ArtCentrica

ArtCentrica fills a gap in how art is appreciated, taught and learned, bringing high quality digital content. High-res reproduction of artworks as well as high curated historical information and metadata, powered by ontologies and AI, enable students to choose freely and autonomously their educational path. ArtCentrica provides a user experience that has been designed to provide engagement within the user. We have designed a business model where our partner museums gain visibility and a percentage of our revenues, creating also economical value from their digital assets. We want to democratise the access to art, enabling also third party local professionals to create value for the platform, sharing their knowledge and finding a job opportunity. ArtCentrica can create a scalable ethical business proposition that effectively impact the art education market and beyond. You can test ArtCentrica for free for 10 days registering at http://art.centrica.it

Art access is not yet democratised and is not present with high quality content and features in the education market. At the same time the business model of museums is obsolete. With ArtCentrica we innovate both and provide a better experience to art learners and lovers.

Traditional lessons are often one-way oriented, teachers lecture and students listen. This approach contributes to building an education environment that doesn't adapt or advance, making the learning experience uninspiring, monotonous and in most cases, outdated. So, it is challenging for teachers to evaluate their students in a way that can be both instructive and not discouraging at the same time.
The lack of high quality content and user experience leads to a less and less
 stimulating environment for children’s creativity.
The traditional, frontal approach used at school does not stimulate the curiosity of
young students, does not involve the development of a personal learning process for the student, and, overall, flattens down the mean students' quality of education.

ArtCentrica is a cloud application which contains a part of the artistic heritage of the Uffizi Galleries in high resolution, a selection of artworks from Brera museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Rijksmuseum, Graphic Institute in Rome and many others that will be added in the next months. ArtCentrica brings a new learning and teaching experience, allowing teachers and students to visualize in detail, compare, virtually measure and correlate artworks. ArtCentrica pedagogical approach is based on Montessori Method: the learning process is a sort of game - encourages exploration - absorb and experience new information - teachers can verify what activity the child is interested in, and customise lessons accordingly. 

ArtCentrica is based on a set of proprietary technologies like image serving, ontologies and AI. ArtCentrica recently introduced AI to automatically suggest and manually review Region of Interests associated with concepts. It is system of web services and microservices, fully horizontally scalable using multiple concurrent hardware machines.  

ArtCentrica is browser based app and can be tested for free for 10 days registering at http://art.centrica.it.

The target population that is addressable by ArtCentrica is of at least 100 millions learners in different education phases, from primary schools to universities and artistic schools. Art is becoming more and more important for developing soft skills and there is the shift from STEM to STEAM.

High quality art content is not accessible to the education market apart from Google Arts&Culture which is not specific designed for the education market and it is not accessible in China.

We are creating a network of Ambassadors in the education market that will promote ArtCentrica providing us valuable insights in what can be improved.

At a later stage we want to bring ArtCentrica in people houses, increasing the target market to at list 2 billions people. 

The problem we address is to provide access to art in high quality with a set of features that create a new experience with art, for learners and art lovers. Travels have been highly affected by Covid-19 and it is difficult to reach museums like before. Art is becoming important to study not only for curricula but to develop the soft skills (transition from STEM to STEAM is a clear indicator). The target learners population that is addressable by ArtCentrica is of at least 100 million and can increase to 1 Billion reaching also art lovers at home.

We are testing ArtCentrica with different institutions worldwide:

• Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Paraguay
• ACADEMICA (US-Miami)
• Italy (Artistic School in Pistoia) 
• Italy (Municipality of Piazzola sul Brenta)
• 400 users registered in the ArtCentrica platform
• National Geographic Society with a vertical development using their content

ArtCentrica is innovative for multiple reasons:

1. High-resolution images (till 10 GigaPixels each), curated content, multiple collections, a set of enabling technologies that deal with media (image server, ..) and content (ontologies, AI) to provide a complete new experience with art
2. Innovative business model that brings value to museums (visibility, money), to the education market (a powerful tool not existing before), to people (empowering their art knowledge and soft skills). In the future we want to add local experts as knowledge provider and provide to them job opportunities, contributing to the scalability of the service

ArtCentrica received many important awards:

• Train Digital Tourist Experience - FS Innova by Trenitalia SpA (July 2021)
• That's Geography special track National Geographic in Global EdTech Startup Awards (January 2021)
• ArtCentrica is between the best ICT tools for teaching and learning in Reimagine Education 2020 (December 2020)

The application is an active tool in the renewal of the cultural heritage sector and is still evolving, both in technological and content. We aim to have a product that can be used by an ever-growing audience, becoming an opportunity for dialogue and enrichment between different cultures and places. 

ArtCentrica provides a user experience that has been designed to provide engagement in the user. 

We want to democratise the access to Art and associated knowledge creating a scalable ethical business that can bring an impact in the art education market and beyond. 

