Henan Museum Founded in 1927, Henan Museum is a time-honored museum in China. Henan Museum, as a state-level museum, was selected as one of the first museums jointly constructed by the central and local governments in 2009. The Museum has collected about 170,000 artifacts, including a large quantity of diversified treasures, and is a treasure-house of culture and art showcasing the development of Chinese civilization.
Concept and innovation of cultural and creative projects in Henan Museum
Henan Museum stays committed to its purpose to "develop intrinsic culture, advocate academic research, improve people's knowledge, promote social civilization" and takes efforts to explore a brand-new cultural and creative mode with the features of Henan Museum based on the culture and history of the Central Plains. Henan Museum also work to build a “Great cultural and creative industry” in response to the call to “make cultural relics come alive”. It makes an all-out effort to figure out how to take its advantage in collection resources, perseveres in win-win cooperation, and innovates the incentive system of the cultural and creative industry. By carrying out these measures, Henan Museum has achieved much in the cultural and creative industry, and has developed its popularity in museums nationwide.
Our project gives priority to research on cultural relics and museums, and marketing, leading the development of the cultural and creative industry of the whole province. And our sub-brand “Meet Guochao in Henan” has entered various municipal museums. Furthermore, our production base of Archaeological Mystery Boxes is built in rural areas of Luoyang city, Henan province, and we try to facilitate rural revitalization through our projects. We have combined traditional cultural elements and the popular “blind box” toy, and have launched “Archaeological Mystery Boxes”, “The Lost Treasure” series and “Rubbing Mystery Boxes”, which have become known as “The three musketeers of Mystery Boxes”.
Meanwhile, we are trying to pay our respects to archaeological, cultural and museum undertakings. Particularly worth mentioning is that Henan Museum first puts forward the concept of “dynamic cultural and creative industry”, and keeps upgrading our products. Moreover, we accurately grasp children’s requirements and their psychology of being curious and striving for knowledge. Meanwhile, we try to explore cultural elements which are more likely to be understood and accepted behind the cultural relics, making them more interesting both in forms and in contents. Our cultural and creative team, with a staff of 24, keep managing their operations by themselves. We set up various positions in the team, including brand building, warehousing, marketing, and finances well as on-line operations, and they have a clear division of work. Besides, our cultural and creative team runs online platforms for promotion independently, including an official Wechat account “RD center of cultural and creative team, Henan Museum” and a micro blog account, and they have accumulated rich experience in practice.
Experience, professional excellence and suggestions
There are still gaps to be bridged between our cultural and creative work and that of advanced models in the same industry, due to macro policy, and problems existing in our views, values, business models as well as management styles. However, supported by powerful cultural resources and teams of experts, it is not complicated for us to analyze and refine cultural elements for project creation.
In future, we shall continue to build a cultural and creative brand matrix, develop and grow the current brand “Meet Guochao in Henan”, and what’s more, we shall keep making efforts to drive the development of the cultural and creative industry of the whole province encompassing cities and counties. We aim to develop a chain of cultural industry and undertake the important mission of rural revitalization.
It did not always run smoothly when carrying forward the project. There are some mistakes that we would never repeat: for example, we tried to figure out how to develop products before analyzing basicelements or launched new products before the promotion plans get ready. We should avoid these kinds of mistakes in the future.
Concerning professional excellence achieved in the project, we created new types of cultural and creative products, built a bridge which connected traditional culture and the trend of the times.
If you plan to get into this industry, we suggest from our experience that the development of cultural and creative products needs to be rooted in local culture and take on strong local features. You are supposed to activate and make full use of archaeological and historical research achievements, and promote their effective communication by analyzing local outstanding culture. Except for fundamental cultural elements, it is necessary for your team to be equipped with the perfect management system as well as innovation ability.