The RE-usable Fashion Museum and Crowd Engagement. How to apply Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing starting from MoMu’s Study Collection as Use Case.

The workshop teaches cultural heritage professionals how to engage users to let them make contributions to cultural heritage collections through crowdfunding and co-creation. Most museum collections are locked away from their users, even though there is a strong case to be made for giving direct access. MoMu and the University of Antwerp (Faculty of Design Sciences, Conservation Studies) are setting up an accessible collection compiled for the sole purpose of study, research, training and inspiration. We strongly believe this will initiate a new dialogue with our users, and we want our study collection to be usable and reusable in every aspect.

But we also firmly believe in crowdfunding and co-creation, for and with our users. Therefore, we are working together with Goteo Foundation to build a hybrid crowdfunding and crowdsourcing framework in order to set up a reusable fashion museum.

Our challenges for the session are:

- How can crowd engagement help open standards for collaboration?
- How can this collaboration help design a comprehensive, educative lab context?
- How can we integrate the entire process (conception, design, prototyping, financing) for new project development?
- Will the crowd begin to bring more social innovation to the long-term planning required to determine the future of our – cultural heritage?

Ultimately, the question becomes: will future heritage be financed and co-curated by the crowd?

For more information and to find the program of the workshop, please visit MoMu – Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp.

Photo: Stany Dederen for MoMu – Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp, CC-BY-SA.