Nocera Umbra, Italy 03/07/2023 – July 9th 2023

The training for trainers on Digital Innovation for Cultural Heritage took place in Nocera Umbra, Italy.

Nocera Umbra is a town and comune in the province of Perugia, Italy. It is a characteristic medieval town perched on a hill and famous for the quality of its water springs Angelica and Cacciatore, exported to Constantinople in the 17th century.

The training was addressed to two trainers per partner’s organization and was led by Invasioni Digitali.

The agenda was organized in a full immersion of three days of learning activities, both formal and informal, with workshops and highlights of best practices in the field of digital cultural heritage. The goal of the training was to provide the Youth Workers with knowledge on Digital Innovation for cultural heritage, to develop skills to promote and valorize the cultural heritage of their Countries.

We started we some warm up activities to get to know each other and to find a balance among the different languages spoken by the participants. The first activity is called “The Aliens have landed” and each participant has to explain others who they are and what they do, assuming they are aliens and they don’t speak our language, only using images. It’s been very interesting to see how everyone used creative thinking to try to introduce themselves.

We then proceeded to share some notable highlights from all the partner Countries and the young women shared their experiences and what they have done so far. We then proceeded with an introduction on Digital Transformation for cultural organizations, helping participants understand concept like Onlife, Reputation, Authenticity, Trust in a digital environment trying to make their organization more participatory and open to change and innovation. We have analyzed the needs, wants and cans of every organizations facing the challenge of digital transformation.

On the first day we also have had a presentation on “Women in Sport” where Erika Nitro from the project “Sisters in Sport” described how sport can be a tool for women to create teamwork. The presentation was really interesting and young women asked lots of questions at the end. 

On the following day we continued working on Digital Innovation, explaining the importance of building communities and enhancing the participation of people to every organization’s projects. We worked on the definition of Audience Engagement and prepared the participants for a workshop on the following day. We also had the presentation of Francesca De Gottardo from the company Endelea, a women led business. She introduced her company and explained the young women how she has created her company between Italy and Tanzania, telling them how she overcome difficulties and succeeded.

The following day we ran a workshop on setting up a digital campaign to promote an organization, a project, a business. The Young Women learnt how to create a digital campaign starting from scratch. At the end of the workshop they prepared a pitch to explain to the others what they had done. They were all quite detailed and very interesting.

During the workshop we had a presentation by Elisa Bonacini on digital innovation for cultural heritage. She is an archaeologist, expert in cultural communication with new technologies and social media and participatory processes. She has published numerous scientific articles and five monographs on museums and technologies. At the end of the presentations of the final works by the participants we explained the genesis and methodology of “Invasioni Digitali” (Digital Invasions) to prepare participants to realize a digital invasion the next day in Assisi.

We had the pleasure to also host a school from Ukraine, they participated to our activities and introduced us to a beautiful tradition of crochet. 

The first phase of the training ended with a non-formal evaluation by the participants, the results has been overwhelming as everybody told they have found the training really useful and they will apply what they have learnt once back home.

The following day we moved to Assisi to realize the Digital Invasion planned. We gave participants a small guide with some riddles to discover the city and let them “invade” it and storytell the experience on social media. We followed them around the city and online to check the results of the invasion and we took a beautiful pic at the end all together.

From July 7th to 9th, the participants to the training joined the Social Hackathon Umbria teams to experience it as a learning methodology and apply the tools acquired during the previous days.

Digital Skills & Cultural Heritage – Slides