Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GLAMMONS (Resilient, sustainable and participatory practices: Towards the GLAMs of the commons)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2023-09-30
The outbreak of the pandemic created unprecedented challenges for the GLAMs, which were already struggling with issues of underfunding, increased maintenance and operational costs and challenges imposed by over-tourism. The pandemic served as a wake-up call to rethink how cultural production and consumption are organized and articulated with different sets of actors and local contexts, towards safeguarding sustainability, access and the well-being of the sector, its workforce, and surrounding communities. Long before the pandemic crisis, European cultural policy encouraged museums to embrace participatory governance and digitisation (European Commission, 2010), become more financially self-reliant and diversify their income-generating activities. GLAMMONS aims to provide answers to the above challenges, advance research and policy, employing the theory of the commons to i) provide an in-depth analysis and evaluation of ongoing shifts in the field of GLAMs, ii) explore and assess practices that emerge around small scale, community-led GLAMs and the possibility of transferring relevant knowledge to more “established” and traditional ones to provide more sustainability to the sector.
GLAMMONS unpacks its Major Objectives (MO) in three Scientific Objectives (SO) and two Policy Objectives (PO):
MO A: Develop new conceptualizations through the ways that the commons theory and practice can provide a new transformative power for the GLAMS and the local communities
SO1: Develop new understandings about the current and post-pandemic challenges that GLAMs face.
SO2: Develop new approaches about the sustainable financing and resource management of the GLAMs.
SO3: Develop new conceptualizations of the cultural commons perspective for the local communities
MO B: Produce evidence-based policy recommendations for more participatory and inclusive management and more efficient and resilient financing of the GLAMs through arrangements of the commons.
PO1: Define resilient communing practices through evidence-based research
PO2: Produce policy recommendations for the GLAMs of the commons
More specifically, the project addresses the following specific needs:
-Need for new methods and models for the sustainable financing of (under-funded) GLAMs.
-Need to embrace and enable participatory management practices for GLAMs to become more inclusive and relevant to their surrounding communities.
-Need to evaluate the economic and social impact of the pandemic on the GLAMs’ sector.
-Need for GLAMs to become fully embedded in cities’ life through participatory management.
-Need to enhance GLAMs’ role in sustainable regional development
-Need for GLAMs to further promote processes of social value-creation and trauma healing
-Need for a digital commons-based strategy for sharing knowledge and communication through and about objects and collections
-Need for new digital tools for co-creating arts and heritage content with user communities
Against this background, GLAMMONS is expected to deliver the following outcomes:
-Explore new ways of participatory cultural management and sustainable financing for museums and other cultural institutions, during and after times of crises such as the coronavirus pandemic.
-Ensure better access to cultural heritage and engagement with local communities, to preserve and strengthen social cohesion through inclusive and participatory procedures.
-Strengthen the sense of belonging to a common European space while respecting cultural and ethnolinguistic diversity, as well as developing an awareness of cultural pluralism.
-Promote the role of museums and other cultural institutions in well-being, health, resilience, social inclusion and society’s dealing with trauma and post-crisis recovery.
-Foster the role of museums and other cultural institutions in sustainable economic growth and regional development.
GLAMMONS unpacks its Major Objectives (MO) in three Scientific Objectives (SO) and two Policy Objectives (PO):
MO A: Develop new conceptualizations through the ways that the commons theory and practice can provide a new transformative power for the GLAMS and the local communities
SO1: Develop new understandings about the current and post-pandemic challenges that GLAMs face.
SO2: Develop new approaches about the sustainable financing and resource management of the GLAMs.
SO3: Develop new conceptualizations of the cultural commons perspective for the local communities
MO B: Produce evidence-based policy recommendations for more participatory and inclusive management and more efficient and resilient financing of the GLAMs through arrangements of the commons.
PO1: Define resilient communing practices through evidence-based research
PO2: Produce policy recommendations for the GLAMs of the commons
More specifically, the project addresses the following specific needs:
-Need for new methods and models for the sustainable financing of (under-funded) GLAMs.
