We tend to consider museums as places that curate materials, objects and resources and present interpretations of them. However they are also places where experiences can be shared through storytelling as they are spaces for empathy.

Stories share personal experiences in an authentic and easily accessible form. They feel familiar, yet enable us to step into the shoes of others. They are full of detail, but leave space for us to insert our own thoughts, feelings and memories.

Stories can be used to help us make sense of the world. Through stories new perspectives can be shared that may change how we think and feel.

An example of this is a museum in the heart of the Big Apple will give you the experience of the past, in the New York of the late 1800’s, when, with the increasing arrival of immigrants, the cosmopolitan and multicultural society that characterises America today.

The Tenement Museum is built inside a building where more than 7,000 immigrants from various countries found hospitality between 1863 and 1935. Inside you can discover using the technique of storytelling the stories of some immigrant families, who left details and memories of their new life in New York.

On the website of the museum there are also many virtual paths to keep the activities going even during Covid lockdown.

Find out more about the museum

Fundraising is essential for many heritage organisations such as museums, collections and galleries if they are to deliver the diverse and exciting range of activities they do providing public access to unique treasures.

This article tells the story of Jane Austen’s letters. In fact, Austen’s letters and books were donated to the Bodleian libraries in Oxford and Jane Austen’s home in Hampshire by Friends of the National Libraries, a charity dedicated to preserving the nation’s written and printed heritage.

Less than 160 letters written by Austen are known to have survived, and as such these two items of correspondence have been described as ‘hugely significant’. Both were addressed to her sister Cassandra, showing the author at two very different stages of her life.

In their campaign, the Friends of the National Libraries, in collaboration with a consortium of research libraries and author’s houses, appealed for public donations to prevent the Honresfield Library from being dispersed through auction sales

The campaign eventually raised over £15 million in donations, including £4 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The largest private donor was Sir Leonard Blavatnik, who gave half the purchase price of the collection.

The Synopsis project has created a fundraising module to support the training of those working in European cultural heritage. Find out more

SYNOPSIS is an Erasmus Plus project looking at Storytelling and Fundraising for Cultural Heritage professionals. The project is producing an online training course to support the cultural heritage sector in developing storytelling and fundraising to engage interested people.

The first module of the training course has now been produced for testing and piloting. It concerns the use of storytelling. Storytelling skills play an important role in helping connect people tp cultural heritage. Cultural Heritage storytelling is concerned with “communicating through stories”, creating narratives through which a cultural heritage enters into an emphatic relationship with people, managing to arouse public emotion. The purpose is to engage people to protect, exploit cultural heritage, and support it financially.

By improving their storytelling, professionals will be able to design a range of communication strategies and adopt digital media to be used in educating people and promoting culture and art.

By the end of the storytelling module, participants should:

– Be aware of using narratives and (serious) storytelling techniques
– Understand the use of storytelling processes and its main benefits
– Have explored and assessed digital storytelling and examples in fundraising
– Created an outline for a digital story using storyboarding
– Identify and select digital storytelling tools according to their own aims and needs and
– Plan a digital storytelling campaign to promote engagement with target audiences.

Play the video: 7 tips on Storytelling for Cultural Heritage from Europeana

Visit the Storytelling module