Vlaamse Overheid

How a virtual museum highlights Flemish heritage

Faam
Drupal
Piwik Pro -
Content Management Systems (CMSs) -
Webmastering & Contentmanagement -

The Flemish Government's brief was clear: 'Build a digital platform that shows Flemish people the great wealth of cultural heritage in their surroundings’. So, we developed FAAM, Flanders' first virtual museum. On the one hand, a very specific job, yet on the other hand strongly reducible to iO's core business: how to develop a digital platform that takes the customer experience to a higher level?

  • State-of-the-art technology setup

  • Website, PWA & interactive app

  • Enhances cultural experience on smartphones

  • Digital platform to promote real museums

A virtual museum…

In addition to the successful Canon of Flanders - for which iO previously developed the website - the Flemish government also wanted to build a Museum of Flanders. However, as it soon turned out that museums were not eager to donate their showpieces for such a super museum, the idea was born to set up Flanders' first virtual museum: FAAM.

On both the website FAAM.be and its Android and iOS mobile applications, you can browse the rich selection of Flemish museums and heritage institutions to your heart's content. FAAM is built around different themes, such as 'Living', 'Working', and 'Eating and drinking'. The interactive app also allows you to discover more about Flemish collections on location.

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Challenge

Build a virtual museum that attracts more visitors to real Flemish heritage institutions.

Solution

iO built a high-quality editor application and ditto audience applications for the virtual museum FAAM.

"We were commissioned to build a digital platform to show Flemish people the unsuspected wealth of cultural heritage in their area. Initially, museums and heritage institutions were not entirely in favour of this set-up. They feared that displaying their content online would plummet their visitor numbers. But the opposite turned out to be true: FAAM makes people want to admire all that heritage in Flanders in real life. So FAAM acts as a teaser and succeeds wonderfully."

... to promote real museums

Joeri Timmermans

Joeri Timmermans, Business Director Technology iO

FAAM Mockup

A beautiful technology story

While the Flemish Government worked with another partner for the content, iO developed the technology story. More specifically, we built the editor application as well as the public applications for FAAM.

Timmermans: "By editor application we mean the content management system in Drupal, which allows all editors to add content for any kind of experience - composed of elements such as text, a game, a video, an image, a scroll story or an AR experience. We built a CMS to which the people at FAAM can add content completely on their own, i.e. without our intervention. This is more economical and promotes the smooth addition of new content. We built the public applications on the front-end in React, consisting of the iOS app, the Android app and the website. For the editor application, we also provided the necessary middleware, such as applications for user management, person data and an API."

"We proceeded very efficiently," continues Timmermans. "We built very high-quality elements piece by piece. At iO, we find that very important. We would rather deliver five applications that are worked out to perfection, than seven applications that still have some shortcomings."

FAAM

Popular mammoth

'FAAM' was not launched coincidently with a press event in Dendermonde, in March 2024. Indeed, via the app, you can bring the mammoth from the collection of Dendermonde's Vleeshuis Museum to life digitally on your smartphone, using augmented reality. This also immediately made it clear that the project does not only focus on the collections and masterpieces from major museums, but also puts lesser-known heritage in the spotlight.

Carolien van Hecke, director of Dendermonde City Museums: "By bundling everything in one place, I think people will find their way to heritage institutions faster. Including smaller players who rarely achieve such a wide reach, like us in Dendermonde."

"The authentic experience in the museum is of course hard to match," van Hecke continues. "But the digital museum can really add value. People - especially the younger ones - are increasingly on their smartphones and there the cultural offer is still limited. It's very nice that Flanders is giving its many museums a digital boost."

To be continued

The launch of FAAM in March 2024 may not mean the end of this beautiful story. There is likely to be another further development that will focus on gamification and provide even stronger support for the initial underlying idea - namely enabling people to discover every square foot of cultural heritage in Flanders.

"We still have to speak with some reservations here, but this addition will probably go a bit on the cultural Geocaching tour. For each physical experience ticked off, you will receive points. For example, anyone who has visited all knight-related heritage experiences in Flanders will earn a knight badge."

Joeri Timmermans

Joeri Timmermans, Business Director Technology iO

The tools we used:

drupal

Drupal

Drupal Gold Partner
Stackpagina Piwik Pro | iO

Piwik PRO

React logo

React

Joeri Timmermans

Want to know more about this case?

Joeri Timmermans - Business Director Technology iO
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