Europeana Foundation, EXCENTRIC’s cultural heritage umbrella organisation, hosts this third Open Demo Day as part of the 2026 Europeana Project Month. The online series showcases EU-funded projects that contribute to the common European data space for cultural heritage, bringing their teams together with heritage professionals, educators, researchers and innovators.

EXCENTRIC shares the day’s theme, “Measuring data and impact in practice”, with the Data Conversations project. Our session brings two pilots from the museum and performing arts sectors to a heritage audience, and connects EXCENTRIC’s Collaborative Data Practice with the professionals who can put it to work.

Data as Creative Material: Playful Insights and Live Stage Interactions

Pilots in focus: Computer History Museum and Theater Dortmund

What if audience data wasn’t an administrative chore or a backend spreadsheet, but a creative material in itself? This interactive demo shows how two institutions are turning data collection into engaging, audience-facing experiences.

The Computer History Museum (Ljubljana, SI) demonstrates how an interactive narrative game enables institutional collaboration and R&D. Instead of counting visitors, the game invites them into a story and listens to the choices they make, giving the museum insight into what people care about and why. The method is designed to be shared, so other institutions can run it and compare what they learn without exchanging personal data.

Theater Dortmund and the Academy for Theatre and Digitality (Dortmund, DE) reveal how live audience input becomes raw artistic material on stage. Their toolbox captures how an audience responds during a performance and translates it into musical and lighting parameters for the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra. The audience is treated as one collective signal rather than as individuals, and data is used live rather than stored.

Side by side, the two pilots show how differently institutions can listen to their audiences, for meaning in one case and for live response in the other, and what that means for measuring impact responsibly.

The session combines live demonstrations of both pilots with an open discussion with participants. Attendance is free; registration goes through the Europeana Project Month page: Europeana Project Month 2026 – the data space in practice: tools, impact and synergies