The World Summit Award is a globally attributed initiative that selects and promotes organisations that have outstanding digital innovation, an overarching positive impact on society, and that achieves local relevance. Established in 2003, winners of this prestigious award cover a vast array of sectors including health and well-being, education, industry, the economy, energy infrastructure, and arts and culture. In each case, winners focus on how to leverage the digital to create innovative approaches to current problems within these sectors.
This year’s award focused on making the ‘COVID connectivity boost’ accessible. This refers to the increased surge of internet use across the globe because of the pandemic, which has also highlighted the increasing digital divide and inequality the world faces in terms of digital infrastructure. As part of this theme, winners of this year’s award reflected on the themes of connectivity and sustainability, and found useful solutions to remote access and connecting communities. Here at Iconic Moments, we were honored to be named one of the 40 winners of this award as it highlights our work as being digitally innovative, creating connectivity, and offering a sustainable solution for the sector.
Digital Innovation
We pride ourselves in bringing a new and emerging technology to one of the oldest living sectors. In doing so, we guide cultural organizations in leveraging this technology with a values-led focus. Blockchain might be a new innovation but to produce creative digital innovation requires critical reflection on how this technology could be applied to the values and ethos of the cultural sector.
Creating Connectivity
Building on the work of our sister company Pass It Down, Iconic Moments explores how NFTs might create new ways of exploring collections from across the sector and encourage audiences to connect with history and culture. NFTs offer a development on the personalized digital collection where users can own their favorite moments in history and culture and we believe this provides a new means to connect with cultural organizations. Our work also attempts to bridge the gap between the cultural sector and web3. We know this won’t be easy and it will require education and open discussions, but we are excited to connect this sector with the future developments of the internet.
Being Sustainable
Sustainability can refer to both self-sufficiency and focusing on environmental impact, and here at Iconic Moments we are hyper-aware of the need for cultural organizations to consider both parts to the term. Our platform provides cultural organizations with opportunities to explore new avenues for funding that interplays and experiments with their collections and provides a new means to connect with audiences. Importantly, we are in constant conversation about how we might make a platform environmentally sustainable in the longer-term so that we can provide museums with a way of engaging with web3 from an environmentally friendly mindset.
Looking to the Future
By winning this award, we have shown how our embrace of web3 with a values-led approach offers the cultural sector a digitally innovative tool that can support their future work and engage their audiences in new ways. We are excited to champion this new approach and whilst we are only at the start of this journey, we look forward to bringing this new and emerging technology to this sector.
