Highland Heritage Global partnership expands for a second year!
Three Highland museums are set to digitise their collections to feature on the world stage after being chosen to participate in a unique collaboration between XpoNorth Digital, Highlands and Islands Enterprise’s specialist digital support programme for the creative and heritage sectors, and Smartify, the world’s most downloaded museum app.
Following on from a successful first year, Orkney Museum, The Argyll Collection and Strathnaver Museum will have the ability to feature their collections online, enabling new ways of telling their heritage story and opening innovative connections with national and international audiences, with some of the collections already starting to feature on Smartify.
These three museums will join an original group of Highlands and Islands based museums: Gairloch Museum, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, Brora Museum, Stromness Museum, Highlanders’ Museum and Cromarty Museum.
The Smartify platform will provide museums with digitised versions of their exhibitions, along with commissioned content to offer bold and immersive digital narration of their stories and collections. This multimedia tour will be accessible online or in person at the museum, enable new e-commerce opportunities and allow smartphone users worldwide to engage with archives, artifacts, and memories from across the Highlands and Islands.
Fiona Mackenzie of Strathnaver Museum said: “It has been inspiring working with the Smartify and XpoNorth Digital team to develop digital content for inclusion on the Smartify app, as the creative process has enabled us to explore new ways of sharing our collection and stories with everyone. The biggest challenge is deciding which of our ideas to take forward first!”
Rosalyn McKenna, Project Manager, Culture, Heritage and Arts Assembly, Argyll and Isles (CHARTS)said: “CHARTS is thrilled to be collaborating with Smartify, the most downloaded Museum app in the world. This presents an extraordinary opportunity to connect a global audience to the most extraordinary Argyll Collection, to both champion the collection and explore the many stories it can tell.”
Chris Andrews, Islands Digital Collections and Heritage Officer, Orkney Museum said: “Orkney is often viewed as a distant archipelago but in recent years tourism has grown significantly and it is now viewed as a popular holiday destination. One of the main draws is its extraordinary history which people come to immerse themselves in. Despite this, the costs and complexity of travel means that a significant number of people from across the UK and worldwide will never be able to visit.
So, we’re very excited to be using Smartify as it’ll enable us to open up some of Orkney’s, history and culture to millions of new users across the world, providing rich and engaging insights into our unique stories. For Orkney folk, and people who are able to visit, Smartify will help put the landscape, historic sites and museums in context, adding depth to the experience of being here.
Smartify will help us work towards making Orkney Museum and some of the stories told inside accessible to as many people as possible.”
Nicola Henderson, XpoNorth Digital Heritage Specialist said: “I’m so excited to bring these new world-class collections onto Smartify to join the existing year one cohort as we work to help share Highland heritage and the fantastic stories therein with the world. We know that there is a hunger for access to our heritage by a global audience and I’m looking forward to working with Smartify and all our museums to explore the different ways we can connect with them.”
Iain Hamilton, Head of Creative Industries at HIE said: “We’re delighted to be deepening our relationship with Smartify to bring a new set of museums into our year two partnership. This innovative collaboration enables the sector to craft exciting and distinctive new experiences and tell their unique stories to a broader national and international audience. It also increases digital skills, unlocks important new commercial opportunities and allows museums to explore fresh engagement models which can evolve into the future.”
Smartify is available on iOS and Android from the App Store and Google Play respectively. It’s also available on the web via app.smartify.org.
