Community aspirations and impact areas

1.1 Community aspiration and long-term aims

The Impact Community aims to stimulate reflective, considerate and purposeful discussions around the topic of impact assessment; and to empower the cultural heritage sector in its digital transformation with the skills and resources it needs to apply an impact approach in order to expand its reach and understand the value of its work.

For 2025 the main focus of our activities will continue to be on the promotion of the online Impact Playbook resource, to build further on the development of training and collection of use cases, and to highlight important strategic areas relating to impact and digital heritage.

Our aspiration contributes to the objectives and vision of the Europeana Initiative Vision 2030 in its focus on capacity building and resources for professionals and driving impact through thematic pan-European campaigns: scalable methods. We also support the Strategy’s plan to strengthen relationships and engage with Member States.

Our Community aspiration is connected to two of the long-term aims set out in the Impact Model:

• LT.1 Just economic and social growth through cultural data used for personal, professional and/or economic purposes

• LT.2 People are more productive and innovative after engaging with knowledge development and transfer activities

1.2 Delivering your community aspiration - connecting to one or more of the impact pathways

We will deliver our community aspirations through the impact pathway for (P.2) Knowledge, skills and innovation by the following actions:

• Raising awareness and confidence in applying the playbook

• Embedding an impact design approach to planning across ENA

• Supporting the development of new metrics to capture the value of current ENA activity

• Building a directory of case studies which demonstrate a diverse range of playbook applications

In the coming year, we will work on creating a Change Pathway for our community.

2. Impact Community membership

As of October 2024, the Impact Community has 1,949 members. Most of our knowledge about our membership is based on a survey undertaken in 2021. There was a low response rate, but the survey showed that our Members are typically members of several communities; their role involves them doing communications, but they are not necessarily communications professionals; they are interested in networking with others and with webinars.

Our members engage through reading our newsletter; circulating news on Listserv; through our LinkedIn group (although this group also has non-members); and through attending events and webinars relevant to the topic of Impact.

We aim to interact more and more effectively with our community members in general and impact playbook users in particular by trying to find answers to the following questions:

• What barriers are there to implementing the playbook?

• To what extent does using the playbook have a positive impact on organisational culture?

• How can we best support the impact community?

• What is the current demographic of our playbook users?

In the coming year we will consider running an empathy map exercise and reviewing existing data to become more familiar and comfortable in reaching our existing and desired audience(s).

We will make efforts to increase our network of active Impact practitioners and to get a better understanding of the overall use of the playbook, which currently is undocumented. To get to know community members without using surveys (at the risk of survey fatigue), we will also engage in activities that foster natural interactions and build relationships over time. This could be through active listening and organic relationship-building over data collection, creating a more personal and meaningful connection with our community.

Governance

3.1 SG composition (including any potential changes)

• Maria Drabczyk

• Jason Evans

• Juha Henriksson

• Matilda Justinić

• Jenny Kidd

• Antonio Davide Madonna

• Chiara Marchini

• Nicole McNeilly (Community Advisor)

• Ad Pollé (Community Manager)

• Nienke van Schaverbeke

• Dafydd Tudur

3.2 Chair and responsibilities

The Impact Community Steering Group (SG) will operate under a rotating chair (six month period). The first chair for 2025 (January - June period) will be (tbc).

The SG intends to allocate specific tasks and responsibilities to steering group members. SG members are empowered to lead on specific areas of work (where they have capacity and interest) and to represent the Impact Community at different events, always with the support of Europeana Foundation colleagues. SG members are encouraged to harness their networks and to use this to inform what the Impact Community should do and how we can increase engagement and the value for members.

3.3 Intention to meet

The SG meets online monthly, in-person when appropriate and possible.

3.4 Recruitment

With the election of new Members’ Council representatives, several of whom have interest or skills in using the Europeana Impact Playbook, we intend to recruit new steering group members who will represent us on the MC. In addition, we may recruit more widely from the Community.

4. Activity plan

4.1 Outreach and communications 

Our main aim is to raise awareness about impact thinking in digital cultural heritage contexts in general and to increase the number of users of the Impact Lite online resource in particular. In doing so we will focus on the following topics:

• the promotion of the Impact Lite online resource;

• the collection and presentation of use cases;

• the development of the training offer; and,

• measuring the impact in and of the data space.

The SG will do this through our communication via Europeana and Impact Community-specific channels, such as:

• Newsletters (3 to 4) to Impact Community members

• ListServ to engage members and encourage discussion/interactivity

• Europeana Pro website

• LinkedIn group and community (including a stronger pivot to a focus on Europeana)

• Europeana’s social media channels

4.2 Peer to peer knowledge-sharing activities

The SG will encourage more connections between Impact Community members, in the wider ENA and beyond (i.e the Impact Playbook users and the LinkedIn group) by scheduling networking and knowledge sharing events, and representing the community at events for new and wider audiences. Our goal is to create an active community of practice around impact.

The SG will continue with the series of Impact Community Cafés and Impact Surgeries (max 2 each). We aim to increase the number of Impact Community members and/or its various communication channels.

Target activities across 2025 (dates to be confirmed):

• Presentations by SG members at non-Europeana events

• Impact Surgeries (similar to community cafés or office hours)

• Webinars, possibly including, for example:

  • Aggregators impact webinar (in particular with the Dutch, German, Italian, Welsh aggregators; drawing on our submission for EuropeanaTech 2023)

  • Digital heritage in education - together with the education community (tbc)

• Europeana Pro news pieces authored or led by SG members (related to other activities such as the above-mentioned webinars)

4.3 Task force(s) or working groups

The Community does not have plans for a Task Force.

5. Monitoring engagement and success

In 2025, we will track the:

• Number, attendance and satisfaction rate of any events organised by the community

• Number of newsletters sent and relevant performance metrics (e.g. open and click rates)

• Number of Community members (including communication channels)

• Views of the community page and news pieces on Europeana Pro

Ad Pollé, as the community support from the Europeana Foundation, will supply these figures with the support of other EF colleagues where necessary.

As for metrics, we aim to reach for:

• 3 to 4 newsletters

• 2 to 3 events

• 10% growth in engagement on LinkedIn

• 10% growth in Impact Playbook users

• 75% of training participants report gaining practical knowledge

We will use this data to inform planning and activities for the following year

6. Budget

6.1 Budget request

Budget required 4,000 EUR (exact breakdown to be determined) for the

1. Development of impact training and promotional resources.

2. Financial support to attend a physical SG meeting.

3. Remaining budget for contingency.

Explore the Impact Community's work plans from previous years.