Along with the tourism sector, cultural and creative sectors are among the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis has had its toll with major disruptions in visitation, being the hardest hit by social distancing measures, described as a culture shock; this resulted in an undeniable financial impact on the running of small and medium sized arts and culture institutions. This turnaround of events, led to the sector needing to innovate rapidly, notably with accelerated digitalisation. The response from the vast majority of these institutions in Europe, included a rapid shift towards digital visitation and digital curation. This ‘forced’ shift for cultural organisations to focus on their “virtual museum resources, e-learning, and online collections”, exposed some of the pre-existing vulnerabilities in the cultural sector, especially in relation to digital curation and the lack of digital skills among cultural professionals.

The Erasmus+ Project “BoostDigiCulture” seeks to tackle these challenges and hopes to set the foundation for a sustainable and inclusive professional development framework of open educational resources and practices, designed to enhance the digital competences of cultural professionals with low digital skills, especially those working in small and medium sized cultural institutions in the partner countries and beyond.