The project’s core idea is to engage with Cultural Heritage Organisations in problem-based learning interventions in multidisciplinary student teams, to tackle the challenges and explore the opportunities for the cultural heritage sector of a highly digitalised post-COVID-19 world.

For that, some indispensable elements for leading the project were the access to inter- and multidisciplinary knowledge, spanning the areas of business model, innovation, and cultural management, as well as a deep engagement with the cultural heritage sector and its evolving needs.

Ca’ Foscari hosts all of these elements. Its location in Venice makes this university embedded in cultural heritage, and in a relationship of continuous dialogue and exchange with the surrounding cultural heritage organisations by means of ongoing research, on-site learning, internships, consultancy, and sharing of spaces and facilities in what can be seen as an osmosis between the cultural heritage sector and academia. This puts Ca’ Foscari in a position of immediate access to cultural heritage organisations, and of up-to-date knowledge of their evolving needs.

Indeed, Ca’ Foscari is a hub of both interdisciplinary research and teaching hub on the topics covered by this project.

In particular, the Venice School of Management of Ca’ Foscari hosts Maclab, the laboratory of Management of Arts and Culture, founded in 2009 as a meeting place for research and teaching activities at the crossroads of management, creativity and cultural productions. Anchored in economics and management knowledge, Maclab extends its multidisciplinary reach to the manifold understandings and professional interests that mobilise notions of “culture”, “art” and, more recently, “creativity”.  It does this by designing and conducting research projects in this variegated field, with an approach characterised by interdisciplinarity and by action and practice-based stance, in strong relationships with the cultural, business and policymakers that make up both its object of research and its main recipient.

In addition, Ca’ Foscari offers a Master’s degree in arts management, that brings together students and educators from diverse disciplinary and geographic backgrounds. This programme integrates expertise, research methodologies and professional approaches from humanistic, economic and managerial areas, focusing particularly on the evolution of the national, European and global artistic and cultural panorama.

All in all, Ca’ Foscari provides access to cultural heritage organizations, the expertise and the multidisciplinary student base that are the indispensable ingredients for running CH 2.0 and realising its goals.