Middle-digital earth: Museums between digital and emergency. Data, stories and impact
International online conference
University of Turin

Museum institutions are seismographs particularly sensitive to changes in communities and relationships that define their identity through their relationship with cultural heritage. The global emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly severed the contact between the public and the collections, highlighting the fragility of the heritage, of the management, prevention and protection systems, if the link with its users is broken. That COVID-19 was and is a new emergency that has put in danger not the cultural heritage in its material component, but has imposed a new everyday life, new comparisons and relationships with the public and professionals. An emergency that has touched almost all the museums in the world that with different times and methods have been forced to close to visitors, suspending all activities in attendance. The reaction of museums all over the world to the new contingencies has been monitored through surveys promoted by various associations, foundations, ministries and research centres in order to get a picture of the situation both at institutional and professional level and from the public. In this sense, it seemed crucial not only that museums have digital content, but that this content produced must be of quality and available for use on platforms, but above all it is important that there is an overall digital strategy in line with the museum mission and carried out by competent professionals. We will talk about all this with Sree Sreenivasan, Marshall Loeb Visiting Professor of Digital Innovation Stony Brook University School of Journalism, New York and formerly responsible for communication of the MET, Elizabeth Rosenberg - of NEMO - The Network of European Museum Organizations, Eleonora Lorenzini, Politecnico Milano, Nancy Proctor, organizer of the world conference Museum & Web and, again, with Catherine Devine, Microsoft Worldwide Education: Business Strategy Leader - Libraries & Museums, Microsoft.

We invite contributions from museum operators, private companies, digital communication professionals, on the following possible topics:
- What digital initiatives did your museum or your company take during the Covid emergency?
- How did you use social media? What were the keys to narrating the activities of the closed museums?
- How will these new strategies be useful for the future of museums?

We accept short three-minute videos or slide shows that document activities and strategies. The materials will be published on the conference website.

Conference presentations can be in any language (but would need to be professionally subtitled in English)

Please send the posters to mariabeatrice.faillaunito.it and annamaria.marrasunito.it by June 20, 2020