Meanwhile in Copenhagen… Our thirty-strong Members Council meet for the first time

A springlike Copenhagen and the Statens Museum for Kunst played host to the first Europeana Members Council meeting in 2016. This meeting was particularly exciting for us as it was a chance to celebrate the Europeana Network Association’s first anniversary and get to know our newly elected colleagues. Together, we are now a group of thirty, each with our own specific backgrounds and expertise but with a shared commitment to ensuring Europeana’s future success.

In case you aren’t familiar with the work we do, it’s our job to advise across all Europeana’s activities, from prioritising the issues addressed in annual business plans, to set up themes for the annual conference. We act as the voice of Europeana in the wider cultural sector and support its work in the Europeana Network Association too. We meet two to three times each year, although with plenty of virtual catch-ups in between!

We were gathered in Denmark with some important items on our agenda: to recap on the Network Association’s first year of activities, to review the role it plays against the 2016 Business Plan, published tomorrow, and to develop the role of the Network Association in the context of Europeana’s broader Strategy 2015-2020.

One of the major ways we do this is through Task Forces and Working Groups. Working Groups are ongoing, whereas Task Forces are tied to Europeana’s annual business plans. Having invited you to submit ideas for 2016 Task Forces, we've now reviewed them and will get back to all Task Force candidates in the coming days.

The Members Council convincingly recreate Christ in the Realm of the Dead, Joakim Skovgaard, Statens Museum for Kunst, CC0. Image: Gina van der Linden, CC BY-SA.

As a core part of these discussions, we developed plans for an #AllezCulture revival to both celebrate the amazing potential Europeana has for Europeans and support it as it addresses sustainability challenges. We’ll share more about this campaign soon, and will let you know how to get involved. It will be an important opportunity for the whole Network to come together and raise their voices in support of the Europeana ecosystem, and make noise about the value of the wider digital cultural heritage sector. We do hope you’ll join us.

Finally, we relaxed with a guided tour of the SMK’s spectacular collections. If you’d like to do the same but can’t make it to Copenhagen anytime soon, there are thousands of beautiful artworks from the gallery on Europeana for you to enjoy, and all with an open license too! Our personal highlight of the tour? A fantastic VanGoYourself-inspired group reenactment of Christ in the Realm of the Dead by Joakim Skovgaard.

As always, we’d love to hear about your thoughts relating to any of the issues and updates above, so do feel free to get in touch with us if you have questions or ideas. A full report from the meeting will be available on Europeana Pro soon.