Public Funding for Smartify Cic

As museums begin to reopen post-COVID 19, new innovations will come into place to enable safe visits for museum staff and audiences alike. In addition, traditional museum challenges, such as the simple act of finding your way around, still stand. Whilst wayfinding initially seems a simple obstacle in comparison to social distancing and museum's potentially facing an 80% drop in visitor numbers, these hurdles actually come hand in hand. Effective wayfinding helps prevent overcrowding, provides greater accessibility through step-free routes and most importantly, delivers enriching experiences where visitors can easily find works that interest them. All of these moments reinforce the economic resilience of publicly funded museums through the increased likelihood of a visitor recommending a museum and spending more money in the cafe and shop which are key income sources. Current options for museum wayfinding are not only a potential health hazard; with rented devices and stacks of paper maps potential bacteria spreaders, but fall way behind innovations in other sectors. Only a small proportion of 23-38 year olds use physical maps with apps like Citymapper becoming the default route finding option for many; and a third of museum visitors reporting inaccessibility in confusing museum buildings (MuseumNext). Existing software solutions for museum wayfinding are time-consuming and expensive to develop and maintain. And on top of this, no existing museum wayfinding tools are personalised to visitor interests. By 2021, 75% of commercial apps will incorporate AI and over 50% of consumers will interact with AI (Information Age) - museums are already behind expected functionality. CCD and Smartify have come together to produce the world's first Artificial Intelligence assisted wayfinding tool for museums - 'Museum Explorer' which combines navigational and creative content. Museum Explorer will have a front-end navigation experience within the Smartify app and a corresponding management platform for staff to review analytics; visualise journeys; manage content and send push notifications. Personalised wayfinding will offer audiences an easy way to explore a museum, view busy hotspots to avoid, and immerse themselves in the cultural experience. For museums personalised wayfinding offers an opportunity to collect important data on visitor habits and increase visitor confidence in returning to museums in a post-COVID 19 world. It will also convert casual visitors to spend in the shop, cafe and as members.

**Context**: The UK's estimated 2,500 museums have all had to close due to COVID-19\. For the average museum, over 75-80% of annual revenue comes from visitors stepping through their doors (NEMO survey 2020) and with spring and summer peak time for tourism, a cultural financial crisis looms. Museums will also likely see a drop in donations and government support as funding is redirected. Meanwhile, many museum staff have been furloughed or laid off and a recent sector review by Artnet estimated at least 20% of museums globally may not survive the COVID-19 crisis. **Opportunity**: Museums are now looking for new ways to engage their audiences, support wellbeing and generate donations. Over the past decade museums have made huge strides in digitising collections and 60% of museums are increasing their digital reach (Artnet 2020). However, business models which leverage these assets are not yet established and many digital collections go unused. The tools needed to put these assets to good use in generating engagement and revenue are either prohibitively expensive or are part of oversaturated platforms. Museums currently rely on social media or Google Arts and Culture to create and share content. These platforms have clear failings: 1) User experience is poor; clicking around an exhibition with Street View is a frustrating interface and results in 'serious tradeoffs in how the art _and_ the building are communicated' (FRAME, April 2020). 2) They are competitive , saturated and promote paid content. 3) They lack appropriate tools to export media without platform branded logos. 4) Copyright images shared become public domain and museums are unable to develop bespoke rights agreements. 5) The time and effort needed is beyond staff capacity: 'facilitating access... cannot be delivered at the detriment of the sector's already stretched workforce' (Museums and Heritage, 2020). **Innovation**: With over 1 million users Smartify is the world's most downloaded museum app and has seen a 30% user increase in engagement since March 2020\. Smartify will build a smart multimedia tour authoring tool that is semi-automated and repurposes existing museum assets. This will include text-to-voice; transcription; translation; predictive content generation, editing and publishing. The tool will enable museums to create, develop and disseminate content, and will analyse online audiences for conversion into membership or donation. It will also create an opportunity to retrain furloughed staff; and will offer distance learning opportunity and alleviation of boredom for audiences at home.

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"There are 75,000 museums globally with over 1 billion visitors per year (AAM, 2018). The average visitor spends £20 per visit on ticketing, retail, audio guides and donations. However, it is a hugely inefficient market in which museums are making only £9bn coming predominantly from retail and ticketing (93% of visitor-generated revenue); with donations at 5%; and audio guides just 2% in spite of the fact that providing engaging, educational experiences is a key aim for museums globally _(__analysis from annual reports of 25 of the world's most visited museums 2017/18)._ The main barrier for museums to embrace technology are high costs of tailor-made digital solutions, lack of staff time and digital expertise. As museums are under increasing financial pressures, technology solutions are fundamental to the sector's future success. Smartify can answer this need by bringing to the market a highly scalable and cost-efficient product based on disruptive technologies and team's expertise in the fields of art digitisation, digital content management and award-winning user experience design. Smartify will deliver a full-stack SaaS digital platform that will include digitalisation and publishing capacity; commercial transactions and sales; advanced audience data capturing and AI targeted marketing; and an elegant AR end-user experience for connecting with works of fine art. The objective is to allow British and global institutions to leverage the existing rich cultural capital and monetise it via digital platforms using advanced audience data and AI targeted marketing coupled with an elegant end-user experience for connecting with works of fine art. The project is innovative because it will use cutting edge technologies to enable a step-change in the digital capacity and long-term financial resilience of museums in the UK and globally. At the same time Smartify will provide the hundreds of millions of museums' visitors globally with a tool to discover and engage with art. If you consider what Spotify has achieved for music, Smartify will deliver the equivalent B2B2C software platform for art."

Ever been to a museum or gallery, seen an artwork you like and been curious for more information? Perhaps you took a picture of the artwork and wall label to look up later but then forgot? SMARTIFY is a London-based Community Interest Company with a mission to help people make meaningful connections with art. We believe nothing beats the physical experience of visiting a museum and want to make it easy to discover, remember and share art. The free SMARTIFY app uses advanced image recognition and immersive Augmented Reality (AR) allowing users to scan artworks and uncover the stories behind each work. Each scan can be added to a personal digital art collection. Set to be the Shazam and Spotify for art, SMARTIFY already has partnerships with museums internationally including the National Portrait Gallery, Royal Academy of Art, Wallace Collection and Rijksmuseum. This project will explore how services such as in-app donations to museums, user-generated content and recommendations can drive-up user retention and further benefits for cultural institutions.