What happens when #HeritageMeetsMakers: Stories from Mallorca

In partnership with Platoniq and the Artik Center FabLab Palma, Europeana invited a small group of makers to a co-creation workshop on 22 and 23 June at the Makerspace of the Artik Center in Palma de Mallorca. The participants explored Europeana Collections and prototyped new ideas for the creative reuse of digital cultural heritage using Platoniq’s innovative “Co-creation made agile” methodology and the 3D printing facilities of the Artik Center.

The makers varied in specialisation (designers, artists, teachers) but they all shared a passion for experimentation and strong interest in applying new ways of working, such as co-design and novel technologies (3D printing and laser cutting, for instance) into their practice. Most of them weren’t familiar with Europeana and got truly inspired by the richness of our collections and their great potential as a resource for diverse makers projects.

The first day started with introductions into partners’ resources, followed by intensive brainstorming, development of various scenarios and their evaluation according to key criteria, such as novelty and feasibility. After a peer review and voting, the best four ideas were selected for rapid prototyping on the next day.

The workshop ended with a showcase of culinary, fashion and two educational projects which all shared a strong 3D component (virtual reality or 3D print). Below the projects profiles:

PROJECT #1 Cooking History

Project leader: Tina Codina, Aida Alvarez

Project objective: Create new recipes inspired by Europeana images using the existing culinary community of el-recetario.net. By selecting and publishing Europeana food & drink related images, the community on http://el-recetario.net is encouraged to (re-)discover historical recipes and experiment with new ingredients and combinations of flavors. In addition, the community members are encouraged to identify antique pots/pans/molds in the Europeana images that cannot be found anymore and recreate them using 3D printing. The latter could be also an interesting activity for families and schools.

PROJECT #2 Heritage Avatars

Project leader: Luisa Fernanda Zárate

Project objective: Create a handcrafted mascot to tell the story behind a museum piece. The project will combine handmade crafts with cultural content and new technology. An example is a doll that has its hair complements inspired by Europeana images and 3D printed, and has an audio chip that tells the story behind those complements. Museums can offer workshops to create such mascots, or/and have the mascot as a “presenter” of a particular museum piece.

PROJECT #3 Fabuloscopio

Project leaders: David Canat / Pau Andreu Sitjar

Project objective: Create “A Museum Magic Box” using 3D cultural heritage images and simple Virtual Reality headsets (for instance, Google Cardboard). The box can be bought at the museum to motivate children to explore and have fun during their museum visit. Museums can also offer workshops for schools to build such magic boxes inside a special room called “Museum FabLab” which will have all the tools and materials necessary to create the virtual reality cameras.

PROJECT #4 Plug Art

Project leader: María Jesús Joya Cuerva

Project objective: Create designs out of Europeana images that can be used as tattoos and/or piercings. The first step is to produce design templates using Europeana content and make these available online to designer communities. Users can then (3D) print them, or modify the templates and create a more diverse set of designs.

Go crowdfunding

As a next step, the project leaders attended a crowdsourcing workshop offered by Goteo on 29 June in Palma de Mallorca where they learned how to design a successful crowdsourcing campaign and secure vital funding for bringing their prototypes to market. Two of the projects - Cooking History and Heritage Avatars - are getting ready to launch their crowdfunding campaign very soon. Follow their campaigns and further developments on @goteo, @europeanalabs and under #MadeWithEuropeana!