Thinking Phygital: A Museological Framework of Predictive Futures

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic has underpinned the relevance and significance of the strategic use of digital tools for museums as they were unexpectedly obliged to function from behind physically closed doors. Indeed, it is fair to state that museums have come to recognise the relevance and significance of the digital to a far greater degree than they did prior to the pandemic, and museums have also acknowledged an opportunity to experiment and engage with audiences through the strategic use of digital tools. With the return of physical museum audiences (albeit in fits and starts), museums might consider this to mean that digital tools are now less relevant, rather than identifying opportunities to strike a measure of equilibrium between the digital and physical going forward. Acknowledging what has been achieved so far is certainly one point of departure, although it provides only a limited view of the broad range of possibilities that museums might have to choose from in the future. This paper explores the possible spectrum of museum experiences within the remit of the ‘phygital’, and how the physical and the digital can potentially interact to define a museum experience through the lens of museum theory. The possible ‘phygital’ scenarios, ranging from what we will term ‘sustained physical’ to ‘autonomous digital’ shall be identified through the lens of a futures literacy methodology. Such a methodology allows us to rigorously anticipate possible future scenarios and is accompanied by a series of case studies that are also representative of such scenarios. Finally, the paper anticipates possible scenarios for the phygital in terms of museums’ goals, objectives and available resources.