This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. By clicking or navigating the site you agree to allow our collection of information through cookies. Check our Privacy policy.

2 minutes to read Posted on Tuesday October 25, 2022

Updated on Monday November 6, 2023

portrait of Georgia Evans

Georgia Evans

Senior Editorial Officer , Europeana Foundation

Discover the beauty of data poetry with Mr Gee

At Europeana 2022, we were delighted to be joined by data poet Mr Gee, whose poems on each day of the conference gave rich new perspectives on the topics in focus. Watch the poems being performed and discover the beauty of data poetry!

Europeana 2022 explored all things digital cultural heritage, and there was a lot to discuss and make sense of as Europeana begins to steward the new common European data space for cultural heritage. 

With the conference emphasising the importance of storytelling as a way of engaging audiences - a topic specifically in focus on Day 2 - we were delighted to be joined by data poet and spoken word artist, Mr Gee. Best known as the ‘Poet Laureate’ on Russell Brand's SONY award-winning Radio show, his work has been featured in the Times, The Guardian and the New Statesman, and he has presented several radio series. He was the summit Poet-in-Residence for the UK’s Open Data Institute where he coined the phrase ‘Data Poetry’. In 2019 the Open Data Institute commissioned Mr Gee’s first ever data artwork, ‘Bring Me My Fire Truck’. You can follow Mr Gee on Instagram and Twitter, @mrgeepoet.  

Mr Gee's perspective that, ‘There is this beautiful poetry, there is this beautiful storytelling, there is this beautiful artistic expression within the data industry’ led to some truly unique retellings of the three days of Europeana 2022 in poetry. Mr Gee’s reflections were, for many attendees, one of the highlights of the conference:

You can watch recordings of all Mr Gee's poems through the video embedded above and on our Youtube playlist. The text of the four poems composed at Europeana 2022 are available at the end of this post.  

The final closing poem of Europeana 2022 - a call for collaboration as we move into the new European data space for cultural heritage - captured the spirit of our conference: 

So as we embark upon this Data Space,

let the changing climate navigate our endeavour,

Because by exposing our art,

We expose our heart,

Such is the impact of the task,

To bring us all together.

Collapsed content

All together now

Collapsed content

Build it and they will come

Collapsed content

The stories that tell

Collapsed content

Hard questions

top