Opening the door to European cultural heritage
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports of the Government of Spain has joined forces with Europeana, Europe's digital platform for cultural heritage. We are working together to highlight Europeana as the digital door to European cultural heritage, by exposing Spanish citizens to the opportunities that exist here. The platform collects and provides access to digitised material from over 2000 cultural institutions, which have contributed more than 30 million items to www.europeana.eu.
Aware of the enormous value of Europeana as an online educational resource, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports is launching a school competition at a nationwide level that encourages secondary students to discover, share and create with Europe's cultural heritage through Europeana. They want to encourage teachers to use it as a catalyst for educational creativity in the 21st century.
Teams of up to five students across Spain, each guided by a teacher, will explore and discover the wealth of cultural treasure to be found in Europeana by using its materials, such as books, films, paintings, photographs, newspapers, sound files, maps, manuscripts and other items, in papers they will submit for this competition.
Each participating team of students will travel virtually in time and gather information through Europeana website on any of the following topics: The First World War, The Generation of 1898, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, The Autogiro, Antoni Gaudí and Design in the Belle Époque.
The obtained information through Europeana will be used to create a digital journalistic chronicle, set between 1880 and 1934. It will focus on real facts and events or fictional ones that relate to real facts and events.
The competition was launched today, 15 October, and will remain open for an entire month, till 15 November. Then the jury will select up to three outstanding works from each region. Later, the best three finalist papers will be chosen at a nationwide level and eventually will be awarded at a press conference at The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. The winning entries will be digitally published.
Each member of the winning team, including their teacher, will receive a tablet computer. The team that comes second will receive a mini tablet, and the team in third place wins an eBook.
Jill Cousins, Europeana's Executive Director, said: ´We're delighted to collaborate with The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports of the Government of Spain, and excited that students and teachers across the country will be introduced to Europeana as a digital resource for learning in the 21st century. This competition will allow Spaniards to discover, share and create through Europeana as they explore the millions of cultural treasures it offers online. We warmly invite students and teachers to participate in the competition, which highlights the importance of our shared knowledge and culture in understanding who we are in today's Europe.´
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports highlights this competition as a unique opportunity to spread European cultural heritage across Spain, and to introduce this fundamental knowledge to the youth. The immense wealth of cultural material that has been put online is an invaluable educational resource, and will promote and highlight democratisation of culture and knowledge through the Spanish students and teachers participating in this project.
This collaboration between the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports and Europeana will culminate in Madrid at the Annual General Meeting of Europeana 29-31 October. Held at the Museo del Prado, the AGM will be attended by 250 delegates from institutions for the conservation of European cultural heritage.
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports and Europeana are aiming to create a meeting place between institutions and individuals who wish to access European cultural heritage.
Contact:
The competition rules and regulations can be found, together with all other relevant information on: certameneuropeana.es. For press releases and images please visit: pro.europeana.eu/news
For press inquiries and further information please contact Nuria Moser-Rothschild from Visión Líquida (+34 675 896 764) [email protected]