Clio Muse first winner at Europeana Food and Drink Open Innovation Challenge

In January 2015, Clio Muse received the first prize in the category of “professional winner” at the first Europeana Food and Drink Open Innovation Challenge. We combined our unique and intriguing stories with Europeana’s digital exhibits to create tours that stress on how food and drink are part of our culture. Our “Wine in Ancient Greece” exhibition won first place for its unique storytelling methodology.

Prompted by our participation at the Europeana Food and Drink Open Innovation Challenge, we wrote down, for the first time each step of the storytelling methodology we had developed after years of research. Throughout the process, we discovered its strengths and weaknesses. We managed to solidify our acquired knowledge in order to properly put it into practice on our next steps.

Being awarded by Europeana, a platform that brings together the digitized content of Europe’s galleries, libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual collections has a special meaning for us. We consider Europeana a valuable tool for the preservation and promotion of the world’s cultural heritage. And as a startup that focuses on the world’s history and culture, we have drawn inspiration from Europeana’s rich online content library multiple times. Hence, the fact that today, the largest European Digital Library recognizes that our narration methodology for promoting museums’ exhibitions stands out and awards the Clio Muse app for its innovative business model is the greatest distinction we could get.

Furthermore, the fact that the award ceremony took place at the Sapienza University of Rome was a great opportunity for us to gain visibility in Italy and promote our products to potential partners. At the same time, we gained credibility at Greece’s cultural institutions and museums that exhibit their collections on the Europeana platform opening doors for new collaborations.

About the Europeana Food and Drink Open Innovation Challenge

The competition was addressed to representatives of creative industries calling them to submit ideas and solutions for innovative methods for the re-use of food and drink-related digital heritage content. The finalists of the event had the opportunity to present their ideas and creative solutions to selected experts from the world of research, creative industries, marketing and cultural institutions.

“The objective of Europeana Food and Drink is to promote the wider re-use of the digital cultural resources available through Europeana by the Creative Industries to boost creativity and business development across Europe.”

And we believe that Clio Muse Tours was awarded for fully implementing this aim.

Clio Muse Tours’ winning project for the Europeana Food and Drink Open Innovation Challenge

Every tour we had created so far highlighted art and culture through captivating storytelling that appeals to modern-day travelers. Finding a way to combine art with food and drink was a new territory which we enjoyed very much exploring while also learning a lot.

For the first time, we applied the storytelling methodology we had developed through our experience in various museums in Athens to a large-scale international project. After writing down the steps and rules we must follow in order to create a captivating tour, we put them into practice and created the “Wine in Ancient Greece” exhibition that gained us the first prize. We got the chance to gain visibility to established researchers, historians and professionals of cultural institutions and get valuable feedback.

Both the tour itself and our attendance in the award ceremony in Italy turned the spotlight on Clio Muse Tours and helped us meet with established entrepreneurs, tour operators and professionals of the cultural sector in Italy. We now feel confident that we already have some strong allies on our side for our future expansion to the neighboring country.

Our exhibition for Europeana Food and Drink Open Innovation Challenge, “Wine in Ancient Greece” brought together ancient Greek myths and real-life facts to unravel the history of winemaking in antiquity. We believe that tours like this one not only introduce travelers to history but they can also benefit both the culture sector and the food and drink industry. Food companies from Greece and Italy have already contacted us for the creation of cultural tours. And Greek museums have seen a new opportunity for promoting exhibits that bring food and dietary habits of the past on the foreground.