Europeana highlights - April to June 2022

This quarter we have established a Working Group to support the digital cultural heritage of Ukraine, looked at the Europeana Foundation’s carbon footprint to see how we can minimise our impact on the planet, and heard Harry Verwayen reflect on why collaboration and community are important to him and to Europeana.

We want everyone to enjoy the Europeana website. So, this quarter we shared progress on how we’re dealing with problematic, sensitive or contentious content, and how we’re making sure the Europeana website works for a visually diverse audience. We also celebrated the Europeana Sport project, which highlighted sport heritage through collections, digital storytelling and participatory events.

Europeana’s ‘Built with Bits’ programme invited students and educators to combine collaborative learning experiences and digital technologies with the values of accessibility, inclusivity and sustainability. We explored the results of the first programme, and introduced the start of its second iteration - Built with Bits Brussels. 

In May and June, Europeana and the Heritage Lab’s Digital Storytelling Festival encouraged people to tell stories with digital cultural heritage and ran a wonderful Opening Gala full of storytellers, creative workshops and resources. Supporting this on Europeana Pro, we explored digital storytelling in action and reflected on how digital storytelling can uncover new stories from women throughout history.

A selection of some of the other most-read Europeana Pro News items from April, May and June 2022.

• Europeana Initiative Task Force offers new learnings for digital transformation
• Europeana Copyright Community launches guidelines on copyright management for cultural heritage institutions
• Teaching with digitised medieval manuscripts in post-secondary education

We look back at some of the recent events taking place in and around Europeana. We hear about ‘Transcription Week’, a crowdsourcing campaign to transcribe and enrich handwritten documents and maps; a series of WEAVE events, bringing people from diverse backgrounds together to explore how the heritage of minoritised communities is often misunderstood or misrepresented in digital collections; and the Europeana Aggregators’ Forum’s next outreach event.