Europeana wins global education award for work to open up digital cultural heritage

23 March 2018, The Hague

The Open Culture Award recognises an exemplary initiative promoting free and open access to cultural heritage collections; a project which showcases humanity’s patrimony freely, openly and without any restrictions.

Europeana is Europe's digital platform for cultural heritage, providing online access to tens of millions of digitised items from cultural institutions across Europe - from books, photos and paintings to television broadcasts and 3D objects.  

The OEA award recognises Europeana’s work in opening up this shared cultural wealth and working to make it freely available for learning, for research, for creatives and for pleasure - and in particular its efforts in making digital cultural heritage content available for use in education.

Harry Verwayen, Acting Executive Director at Europeana, says:

‘It is wonderful that the Open Education Awards have recognised Europeana’s work, especially in 2018, the European Year of Cultural Heritage. Our mission is to transform the world with culture by contributing to an open, knowledgeable and creative society. We bring together the organisations that have great open material with the people and sectors that need it, and it is particularly special to be recognised by the education sector which is a key focus for Europeana.’

Europeana was rewarded by the Open Education Awards for Excellence Committee, which is comprised of educators and open education advocates from around the world, and which reviews nominations and selects OEA winners in Open Educational Resources, Open Projects & Initiatives, as well as exemplary leaders in Open Education worldwide.

ENDS

Media contact

Eleanor Kenny - Europeana Foundation
E: Eleanor.Kenny@europeana.eu

About Europeana

Europeana is Europe’s platform for digital cultural heritage with a mission to ‘transform the world with culture’. Europeana Collections is Europe’s digital library, museum, gallery and archive. From books, photos and paintings to television broadcasts and 3D objects, Europeana Collections provides online access to a vast store of cultural heritage material from across Europe for everyone to find, use and share: for research, for learning, for creating new things. (@EuropeanaEU)

Europeana DSI is co-financed by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility.