the museum
by taking over spaces in the museum
/ reinterpret collections
- “Permission-free” – visitors “do their own
thing” and respond to the collection
Collection of Best Practices

17. They have been also classified according to the following
categories:
Maker-in-residence Maker Faire
Maker Spaces FabLabs;
HackerSpaces MediaLabs
Digital engagement
Craft and Design
Pop-up museums / exhibition;
Interpretative techniques
Collection of Best Practices

18. Makers in Jerusalem

20. Conclusions
The true sign of intelligence
is not knowledge
but imagination.
The most beautiful thing
we can experience is the
mysterious: it is the source
of all true art and all science.
To regard old problems from
a new angle requires creative
imagination and marks.

21. Thanks
for your attention
http://www.creative-museum.eu