A Collaborative Model for Lifelong Learning and the Arts Using Broadband Multicasting

The Cleveland Museum of Art has embarked on an innovative program which delivers lifelong learning opportunities through cultural programming to isolated and impaired older persons by providing high quality live interactive video and video on demand. This is distributed using broadband multicasting over a hndamentally public infrastructure. The purpose of the program is two-fold: First, this project demonstrates that this type of programming can be profoundly beneficial to the recipients who are otherwise isolated from traditional cultural, social, and intellectual engagement. Second, this project emulates how the internet will deliver far higher quality of media content as broadband multicasting becomes more widely feasible, thereby enabling this type of program delivery. In addition to program and technical descriptions of the project, emphasis is placed on the process that generated the concept and then brought community organizations, technology companies, and diverse cultural organizations together in order to makc the project a success.