ArtCentrica is based on the following proprietary Centrica technologies: 1) XLimage® for the delivery of very high resolution digital images on the Internet. The main advantage of XLimage® is the possibility for users to display on their devices (browser, touch screen, pc, smartphone / tablet, electronic whiteboard, Apple TV) very high resolution images without any problem related to bandwidth. 2) XLknowledge® for knowledge representation based on ontologies and AI. Among the main advantages in the use of XLknowledge® technology, there are the automatisms created by the association between different representation models (work, artist, etc.) that guarantee an intelligent fruition, together with the ease with which each model can be extended over time, to ensure a continuous evolution of new functionalities, themes or contents. 3) an integrated system of services and web microservices horizontally scalable using multiple hardware machines at the same time. 

Comparison feature between two Bronzino's portrait (on the left an artwork conserved in Uffizi Galleries and in the right one conserved in the MET).

ArtCentrica is based on a set of proprietary technologies designed and developed by Centrica (XLimage image server, XLknowledge ontology server, ...) deployed on Amazon Web Services.

You can try ArtCentrica for 10 days free by registering at ArtCentrica http://art.centrica.it and follow the product evolution on website http://www.artcentrica.com. 

At this stage ArtCentrica does not bring risks and follows EU GDPR regulation. 

We are currently serving 1.000 people.

In one year we want to reach 25.000 people and 100 educational institutions.

In five years we wan to reach 5.000.000 people in education market and 100.000.000 in home market

Social Impact

We want to democratise the access to art and associated knowledge. Our purpose is to foster the appreciation and valorisation of cultural heritage through hi-res images by promoting knowledge through interactive technologies and apps for education. ArtCentrica aims to meaningfully impact on cultural institutions, by improving their visibility and supporting them also with economical resources.

We want to make art really accessible to everyone powering the soft skills of all learners and enabling art appreciation and understanding for millions of people

Supporting Innovation

ArtCentrica’s implementations could boost innovative ways to approach EdTech thanks to its engaging formula. Technologies could stimulate every user’s curiosity and creativity . We think that art fruition should be as intuitive as possible: to the complexity of technology, we apply our easy and attractive solutions, accessible in a classroom and by personal devices.

Equal Opportunities

We firmly believe in equal opportunities. In fact our company team is heterogeneous and we combine different profiles and skills with an inclusive approach. With the same attitude we created our App which gives everyone the possibility to remotely discover artworks from all the world, thanks to the internet and a computer, a whiteboard, a tablet, a smartphone. We believe in the power of art to open our minds and we want to extend this beneficial opportunity to everyone. 

We use the following indicators:

1. Number of users of ArtCentrica (final users and educational institutions)
2. Number of museums and cultural institutions that become ArtCentrica partners
3. Number of Ambassadors of ArtCentrica
4. Number of contracts with B2B partners for vertical projects based on ArtCentrica Platform

We want to introduce measurable indicators to understand better how to improve the learning process and the experience

Founders (60 years of experience in culture&tech) Marco Cappellini: CEO and Marketing&Sales&Financial; Paolo De Rocco: Director of Digital Imaging; Paolo Romoli: Director of Software Development.

7 full time staff (Senior Developer; Sales&Marketing; Art Director; Art Historian; Art Historian and teacher, Communication&Social)

2 part-time (2 Senior cataloguers).

The composition of Centrica's team is probably the real strategic advantage over competitors. Our team is composed of people from very different backgrounds: Centrica content&technology company with a deep know-how in art&education, digitisation and software. Management and board have cumulative 60 years of experience in culture&tech with international experience and proved know-how.

The development team is interdisciplinary, from engineers and software developers to art direction, art historians and art teacher. 

Gender balance. Percentage of women in the team is exactly 50%. We have always been open to everyone. The criteria that we use to select people to be part of our team are their knowledge, their ethical principles, their passion.

We apply to TPrize Challenge because we want to open the LATAM market for ArtCentrica and TPrize can bring financial resources, visibility, partnership opportunities, investors, industrial partners, strategic to create the first steps for ArtCentrica in the LATAM market.

So TPrize can be the opportunity to diminish the financial and partnership barriers for ArtCentrica.

We surely need support in designing and executing the penetration strategy in the LATAM market.

What we must understand better is:

• product-market fit for LATAM countries and where it is better to start
• marketing activities
• prospects and sales: who are the key buyer people in organisations and government
• specific development of ArtCentrica for LATAM countries

SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES

1. Escuela de Conservación y Restauración de Occidente 
2. Instituto Nacional Antropología e Historia - INAH 
3. Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía 
4. Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro 
5. Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí 

COMPANIES

1. Sackbé 
2. Grupo Tares 

MUSEMS 

1. Museo Dolores Olmedo 
2. Museo Nacional de Antropología 
3. INAH 
4. Museo Soumaya 
5. Secretaría de Turismo DF (ufficio di turismo della città del Messico- CDMX) 
6. Museo del Vidrio 
7. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo 
8. Secretaría de Turismo de Nuevo León /ufficio di turismo dello Stato di Nuevo León. 
9. Museo de Historia Mexicana