Peter Soemers
Information specialist (retired)
Ad Pollé
Senior UGC Projects Coordinator , Europeana Foundation
Georgia Evans
Senior Editorial Officer , Europeana Foundation
The Europeana Communicators Community is one of the Europeana Network Association's specialist communities. Explore their work plan for 2022.
In 2022, the Communicators Community aspires to foster a welcoming, inclusive community of engaged communicators, who recognise, share and promote the value of (digital) cultural heritage.
Read and download the full Communicators Community work plan below. You can also join the Europeana Communicators Community.
Chair: Peter Soemers
Co-chair: Killian Downing
Manager: Ad Pollé
Community advisor: Georgia Evans
Community Members: Carola Carlino; Marianna Marcucci; Valérie Madoka Naito; Vaya Papadopoulou; Cristina Roiu; Barbara von Campe.
Connect: We aim to be a communication hub between community members, communities and the Europeana Network Association.
Support: We contribute to Europeana's shared knowledge by supporting the development and promotion of training resources, tools and activities.
Upskill: We equip and empower our members with digital communications skills and tools.
Inspire: We share examples of digital culture in action, demonstrating the relevance of Europeana and (digital) culture heritage.
Foster a welcoming, inclusive community of engaged communicators, who recognise, share and promote the value of (digital) cultural heritage.
Deepen our understanding of the priorities and needs of our community in order to mobilise and engage members;
Ensure that our community planning and reporting processes are transparent to our community;
Build and foster connections both within our community and across ENA communities;
Work to be inclusive to our multinational and multilingual community through encouraging multilingualism in our activities;
Investigate possibilities for reinforcing the value of open digital cultural heritage by demonstrating the varied and valuable ways it can be used and shared.
Deepen our understanding of the priorities and needs of our community in order to mobilise and engage members.
In 2021, we undertook a number of activities to gain a greater understanding of the priorities, motivation and needs of our community, including a survey of our members. We have learnt from these activities, but a low response indicates we need to do more to understand our community members in order to mobilise and engage them.
Activities which could contribute to this priority area include:
Making the results of the survey more visible and transparent to our members;
Conducting an annual survey to ensure we have relevant data and continuity in feedback and a comparable understanding of our community;
Complementing the survey with qualitative interviews with community members to gain more insight into individual experiences;
Experimenting with new communication tools and platforms, (for example, Gather.Town) to engage with members;
Working to gain a greater understanding of our steadily growing LinkedIn group and test new ways to mobilise members through this channel.
Ensure that our community planning and reporting processes are more transparent to our community.
The Europeana Communicators Community Steering Group dedicates considerable time to reporting on community activities, preparing for Network events (including the AGM) and planning. In the coming year, we would like to explore how we can streamline and share this work among the Steering Group, and be more proactive and transparent about sharing it with our community.
An activity which could contribute to this priority area include:
Sharing our reporting activities with our members in the timely newsletter and in our LinkedIn group.
Build and foster connections both within our community and across ENA communities.
We would like to undertake work to strengthen connections between our community members, but also with other communities across the Europeana Network Association. As a community of communicators, we have a role to play in supporting communications across the whole Network.
Activities which could contribute to this priority area include:
Organising informal events for our members to meet and discuss relevant issues (drawing inspiration from the Copyright Community’s Office Hours); this could be expanded to include other communities;
Supporting the ENA Membership Working Group;
Running a ‘buddy system’ between our Steering Group members and those of other communities to share ideas and good practices;
Sharing the Communicators survey template with other communities as a resource for them to understand their own community;
Supporting Councillors and other Basecamp users in the use of this collaboration tool by developing a quick start guide and one or more webinars;
Promoting the use of #EuropeanaCommunities and #AllezCulture and inspire the Members Council and Communities to be active on Twitter;
Promoting the use of the Events Page on Europeana Pro by the Network.
Work to be inclusive to our multinational and multilingual community through promoting multilingualism in our activities.
This priority from 2021 remains relevant for our work in 2022. Members of our community are multinational and multilingual, and we want to reflect this in our activities by working to support multilingual activity across the Europeana Initiative.
Activities which could contribute to this priority area could include:
Carrying out short interviews with community members both in English and in their own languages;
Formulating a plan to translate resources relevant to the Communicators; Community (this could include the 7 Tips for digital storytelling);
Continuing to organise multilingual digital aperitivos.
Reinforce the value of open digital cultural heritage by demonstrating the inspirational ways it can be used and shared.
This priority from 2021 remains relevant for our work in 2022. The Steering Group feels strongly about the importance of making digitised cultural heritage openly available for reuse, and the relevance of this to communicators across Europe. The community can add value to this discussion by proactively communicating and demonstrating the creative and inspirational ways that digital cultural heritage can be reused when it is openly licensed.
Activities which could contribute to this priority area could include:
Working on Pro news posts which encourage and highlight reuse, and proactively reaching out to other organisations to work with them on this;
Organising a digital aperitivo more frequently than just at the Europeana conference;
Developing a ‘how to organise a digital aperitivo’ resource for other institutions;
Exploring concepts for recognising inspiring community members in a model which could be used by each community.
The Communicators Community is currently in the process of discussing ideas for Task Forces in the coming year. We would like to explore demand and ideas for Task Forces for:
Launching a Champion programme to recognise inspirational ENA community members who have demonstrated innovative ways of engaging digital cultural heritage (DigaMus model);
Digital Storytelling Part II;
The use of video as a communication tool across the Europeana Initiative.
Monthly newsletter to members
ListServ to engage members and encourage discussion/interactivity
Pro page with updated newsletter and actions
LinkedIn community
Supporting Europeana’s news and campaigns on Twitter by tweeting and retweeting.
Monthly virtual meetings for the Steering Group based on this work plan
Reporting to MB/MC every three months using this template
In total 3,000 euros.
For:
Travel for a physical meeting
Potential compensation for translating relevant communications documents
Supporting initiatives of community interest
*Budget pending final approval
