Sharing a legacy is caring for each other: discover Ghent Collections, a multi-partner project.

The project

Ghent Collections is a cross-pollination of citizens, museums, and heritage institutions that enables creative use of each other's objects, documents, and stories. On one hand, it spreads valuable knowledge about Ghent's heritage beyond museum walls; on the other, it gives citizens a voice to share how they experience 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. From spring 2022, the CoggGhent Box lands in three neighborhoods in Ghent, providing a space to visualize 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 COGHent Box finds its home at DING, the new wing of the Design Museum Ghent.

Collaboration

We started 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 communication at CoggGhent. Creating the explainer video was a challenge: on one hand, we had to explain the full project, while on the other, introduce all partners and their roles—keeping the video under two minutes. After several rounds of feedback and edits, the video was ready.

The final result can be viewed here:

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When defining a social strategy, several goals had to be considered. First, we needed to tell heritage stories. This is done in close collaboration with the participating museums and institutions. In a monthly calendar meeting, we assess overlapping topics to create cohesive stories and discuss the content calendar for the upcoming month.

Our social media manager prepares this by adding several topics or topicals to the calendar and determining 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 agenda meeting, all the pieces are put together. In addition to heritage stories, we must ensure that we communicate about the progress of the project.

We need to explain what is happening, which events are taking place, how we promote the project's name, and how we make sure people know what we are doing. Brand awareness is therefore an important factor in our social strategy. Now that the project has also launched offline, we will focus in the coming weeks on an extensive branding campaign. This campaign will be posted organically, with an additional push through social advertising. Finally, it is crucial to activate the citizens of Ghent.

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

It is important to create a clear funnel for Ghent Collections, in which we reach citizens of Ghent and guide them through the project. We then aim to engage them with our heritage stories on the social media channels Facebook, Instagram, country Twitter, and ultimately convince them to become active members of our community who contribute their own stories to the Collections.

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