Culture Hackathon 2025: “Leave No One Behind” – Innovation Meets Sustainability
The association OpenGLAM.at placed the 2025 Culture Hackathon under the motto “Leave No One Behind” – a central principle of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As part of the FFG-funded GREENGLAM project, creative minds from the fields of art, culture, technology, and research addressed the question of how objects from the Lower Austria State Collection or the museum management's online catalog can be linked to the SDGs. The aim was to raise awareness of sustainability among the general public and to show how cultural treasures are connected to everyday life.
Ms. Sylvia Petrovic-Majer, Chairwoman OpenGLAM.at has been convinced of the following approach since the association was founded in 2013:
"If we want to work sustainably with data, there is no way around OPEN DATA. Only freely available, modifiable, and usable data can guarantee reuse. The Culture Hackathon highlights the innovation behind open cultural data and thus also draws attention to its economic benefits. With OPEN DATA, we follow the principles of the SDGs and can thus refer to each of the 17 sustainability goals, depending on the content."
The interdisciplinary teams developed innovative projects that not only promoted exchange between disciplines, but also created lasting connections between culture and technology. Titles such as “Fun with Facts – Make History Bad Again,” “Prompting History,” and “CONNECTA – Local Heritage Vending Machine” testify to the enthusiasm and creativity of the participants. Lyndon Nixon, project manager of GreenGLAM (Technology module), pursues the following approach throughout the project “The relevance of local museum collections to the public can be highlighted by linking them to current news and the SDGs.”
Maja Sausmekat from the Virtual Underwater Museum Malta provided inspiring impetus at the start. The event was organized by OpenGLAM.at (www.openglam.at) as part of the GREENGLAM project (www.greenglam.at). The culture hackathon was supported and sponsored by the Province of Lower Austria (Department of Art and Culture and Department of Science and Research), SmartUp St. Pölten, the City of St. Pölten, and the E³UDRES² Open Innovation Hub “Creative Industries & Digital Media” at the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences.
Read more about our achievements in the NÖN-Artikel <–
Fotos: CC BY 4.0 OpenGLAM.at – Foto: Anna Puhr (Blue Shield Austria)
