What is AIM?
Art Interactive for Museums (AIM) is a program that is dedicated to exploring, engaging with, and expanding museums and cultural institutions by taking their audiences to the next experiential level.
We firmly believe that the scope for audience engagement with cultural artifacts can be deepened with the help of specialized interactive content and technology. This can be achieved by enhancing the content with narrative stories that are intricately woven around the art and artifacts on display.
The AIM program is designed to develop such content and thus create a meaningful dialog between museum artifacts and the public.
The current situation
The museum scene in our country is bleak, despite the fact that India boasts a rich historical and cultural heritage spanning more than 5,000 years.
Given the long trail of our cultural traditions, the museums in our country are few and far between. Moreover, those museums we have are just repositories of artifacts. People visiting these museums rarely take home meaningful memories, as there is hardly any interaction between the museum and its audience. Overall, the museum experience remains uninspiring and it is therefore quickly forgotten.
There is an urgent need to transform our museum culture from a dull, almost zero-interactive environment into a vivid, engaging atmosphere that generates experiences which people will celebrate, cherish ... and come back for more.
The power of stories
People, no matter what their demographic, love real-life stories, as stories have an inherent ability to touch the very core of the human psyche. Moreover, stories create a dialog with audiences while creating a sense of timelessness.
At AIM we use storytelling as a key component of the entire museum experience. Museum visitors become part of the story surrounding an art form or artifact in the museum by engaging with our specialized interactive content.
Our customized content is disseminated through a gamut of digital media such as touch-screen exploration, film, animation, and 2D/3D footage. We also personalize the museum experience for visitors through platform-independent mobile apps, augmented reality, and other cutting-edge, technology-driven solutions.
Heritage Commons App
With the Heritage Commons App, you will be able to follow Heritage Commons and its activities wherever you go. Hear about the latest events, news, and projects. Explore the eclectic collection of objects in our digital repository, interact with other Heritage Commons users, and share your experiences with people in your social circles.
The App, which will be launched late in 2015, will also allow you to view and engage with our customized interactive content, watch and listen to video-based stories, and buy souvenirs.
HC Registration Details: In 2001 ihsan talkies started as a proprietor company and since then accomplished various art, culture and museum projects. Neeraj Bhasin founded Heritage Commons in 2012. Heritage Commons is a not-for-profit organization registered under the society registration act 1860. HC founders are the members of inclusive museum.
For most companies, strategies relating to corporate social responsibility (CSR) are limited to granting funds for education and empowering communities. Art has not yet emerged as a major CSR objective for businesses in India, unlike in the USA, where most art funding is private or corporate.
Our primary objective at Heritage Commons is to bring art and culture into the forefront of society. We strongly believe that companies and art institutions can work together to improve the cultural spaces within the country. The main focus will therefore be on introducing companies to the World of Art and the potential they can create for artists, artisans, and craftsmen as part of their social responsibility. We will build partnerships with traditional and contemporary artists, as well as designers of public art. We will also work with civic bodies and urban planners to bring art to public spaces and urban cultural facilities, museums and parks.
Heritage Commons has realized over the period of time that no art; design institution has pedagogy on the sustainability of graduates on non-traditional, unconventional practice in art. Every art school/colleges is still going on more or less with the monotonous ways of practice.
One of our focuses will be the pedagogy that allows graduates to embrace experimentation in these areas. Our aim is to make this module work closely with design, art and architecture schools and cultural institutions all over India. This module will bring integrated approach to art pedagogy.
This will be done with the collective effort of unconventional art practitioners, fresh IT programmers and techno savvy talents who willprovide a strong support system in fostering an unconventional practice in art.
One of our core vertical in the realm of art and culture is communication design and branding. We have extended our present fifteen plus years brand and design development expertise dedicatedly into the art and cultural sector for both the medias- Print publications and New Media- online, to support the different aspects of the work we do so as to provide a full fledged solution to our clients with a unified vision.
In the course of our expertise and other offerings we have realized that print and online media is also an integral part of any kind of documentation. Despite of giving incomplete solutions, Heritage Commons is very keen to offer specialized services in the area of creating brand identity for any art and cultural institution in India and abroad.
Our team will design and program online responsive website which will run on computers, ipads and mobiles as well.
Some of our clients from the NGOs, Corporate, Art and Cultural sectors are:
Breakthrough, Jagori, Vestergaard, Helpmesee, SAIL, Adaan,
GVK Art Museum, T2 Mumbai, OSIANAMA, Rajeev Sethi Scenographers.
The cultural heritage of a community or region encompasses both tangible and intangible manifestations. Museum objects such as paintings, sculptures and handicrafts represent tangible aspects whereas intangible culture includes song, music, drama, skills, cuisine, annual festivals, craft skills, and the other parts of culture that can be recorded but cannot be touched. These cultural vehicles are also called "human treasures" by the UN.
It is the intangible cultural heritage that lends a unique identity to a community, as it has been enriched from one generation to another since time immemorial. Simply put, the intangible cultural heritage represents the living heritage of all existing global communities.
The richness of this intangible global heritage attracts large numbers of international tourists, who seek new experiences and interactions. At Heritage Commons we intend to develop the rich cultural spaces of India to meet the aspirations of tourists who are looking for unique intangible cultural experiences. By so doing we wish to preserve, nurture, and promote local traditions and also develop revenue streams for the long-term sustainability of these intangible cultural spaces.
Our initial focus is on Madhubani (a state in Bihar) famous for its Madhubani traditional paintings and Dahanu a coastal city which is 150 km from Mumbai and famous worldwide for its warli painting.
We are open to collaborations with national and international educational organizations to organize trips to these places; these will start in late 2015.
Heritage Commons Worldwide, which will be launched late in 2017, will be a global online platform, on which people from across the world can showcase personal collections and artifacts in their possession. This platform will allow people to upload images of antique art as well as everyday objects from a bygone era. Photographs of objects such as old radio sets, wall clocks, furniture items, paintings, decorative pieces, and so on, will be part of Heritage Commons Worldwide.
Our objective is to create a network of like-minded individuals who appreciate and value objects and are interested in exploring and having a meaningful dialog with each other around stories associated with these objects. Moreover, this forum will create a rich digital repository of easily accessible reference material that has so far not been available in museums, digital libraries, and private collections.
To improve the museum experience in our country and to learn from the best practices followed by cultural institutions across Asia, we propose to hold a South-East Asia Museum Symposium in 2018 in India. The main purpose of this event is to promote a long-term relationship between museums in India and those in other Asian countries.
At Heritage Commons we believe that this symposium and the subsequent cultural exchanges between Asian nations will help improve the museum experience in all of the countries involved. The symposium will also provide government officials, museum administrators, scholars, and intellectuals with the opportunity to broaden their perspective regarding the latest trends in museum management.
This symposium will be an annual event, which will be held in different parts of India. The event will enhance the value of museums to society by sharing knowledge, practices (e.g. about the preservation of artworks), trends in museum design, documentation and experiences. It will be a lively mix of discussions, workshops, films screenings, and sharing/learning sessions.
India is an old civilization. Art and Architecture were not different from each other here. With the advent of new material like steel and cement there came a shift and our traditional practices were marginalized. Urban planning today will have to constructively deal with issues like housing, transport, hygiene and basic amenities for the growing population. Most importantly,Culture based initiatives will have to be built into the planning as well. Incorporating our heritage in a contemporary Urban Milieu for everyone to touch and feel is as important.
Heritage Commons believes that Art in the Public Domain is essential as it creates a social dialogue and spaces to harbor cultural identity.
