Looking at migration to and from Europe historically, Europeana aims to show that the geographical moving of people makes culture richer. Our cultural heritage shows us that the Europe we inhabit today is the result of a flow of people and ideas and that migration is woven through and enriches our everyday lives in many ways.
Throughout 2018, the European Year of Cultural Heritage, Europeana ran a series of collection days and events involving museums, libraries, archives and audiovisual collections across Europe that specialise in or are interested in the theme of migration.
People young and old were invited to join in online - contributing to and exploring a migration thematic collection on the Europeana Collections website - and at cultural heritage organisations - by participating at museum events where they shared their personal migration stories, with material such as pictures, diaries, videos and letters.
Outcomes of the campaign
The video and presentation below summarise the campaign, its objectives, outcomes and our insights.
Contribute your content
Europeana Migration is a thematic collection bringing together content relating to migration to, from and within Europe. If you represent a cultural heritage institution with collections that relate to the theme of migration, we'd love to hear from you.
What content are we looking for?
We're looking for documentary evidence, material culture and personal stories reflecting migration movements in Europe over many centuries, as well as how these have affected the arts and sciences.
To see how to prepare your data for inclusion, please read the Europeana Publishing Guide.
Reasons to get involved:
- To be part of Europeana Migration, a unique, multilingual digital resource where thousands of cultural institutions – from regional archives to national museums – share their collections
- To bring your content to new audiences: individuals and professionals who can discover, research, share and enjoy Europe’s wealth of digital cultural resources
- To showcase collections in blogs, galleries, online exhibitions and social media to reach millions of citizens across Europe
- To see your collections reused within research, education and the creative industries
Host a collection day
At a Europeana Migration Collection Days, people are invited to share their stories and material relating to migration and family history. Collection Days have taken place in museums, libraries, galleries, archives and other cultural heritage institutions and are an opportunity for the public to share their own individual or family migration stories. See the stories shared so far.
How Europeana can help with your Collection Day:
- We'll provide expertise and knowledge of running Collection Day events, including how to tutorials and an online tool for capturing data
- We'll give you press and marketing material templates
- We'll give you access to our user-generated story contribution platform
- We'll help provide visibility for your collections / organisation
- You'll be connected to our network of 3,500 cultural heritage institutions
If you are interested in running your own Collection Day event to digitise and add material for Europeana Migration, you can find help and advice on how to do that in the following documents.
Europeana Migration Collection Days are based on the Oxford Community Collection Model.
