The impact of digital formats on city museums: displaying, creating heritage and mobilizing cities and citizens

Recent changes in museums encompass the use of digital technology to display collections, create narratives and engage visitors. They also include ways of shaping new knowledge through innovative practices. Beyond preserving and exhibiting their collections, museums have become complex engines of culture that develop research, create new kinds of collections and promote social engagement and participation. The creation and implementation of digital formats involves deep transformation. Methods for sharing heritage are joined by societal challenges, such as democratisation and sustainability. Novel formats can be especially disruptive in city museums, as narratives shape meanings across our living cities. While cities are embedded in the globalisation process, the methods with which city museums are using and focusing their collections concern the contemporary construction of the past and the diversity of urban identities. Questioning formats reveal how city museums are generating cultural strategies by managing their collections and shaping a response to societal and cultural developments. The increase in audience and public engagement are key objectives to which digital approaches contribute for all kind of cultural institutions. However, curatorship, approaches, tools, and socio-cultural-economic impact account for specific challenges in the case of city museums. Strong relationships link these museums to their territory. Urban space and heritage as well as local developments and public wellbeing are crucial. Current museum formats range from integrating permanent collections and temporary exhibitions with virtual environments to online visitor engagement, from archives and digitally-created collections, to public events and webinars; from formats for training/educating/ fun to formats for ‘recovering’. The digital approach is a crosscutting perspective, embedded in the impact of museums on our digital society