Sharing a legacy means caring for one another: discover Ghent Collections, a multi-partner project.

January 1, 2021

min read

Ghent Collections is a project involving no fewer than twelve partners, including museums, heritage institutions, tech companies, researchers, the City of Ghent, and others. When we took on the role of partner to create an explainer video and manage the project’s social media, we knew we were in for a challenge.

The project

Ghent Collections is a collaboration between citizens, museums, and heritage institutions that enables the creative use of each other’s objects, documents, and stories. On the one hand, it shares valuable knowledge about Ghent’s heritage beyond the walls of museums; on the other, it gives citizens a platform to share their experiences of heritage and the stories they have to tell. In this way, Ghent Collections aims to strengthen social cohesion.

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These two worlds are brought together in a spectacular, high-tech way. Starting in spring 2022, the CoggGhent Box will be installed in three neighborhoods in Ghent, providing a space to display thousands of objects and photos from museums and institutions while also bringing people’s stories together. Citizens are encouraged to add their own stories and objects to the Box. After touring Ghent, the CoggGhent Box will find its home at DING, the new wing of the Design Museum Ghent.

Collaboration

We began a collaboration with Pieter-Jan Pauwels (District 09) and Olivier Van d'Huynslager (Design Museum Ghent), the two founders of Ghent Collections, and Ilse Devroe, marketing campaign lead at the City of Ghent and head of communications at CoggGhent. Creating the explainer video was a challenge: on the one hand, we had to explain the entire project, while on the other, introduce all partners and their roles—all while keeping the video under two minutes. After several rounds of feedback and edits, the video was ready.

The final result can be viewed here:

When developing a social media strategy, several objectives had to be taken into account. First, we needed to share stories about our heritage. We do this in close collaboration with the participating museums and institutions. During our monthly planning meeting, we identify overlapping themes to create cohesive narratives and discuss the content calendar for the coming month.

Our social media manager prepares this by adding several topics or themes to the calendar and deciding which format and platform will be used for each topic. The partners then review their collections to see what content they can provide. During the planning meeting, all the pieces are put together. In addition to heritage stories, we must ensure that we communicate about the project’s progress.

We need to explain what is happening, what events are taking place, how we promote the project, and how we ensure that people know what we are doing. Brand awareness is therefore a key component of our social media strategy. Now that the project has also launched offline, we will focus in the coming weeks on a comprehensive branding campaign. This campaign will be shared organically, with additional promotion through social media advertising. Finally, it is crucial to engage the citizens of Ghent.

The project will only succeed if they get involved as well. This is a challenge, because before April, Ghent Collections was completely unknown and there were no social media channels in place. Daily community management is therefore essential.

It is important to establish a clear pathway for Ghent Collections, through which we can reach the citizens of Ghent and guide them through the project. We then aim to engage them with our heritage stories on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and ultimately encourage them to become active members of our community who contribute their own stories to the Collections.

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