Project title: Digital borderland. Promotion of tangible and intangible cultural and natural heritage on the Polish-Slovak border in the era of digital transformation
Programme: Interreg Poland – Slovakia 2021 – 2027 (Microproject Fund)
Priority 3. Creative and attractive tourist borderland
Lead Partner: EGTC TRITIA
Schedule: 10/2024 – 09/2025
Budget: 92 090.16 €
Project description: In the previous program perspective, EGTC TRITIA implemented the project “Joint 3D digitalization of historical objects of the SK-PL cross-border area” under the Interreg V-A Poland-Slovakia 2014-2020 program. The result of the aforementioned project was a number of modern digital products, i.e. 3D scans, 2D cross-sections, films, or virtual tours of objects, which contributed to the increase of attractiveness of cultural heritage sites in the Polish-Slovak border area. Since the project was a great success, and the online world is becoming more and more inseparable from our lives, we would like to continue our activities related to the implementation of digital tools in the sphere of culture and tourism of the borderland, focusing this time more on the employees of this sector. In a post-pandemic world and increased digital transformation, we would like to examine within the framework of the project how the functioning of cultural institutions in the borderland has changed, and what the contemporary recipient of culture functioning in the Polish-Slovak borderland looks like. Closure of the cultural and tourism institutions as a result of the pandemic has caused most of the cultural activities in recent years to move to the Internet, and cultural workers and recipients of those activities have since had to acquire, in a short period of time, competencies related to online tools, i.e. artificial intelligence, handling social media, which is changing very rapidly, virtual reality, digital platforms and many others. Digitalization has led to the emergence of completely new creative methods, media, channels for the dissemination of culture and models for its reception. Cultural institutions on both the Polish and Slovak sides are burdened at this point not only with the responsibility of presenting culture in an attractive digital form and apprise the recipient with new technologies and digital tools so that they can use them consciously, critically and wisely, but also with the task of making cultural goods available to the digitally excluded. We see a massive challenge ahead of us in terms of increasing the competences of cultural sector employees in the use of digital tools and also in methods of making culture accessible that attract digitally excluded users. The aim of both approaches is to promote cultural heritage objects and to increase the attractiveness for tourism of the common territory of the Polish-Slovak border area.
In this context, the project plans many activities increasing the competences of cultural sector employees, i.e. a series of online trainings in the field of digital technologies in cultural institutions, surveys and activation of the public in the online space, projecting services using the design thinking method, etc. We plan to develop a series of podcasts promoting cultural heritage objects on the Polish and Slovak sides of the border, a report for cultural institutions – “Digital transformation of the cultural sector in the Polish-Slovak border area. Changes in the model of dissemination and support of culture” and an explainer video with the conclusions.
The project is co-financed by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund under the Interreg Poland – Slovakia 2021 – 2027 Programme.
Consistency with strategy and action plan
Strategic objective:
CR5: Increasing visitor awareness of “attractions on the other side of the border”
CR7: Creating a joint database to enable effective targeting of marketing activities
Action plan: