Heritage Understanding & Participation Hackathon: Co-creating Cultural Heritage Experiences with and for youth (Hup Hackathon)

Heritage Understand and Participation (HUP) Hackathon is a unique pan-European project designed to create new blueprints for emotional engagement with heritage among young people aged 10-16 at museums and heritage sites.

The challenge – Inspired by the lived experiences of the consortium’s cultural operators and reflected in literature and Eurostat data, museum visits and deep engagement by youth, especially those outside the white, middle-class mainstream—are declining. Few digital-native teens reach deeper engagement where empathy and critical reflection spark change. Since affect, not information, drives impact, museums must shift from “”talking at”” to “”creating with”” young people.

The objective – Through this project, we question how the sector can give authorship to youth, framing heritage as an emotion and participatory practice that results in imagining how human–technology interplay can reshape heritage experiences, and foster emotional connections with generation alpha.

The solution – HUP blends value-based heritage interpretation with child-led design thinking and AI prototyping into a one-day hackathon. Five pilot museums (NL, BE, SI, PT, GR) will train staff, run hackathons with 60 diverse teens and build five low-cost prototypes. Outputs include an open manual, training materials, video tutorials and an online community facilitator network.

The impact – Youth gain belonging and empathy; professionals acquire a repeatable, inclusive method; society benefits from more relevant, participatory heritage spaces. A sustainability plan and the Global Children’s Designathon network have the potential to extend HUP across Europe and into 56+ countries—supporting, among others, post-war heritage recovery in Ukraine.

HUP Hackathon directly advances Creative Europe’s goals on innovation, inclusion and digital transition.

[Vir: portal F&TOP]

Razvojna agencija Kozjansko

(Partner) Šentjur

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