From Barcino to BCN

The challenge

Barcelona’s Council had in mind gathering up and spreading the history of this great city, a town that has been the scene for many events throughout time. We were invited to think how to do it.

Analysis

The first thing we considered was: what is history? What does provide us with?

History is without any doubt a source of knowledge, knowing the past allows us to know the present and even the unexpected turns of the future. It is a great adventure in time unfolding outstanding characters, important facts, unknown places, it also recalls events that have shaped and still are shaping this city.

The city archives were wide open with all kind of documents, images, photographs and illustrations, engraves and videos. We had in our hands a great deal of material as well as very valuable, but how should it be brought closer to the citizens?

The proposal

We understand history as a living creature in a constant reinterpretation, thus the best ally to approach, relate, adapt and deliver contents throughout all the points of view and for a wide audience is the Internet. A perfect channel to organise a rich and accurate discourse as well as attractive.

The main axis of our proposal was based on storytelling, dealing with and connecting multimedia content, showing the different perspectives of the historical events.

Obviously, historians’ visions allowed putting together the events to relate them. In order to reach such a broad audience, mainly in terms of age, it was important to organize communication in a hierarchy and adapt it to all valid discourses.

Edutainment and infotainment: Information, education and entertainment joint together, that is our mantra to generate appealing messages dealing with complex contents in simple ways.

Results

The work of a multidisciplinary team of 15 people working together for 6 months.

From Barcino to BCN, 45 digital instalments, 45 weeks where every Monday a new chapter was published, representing an opportunity to discover new realities with the help of diverse documentation. Initial goals were achieved, having a site dedicated to cultural dissemination for all citizens, and also it became a valuable support tool for teachers and students.