Museu de la Patum de Berga

"La Patum" is a traditional festival that is celebrated since medieval times in the Catalan city of Berga. In 2005 UNESCO declared it Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity which motivated the city hall to set up a innovative virtual museum showing history and elements of the festival. In November 2008 the web site of the Museu de la Patum de Berga was launched. The content is based on an investigation lead by Antoni Rius and Museia, a research group on online museology at University Oberta de Catalunya.

The core of the site is the online museum which uses 3D technologies to create an innovative virtual space where the content is exposed. All video material was recorded during 2008 celebrations using helmet cameras with the main goal of allowing the visitor to experience the festival from the inside. The wish of creating a community around the museum is represented in it's social tools. There is a popular archive that offers the possibility to upload and share the recorded material of the participants increasing the dimension of the festival.

This site uses content management system Drupal as it's base and PHP and jQuery/Javascript to adapt and extend module functionality to the needs of the project. Multimedia and 3D content is realized using Flash.

The project was planned, programmed and designed by Barakia cultura i noves tecnologies SL, a Barcelona based company specialized in the application of new technologies to online museology and cultural heritage.

Actually the project is in process of dynamization to make participate local communities in the online community and to make them upload there creations like texts, photos and videos to the popular archive of the web site. On this stage only a Catalan version of the web site is accessible but Spanish and English translations are in process.