-Need to embrace and enable participatory management practices for GLAMs to become more inclusive and relevant to their surrounding communities.
-Need to evaluate the economic and social impact of the pandemic on the GLAMs’ sector.
-Need for GLAMs to become fully embedded in cities’ life through participatory management.
-Need to enhance GLAMs’ role in sustainable regional development
-Need for GLAMs to further promote processes of social value-creation and trauma healing
-Need for a digital commons-based strategy for sharing knowledge and communication through and about objects and collections
-Need for new digital tools for co-creating arts and heritage content with user communities
Against this background, GLAMMONS is expected to deliver the following outcomes:
-Explore new ways of participatory cultural management and sustainable financing for museums and other cultural institutions, during and after times of crises such as the coronavirus pandemic.
-Ensure better access to cultural heritage and engagement with local communities, to preserve and strengthen social cohesion through inclusive and participatory procedures.
-Strengthen the sense of belonging to a common European space while respecting cultural and ethnolinguistic diversity, as well as developing an awareness of cultural pluralism.
-Promote the role of museums and other cultural institutions in well-being, health, resilience, social inclusion and society’s dealing with trauma and post-crisis recovery.
-Foster the role of museums and other cultural institutions in sustainable economic growth and regional development.
A) Implementation progress:
-14 Deliverables have been submitted on time
-3 Milestones have been achieved:
M1 – Launch of GLAMMONS
M2 – GLAMMONS web presence
M3 – Ending of analytical phase
B) Scientific:
The GLAMMONS consortium worked on understanding a number of challenges that GLAMs face and attempted to shed light upon the participatory practices in GLAMs, the multiple financial channels of GLAMs and their contribution to regional economies, etc. The project gathered primary quantitative data for most of the above through the GLAMMONS survey, but also through databases, reports and studies, as well as through interviews with GLAMs professionals. Furthermore, the project attempted to theorise the ways GLAMs can be seen through the lens of commons theory leading to a research paper forwarded to Open Research Europe
C) Management:
- The Consortium Agreement was signed by all beneficiaries
- Panteion set a Project Management Office to ensure the PM quality standards and to have the overview of the project’s execution, build the deliverables, monitor activities, and report to the Funding Authority.
- The Consortium set its governance bodies and persons: The Steering Committee; The Coordinator; The Ethics Manager; The Data Manager
-14 Deliverables have been submitted on time
-3 Milestones have been achieved:
M1 – Launch of GLAMMONS
M2 – GLAMMONS web presence
M3 – Ending of analytical phase
B) Scientific:
The GLAMMONS consortium worked on understanding a number of challenges that GLAMs face and attempted to shed light upon the participatory practices in GLAMs, the multiple financial channels of GLAMs and their contribution to regional economies, etc. The project gathered primary quantitative data for most of the above through the GLAMMONS survey, but also through databases, reports and studies, as well as through interviews with GLAMs professionals. Furthermore, the project attempted to theorise the ways GLAMs can be seen through the lens of commons theory leading to a research paper forwarded to Open Research Europe
C) Management:
- The Consortium Agreement was signed by all beneficiaries
- Panteion set a Project Management Office to ensure the PM quality standards and to have the overview of the project’s execution, build the deliverables, monitor activities, and report to the Funding Authority.
- The Consortium set its governance bodies and persons: The Steering Committee; The Coordinator; The Ethics Manager; The Data Manager
The project has delivered seven working papers at the end of September 2023, and thus we cannot record their impact on the scientific community yet. During the first year of the project, four partners participated with papers in several academic conferences and workshops (e.g. Panteion in “The museum: third place and cultural commons?” workshop in Cote d’ Azur University and in the “European Group on Museum Statistics (EGMUS) Plenary Meeting in Beograd”), with the main aim to disseminate the GLAMMONS project and raise awareness on its specific scientific and policy objectives. Furthermore, the GLAMMONS survey was disseminated through a large number of GLAMs European and International organisations. These institutions agreed to disseminate the survey to their members and followers on social media as they believed in the added value of a commons approach in managing GLAMs.