During an intensive week, 8 to 12 September 2025, a multidisciplinary team comprising nine teachers and academics, four students and three PhD students from four Arqus universities (Padua, Granada, Minho and Leipzig) gathered at Leipzig University for the Arqus Inclusion Hackathon, organised by the Arqus Inclusion & Diversity Hub and Arqus Linking Local Ecosystems.
During this event, participants worked on real-world challenges faced by companies and public facilities with a focus on inclusiveness and accessibility, exploring these topics with collaborative hands-on sessions, while visiting local partners: the Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, Eye-Able by Web Inclusion GmbH, and Inclusive Gaming, and making a final presentation in which participant teams showcased their proposed solutions.
The first day of the event kicked off at the Lab. Chiara Enderle (Leipzig University), with the participants’ welcome and a team-building exercise to reflect on their joint understanding of inclusion. From this activity emerged a rich variety of themes and topics: innovation, freedom, and exploring diverse forms of expression, among others.
After that, participants visited on their second day the ethnological GRASSI Museum to learn more about individual works of art and exhibited pieces from different eras and cultures looted by colonialism.
During the visit, Sabine Wohlfahrt, education and mediation project manager at GRASSI, formulated a challenge to the participants:“How can the museum transfer knowledge, education, and the social values behind these objects to everyone to become more inclusive and accessible?” This question set the tone for the rest of the tour, which concluded with Christine Fischer (responsible for the Africa collections at GRASSI) presenting the inclusive room, an accessible space in the museum designed to welcome all visitors.
In addition to this tour, the second day also included an introduction by Paula Trigueiros (University of Minho, School of Architecture, Art and Design) to inclusive (universal) design as one way to address wicked problems; sharing her book and the ‘activity map’ as a means to enrich the inclusive perspective of the “state of the art“ of any project. Antonio J. Chica Nuñez (University of Granada, Department of Translation and Interpreting) participated in this introduction too, presenting illustrative examples of inclusive apps for museums, found on diffusive platforms and online portals for dissemination and evaluation of accessible audio-visual resources (e.g., TRACCE project, ALMusactra, PRA2).
The third day commenced with a presentation on design thinking, sharing with the participants some useful tools, warning them that these tools are not always the solutions for removing all barriers (e.g., Microsoft Seeing AI, Rayban Meta Glasses, etc.).
Prof. Ombretta Gaggi (University of Padua, Department of Mathematics) gave a dynamic presentation on web content accessibility, concluding that “accessibility is innovation” and “fixing accessibility issues costs more than designing accessible content”.
From this presentation, participants learned that there are still some roadworks ahead, but by changing the environment, we can enable people.
Afterwards, in the afternoon, they visited the start-up Inclusive Gaming, where the CEO Stefan Wilhelm presented how a company can build a business model with inclusive solutions: computer games for visually impaired people.
The fourth day, students from three teams submerged themselves in prototyping solutions to defined challenges related to the GRASSI-Museum in the Lab. Christian Hauke (Leipzig University, SMILE), where the teams were supported with creativity techniques for designing innovative solutions.
On the last day, the teams had 10 minutes to pitch their ideas and solutions, using any tools they wished, and receive feedback on the innovation and potential of their proposals from a panel of critics and potential end-users, including Stefan Wilhelm from Inclusive Gaming, Max Scholz from Eye-Able and Sabine Wohlfahrt from the GRASSI museum
The Design Solutions developed during the Arqus Inclusion Hackathon.
Bring Back the Objects – Catching the Attention of Children
This activity, designed for the GRASSI museum, targets children like Otto and Rosa, energetic and enthusiastic young learners who struggle with attention and concentration.
The children are introduced to a game in which they transform into secret agents on a mission to return stolen objects from foreign countries. Children navigate themed rooms with engaging missions, such as searching for hidden items in a room filled with large objects, designing colourful masks to send back to their home countries, and reconstructing the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Each completed mission earns a stamp on their personal mission map. Successful participants are rewarded with an official secret agent ID, combining fun, creativity and focus-building in a unique learning experience.
A Journey Through Time: families together in the museums
With an inclusive approach, this project is an innovative proposal for the Grassi Museum, designed with diverse family groups in mind.
The inclusive, multisensory visit, created for a group including a blind teenager and a grandfather with limited mobility, focuses on adapting the experience for everyone.
The journey begins in a rest area with soft seating and music, where visitors can prepare and download supporting content, such as audio guides or tactile maps, to optimise their visit. The route is marked by mediating objects which, by forming a simple narrative about modes of transport, guide participants through the exhibition.
The family boards a wooden boat, surrounded by the sounds of waves and sailors; they encounter a life-sized elephant with textured skin and resonant rumbles that can be both heard and felt, followed by a sculpted horse with a saddle to sit on and soundscapes of galloping hooves.
At each point, an interactive module allows the grandfather to rest while everyone listens to detailed information about the piece. The child is invited to participate actively in multisensory interactions, such as a vibrating mat, while collecting pieces for a puzzle they will complete at the end. Orientation is facilitated by elements such as coloured lines on the floor and the thematic soundscape.
The visit culminates in a return to the lounge, where the family can deepen their experience with additional materials, such as games and books related to the story.
Touching Emotions
Touching Emotion is a project designed to enhance accessibility at the GRASSI Museum for blind visitors and for those who experience difficulties with reading. Its starting point is the idea that accessibility can be expanded through the emotions that artworks and installations are meant to evoke.
The project seeks not only to capture and engage the visitor, but also to create opportunities for them to express their own emotions in return.
To achieve this, Touching Emotions combines innovative approaches in sound design, scent design, and tactile exploration, making use of immersive soundscapes, carefully aligned with the artistic and historical content of each room, surrounding visitors and creating a 360-degree sensory experience.
Using localised scent diffusers will add another dimension, enabling people to experience the artworks through smell, intensifying the emotions conveyed in combination with sound and storytelling.
A curated selection of 3D-printed reproductions invites visitors to explore the works through touch, complemented by textured ribbons that help convey the scale of artworks that are particularly large or small.
Finally, visitors will have the opportunity to leave a trace of their own experience in a dedicated space that will allow them to record audio or video reflections of their emotions and thoughts. With the author’s consent, these personal contributions will be archived and made available for future visits, building a collective, evolving diary of the museum experience.
The Inclusion Hackathon was organised by Working Group 10 Arqus Inclusion & Diversity Hub and Arqus Working Group 8 Linking Local Ecosystems, in collaboration with SMILE, the startup support service of Leipzig University.
In alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the Inclusion Hackathon empowered participants to solve societal challenges through innovation while promoting diversity and inclusion.
Participants received a certificate of attendance. Travel, accommodation, and subsistence costs were covered by funds from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space.
