Museum Communications and Marketing. A seminar in Petrozavodsk.

A three-day seminar started yesterday in the National Museum of Karelia, Petrozavodsk. Over 20 participants from Karelian museums gathered together to talk about museum communications and marketing. Modern approaches to interaction with visitors, competencies of museum workers, participatory culture and differences between Finnish-speaking visitors of the Russian museums and Russian-speaking visitors of the Finnish museums were on the agenda of Day 1 moderated by Darya Agapova, an executive director of the Museum Development Center and a curator of the Children Days in St. Petersburg festival from Helsinki and St.Petersburg.

The second day is devoted to new museum marketing strategies. The key question of the day is how to attract more visitors to museums. Natalia Kopelyanskaya, a cultural and museum project designer from the Moscow center for museum development will talk about motivation of museum visitors, methods and tools to attract them, educational packages of small museums and services.

The seminar will be completed with a hands-on training on the Open Karelia museum information system which was developed in the framework of the Euregio Karelia: Museum Hypertext project. Open Karelia is a database of collections of the leading museums in the Euregio Karelia region and cultural heritage objects. The System is flexible and can adjust museum collections to individual interests and preferences of the visitors and Internet users. Representatives of other museums of Karelia which are not project partners but which express interest in joining the Open Karelia system will be part of the last seminar day.

A live broadcast of the seminar is arranged for the Finnish partners of the project on Youtube and a skype connection is used for feedback.

Photographs