European Commission awards more than €900,000 to two new Europeana Generic Services projects

The projects were in the reserved list of the 2019 Europeana CEF Telecom call, and were officially granted later funding in May 2020. The projects originally funded under this call were Europeana XX and Pagode.

Europeana Sport

Europeana Sport aims to increase the amount of high-quality content and metadata on the theme of sport in Europeana. The project will hold a series of events that aim to engage European citizens with their sporting heritage and raise awareness of the Europeana Initiative. 

The project coordinator, Antonio Davide Madonna from Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle biblioteche italiane e per le informazioni bibliografiche, says, ‘Sport has the potential to attract a large audience and it is naturally linked to several topics of high social and educational value, such as cultural diversity, integration, social exclusion, gender equality, youth empowerment, and more.’

‘Besides collecting high quality content from several cultural institutions, the project also aims to generate new content and new stories involving European citizens in their local communities, through the organisation of co-creation sessions and participatory events.’

ARMA

ARMA - the art of reading in the middle ages, aims to showcase how medieval reading culture evolved and became a fundamental part of European culture, through editorial activity and bringing newly digitised manuscripts to Europeana. 

The project Coordinator Doc. dr. Ines Vodopivec from National and University Library of Slovenia says, ‘The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages will gather over 20,000 digitized medieval objects from across Europe in a virtual ARMA-rium  – a digital bookcase of the European medieval written culture. The CEF funded Action will "unlock" the potential of digitised medieval manuscripts through curatorial and editorial enrichment of originals, enabling their educational contexts and further exchange of knowledge and experiences among curators and educators at cultural heritage institutions’.

Europeana Foundation is a beneficiary in both projects, joining partners from 10 EU countries as well as the United Kingdom. Milena Popova, Programme and Business Development Manager at Europeana says, ‘We are very pleased with the launch of the two new Europeana Generic Services projects. Both Europeana Sport and ARMA have a unique content focus and envisage robust audience engagement approaches, from participatory events on sport heritage to memorable educational experiences with medieval culture. We are looking forward to working with the project partners to deliver even more appealing and interactive digital cultural experiences for European and global audiences’.

The projects will start on 1 October 2020 and run until early 2022.