Hunan Museum’s Animation Series — Travel with the Cultural Treasures was Shortlisted for the "Chinese Cultural Relics All-Media Communication Excellence (New Media) "

On June 11, a series of host city activities of the Cultural and Natural Heritage Day were held in Lanzhou, Gansu Province. At the event, the recommended and shortlisted projects of the 2022 Chinese Cultural Relics All-Media Communication Excellence (New Media), which was jointly held by the National Cultural Heritage Administration and the Cyberspace Administration of China, were officially announced. 10 works, including Travel with the Cultural Treasures, a series of short animated videos planned and produced by the Hunan Museum, were awarded the shortlisted project of the Chinese Cultural Relics All-Media Communication Excellence (New Media). Duan Xiaoming, director of the Hunan Museum, attended the ceremony and received the award.

Travel with the Cultural Treasures was collaboratively produced and released by the Hunan Museum, the Fine Arts Academy of Hunan Normal University and the Xinhua News Agency, covering animation videos, animation posters, interactive H5, offline activities, cultural and creative products and other media forms. The 9 (sets of) cartoon characters in the 9-episode short animated videos were based on the cultural relics collected by the Hunan Museum, and they lead the audience to explore certain historical periods and know more about the historical settings through “livestreaming”. The animation introduces hard core and rich knowledge of history, art, culture and folklore, and incorporates the most popular and fashionable components of livestreaming, live streamers, China-chic and Chibi, making it meaningful and easy-to-understand. The short videos were released at home and abroad in June 2021. According to the Xinhua News Agency, the animation got over  100 million views online. At the same time, the series of animated videos were shown on overseas platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube through Xinhua News Agency, and were well received across the world, with the number of overseas media views exceeding one million. The much-discussed Travel with the Cultural Treasures was praised by many Chinese overseas and global audience, making a positive contribution to the foreign communication of excellent traditional Chinese culture.

This excellence promotion activity aimed to thoroughly implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important statements and instructions on heritage work, strengthen the protection and utilization of cultural relics and inheritance and protection of cultural heritages, improve the research, interpretation, display and dissemination level of cultural relics, enhance the protection awareness of cultural relics in the whole society, present the value of cultural relics in the era, and demonstrate cultural relics-related work. A total of 234 application projects were received in this promotion activity, including 2,502 works, covering key cultural relics fields such as archaeology, cultural relics protection, museum and social cultural relics, cultural relics scientific and technological innovation, revolutionary cultural relics, foreign exchanges and cooperation. And they were in diverse communication forms, including audio and video, short videos series, cultural relic media convergence, Anime & Comic, vertical comic, livestreaming, H5, mini program and cloud display.

The new media communication work of the Hunan Museum has always kept up with the development of the times. Since 2018, relying on the resources of the museum, it has successively launched a number of short animation videos such as Han Dynasty Travel Guide, Relic Rebirth Secrets, and Travel with the Cultural Treasures. All of them have won plenty of praise, among which Relic Rebirth Secrets was awarded the 2020 Chinese Cultural Relics All-Media Communication Excellence (New Media). In the future, the Hunan Museum will continue to leverage the new media platform to extensively collect, thematically explore and creatively utilize the cultural relics, exhibitions and educational resources of it, combine various latest technical means, and cooperate with more universities, research institutes and media, so as to tell the stories behind the cultural relics, improve public cultural services, and convey the excellent traditional Chinese culture.