Atlas of Maritime Heritage of Martabal project

Introduction

MARTABAL (MARiTime heritage Atlas BALtic sea) is the one year project run from June 2013 to September 2014 funded within Seed Money Facility of EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region under the Priority Area Culture – Developing and promoting the common culture and cultural identity.

MARTABAL aims to enhance the existing prototype of the “Maritime Heritage Atlas of the South Baltic” and create a complete portfolio of the Baltic Heritage including historic sites and objects, constructions, museums, lighthouses, historical ships and warships, ports and shipyards, natural attractions which belong to maritime heritage, cultural and touristic events. It is a first step responding to the growing demand of high-quality products in the field of culture, tourism, nature and ‘edutainment’. The Seed Money project gives the opportunity to explore and research in detail the options of the Atlas development within the scope of content creation, new IT technology and tourist sector requirements. Moreover, it will allow to identify the most promising network of individuals that would open up a platform for collaboration around the startup idea. MARTABAL as the technical project will work out necessary components to prepare the application to the EU or national funding sources e.g. the European Structural & Investment Funds programs 2014-2020 or European Territorial Cooperation (Interreg) V, Creative Europe or the Research Framework Program HORIZON 2020 It will include a description of activities and outputs, the composition of the partnership and the indicative budget of the future main project.

The Main Goals and Challanges
 

		We set a variety of goals to be achieved through the Maritime Heritage Atlas launch Response to an audience’s needs and expectations Educate by knowledge offer Facilitate communication and information exchange Inspire greater interest and engagement in cultural heritage and its preservation Connect people Enrich tourism offer Increase awareness of maritime heritage preservation Promote regional identity
		How do we plan to achieve them? Conducting researches and broadening the knowledge Applying digital media solutions Engaging city and tourism stakeholders and authorities Harnessing museums’ resourses Integrating a variety of strategic partners

Methodology

The identification of the future shape of Atlas and approach towards its development depends on the selection of crucial pillars – culture, tourism and technology.

Three scenarios of the main project are predicted:

1. Primarily Culture related, as a catalogue of heritage sites serving to the main objectives of museums (research, dissemination, education and preservation) for further on-line and off-line exhibitions and catalogues;
2. Mainly Tourism focused, as a tool for facilitating visits and attracting tourists with practical information about organizing leisure time or finding the best place to stay in Baltic coastal destinations;
3. With a strong link to Technology, where the maritime heritage and the tourism dimension can be an emblematic case study for demonstrating the benefits of the new technological development in the creative industries.

Partnership

National Maritime Museum in Gdansk (Poland) is the Lead Partner of MARTABAL. Contact person: Katarzyna Nowicka k.nowicka@nmm.pl

It is supported by following Partners:

	Forum Marinum in Turku (Finland); Contact person: Ulla Kallberg ulla.kallberg@forum-marinum.fi
	Lithuanian Sea Museum in Klaipeda (Lithuania); Contact person: Jurgita Eglinskienė j.eglinskiene@muziejus.lt
	Marinmuseum in Karlskrona (Sweden); Contact person: Per-Inge Lindqvist per-inge.lindqvist@maritima.se

The MARTABAL partners strongly cooperate with Network of Maritime Museums of Baltic Sea Contact person: PhD Robert Domżał r.domzal@nmm.pl

Activities
 

The core activities are 3 workshops held in Gdańsk and in Turku.

These workshops will embrace brainstorming sessions, mind-mapping and in-depth discussion and will also be supported by experts in the fields such as commercial dimension, technical issues (mobile applications), touristic offers, etc.

Workshop 1 in Gdańsk, 6-7 November 2013

The meeting was focused on the definition of the Business Model, based on the Canvas methodology.

This exercise delivered core elements to discuss the main project:
Value Proposition (Content of the Atlas, the structure of data); Target Segments (mass tourism, museum visitors, scientists and curators); Channels (online-offline), Key Resources (financial, human, IPR, heritage); Key Activities (technology development, commercial activities, scientific documentation of existing heritage, marketing of cultural assets); Key Partners (identification of strategic alliances, subcontractors); Cost Structure (indicative budget of the project).

Workshop 2 in Turku, April 2014

The meeting was organized in conjunction with Network of Maritime Museums of Baltic Sea region conference.

The representatives of the museums were invited to participate in Atlas creation. In order to achieve a broad exposure and wide partners’ involvement the list of invited experts would outline the range of commercial operators:

• tourism operators (cruise and ferry lines, hotel chains, web offers, travel agencies, etc.),
• city tourism promoters, regional development agencies,
• web and mobile app developers,
• web and mobile app providers.

Workshop 3 in Gdańsk, June 2014

The partners and invited experts focused on the final conclusions concerning profile of the future Atlas project. The state of the art based on the market research on coastal tourism of Baltic Sea Region was introduced. Main project components and the partnership were identified and decided.
Partners agreed to consider 3 options of main project submission:

• Baltic Sea Region Programme,
• Interreg Europe,
• South Baltic Programme.