Open Atelier Digital Competition: Leveraging the Potential of Digital Transformation to Enhance Young Audiences’ Engagement in the Interpretation and Dissemination of European Cultural Heritage

In the last decades, digital technologies and practices have produced major changes in the way heritage is conserved and accessed, offering new methods to collect, manage, and disseminate historical artifacts and knowledge. The transformative potential of the rising digital culture refers to the enhancement of traditional processes as well as to the development of unprecedented opportunities and formats, the outcomes of which are generating a particularly significant impact on audience engagement–i.e., on the creation of cognitive, emotional, or creative experiences that enable people to have an active part in the interpretation, presentation, and use of heritage. The study aims to observe one of these new formats–namely “digital creative competitions.” Specifically, it outlines this emerging practice and reflects on its potentialities and criticalities in light of the experience carried out within Open Atelier, a project funded by the European Commission Within the Creative Europe program (CREA-CULT-2021-COOP-2). The Open Atelier Digital Competition was launched in Spring 2024 to foster young creative talents to develop innovative reinterpretations of the collections of four European house museums based on their possible connection with the achievement of one or multiple tasks blueprinted by the Sustainable Development Goals at the core of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. The evaluation of the outcomes of this experience provides evidence about the strategic role of digital audience engagement in generating innovation in the heritage sector by activating online co-creative forums through which young generations can become the producers and narrators of fresh and resonant perspectives.