Celebrating International Women's Day with a community of collage creators

Europeana Foundation and the Paris Collage Collective joined forces to organise a creative workshop at Espace Canopy on International Women's Day, which is celebrated on 8 March every year. Paris Collage Collective is an international collage community that connects local and global artists through collage art. The Collective posts weekly creative challenges that are open for anyone to join.

Together with Europeana, the Collective organised a workshop in Paris on 8 March to celebrate International Women's Day. Europeana provided openly licensed cultural heritage objects from its vast database for the participants to remix into personal creations. The images that Europeana provided were linked to Women's History Month, celebrating the achievements and stories of pioneering women through Europe's past and present.

The workshop space in Paris filled up quickly, with extra chairs having to be brought in to accommodate everyone. The crowd was composed of collage veterans and first-time collage makers. 

Even though the event was locally run in Paris, the Paris Collage Collective is truly international. Some attendants flew in from as far as the United States to reconnect with friends and take part in the in-person workshop.

Throughout the event, people touched upon the sense of community that comes with creating a space like this, where people can come together to create collages as well as celebrate International Women’s Day. Taking part in a workshop like this immediately plunges you into the community itself: passing each other materials, helping each other out, and talking about each other's creations and experiences.

One participant said, ‘It was important for me today to be here, part of this community of collagists…(creating collage) I could express my ideas about where I am today about my thoughts and my feelings.’

Collages give people a way to talk about current affairs, politics, and deep and personal emotions and reflections. This is something that was felt at this event, where some through their collage highlighted the male gaze, oppressive laws that continue to be inflicted on women and others shared the aspect of domestic violence. What was said several times was that the day was not ‘La journée internationale des femmes’ ( International Women’s Day) but ‘La journée internationale des droits des femmes’ (International Day of Women’s Rights).

Everyone imbues their personal thoughts and experiences in a piece of art to share, talk about and re-interpret. The ability to do so by reusing cultural heritage from Europeana.eu that was created, in turn, by other artists from the past, creates an intriguing feedback loop of art remixing and reusing. But most of all, important messages can be shared and expressed. When using cultural heritage can be a part of expressing current affairs in our society on oppressive aspects that still need to change, supporting communities, and creating a space where people feel free to release the things they want to communicate from within them, that is invaluable and unmeasurable. Europeana provided the cultural materials, Espace Canopy provided the space with a welcoming atmosphere and a beautiful community of people who attend their activities. Paris Collage Collective provided the platform and international network, and the audience and community in turn created visual stories and messages that mark ‘International Day of Women’s Rights’ as a day to continue to honour and work towards more rights and protection for women.

Not only artists joined the workshops, but other interested audience members also stepped in to admire the collages others had made, or to collect information on Europeana as an educational tool. If you are interested in learning how to make digital collages using Europeana resources, watch our guided tutorial and explore our reuse page.