The Young Curator programme allows selected students to physically experience the role of young curators who research and document the uncatalogued treasures of the Lobkowicz collections. Moving the program to an online space will allow a much wider number of students around the world to get involved. Alexandra Lobkowicz, President of the Lobkowicz Collections, one of the main components of the HoL, Marcel Jiřina, Dean of CTU FIT, and Matthew Hayes, history teacher at the International School of Prague, came to personally introduce the young curators to the students of the course.
"We are excited to be working with FIT CTU because we see this as an opportunity to use technology to enhance our program by creating engaging online experiences for students. This project is important because it allows us to expand our ability to share items from our collections in new ways. We hope this collaboration will also foster community building and teamwork as we continue to work with universities around the world. While this is only a pilot project, we are very pleased with the creativity and enthusiasm of the students and look forward to the opportunity to continue working together to further develop the Young Curator," said Alexandra Lobkowicz.
Under the expert guidance of CTU FIT teachers and HoL mentors, students worked on designing a solution using the unique Design Sprint method, originally developed by Google. Thanks to this method, they were able to go from an idea through testing to the final design of a possible innovation and transformation of the Young Curator programme within five days.
The students of CTU FIT came up with a solution for a complex online educational web application that uses the latest technologies, including digitization of historical objects and artificial intelligence. If implemented, their web application proposal would enable the Young Curator educational programme to move fully online and involve students from all over the world.
The web app would feature pre-recorded videos from HoL curators to help kick-start the Young Curator's journey. Users would be able to view and analyze objects using interactive 3D models, add historical milestones and context to the timeline, and then create broader narratives about the origins and uses of the artifacts being researched. Finally, they would create a simple but engaging video or presentation summarizing their findings about the object.
The app design also includes a fun element where users use AI guides to correctly place an object in an exhibit in one of HoL's historic buildings. A section for curators would provide an overview of all ongoing research and activities of participating schools and young curators.
"I am very happy for the opportunity to cooperate with HoL in order to innovate and modernize the access to historical collections so that we can bring them closer to the widest possible range of users," said doc. RNDr. Ing. Marcel Jiřina, PhD. dean of CTU FIT "From our side, we bring to the project cutting-edge technologies, knowledge and experience of our students, as well as the mentoring perspective of our teachers. I am looking forward to the resulting innovative solution and I believe that its early implementation will significantly enrich the Young Curator educational programme, thus opening up the Lobkowicz Collections to a new generation of young enthusiasts and professionals."
The five-day Design Sprint course is one of the follow-up projects to the Memorandum of Cooperation signed by representatives of HoL and CTU FIT on 20 November 2023 at the Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle.