Supporting cultural heritage professionals in the time of COVID-19

Virtual events and webinars

With professionals across the world working from home, many events are moving online and organisations are developing webinars offering advice and training for the current situation. We’ve highlighted a few examples below, and will be co-ordinating more webinars in the coming weeks - keep checking Europeana Pro and our Twitter for more information!  

• The Europeana Communicators Community recently organised a webinar on Culture From Home, which highlighted some of the ways cultural heritage institutions are turning online to engage with audiences in this difficult time of quarantine - you can watch the full webinar and access the slides and links through our website. Their previous webinar on digital storytelling also remains relevant! 

• The International Council of Museums (ICOM) ran a webinar on 'Coronavirus (COVID-19) and museums: impact, innovations and planning for post-crisis' on Friday 10 April, and it is available to rewatch on their website. 

• The Network of European Museum organisations is running a series of free webinars, including ‘Creative Europe – What’s in it for museums?’ on Wednesday 16 April and Museum lives in post-pandemia on Wednesday 16 May. 

• Michael Peter Edson is offering free strategy workshops to GLAMS and civil-society organisations to help related sectors cope with and adjust to Covid-19, and find new ways to serve the public. 

• The museum engagement platform Cuseum has run a series of webinars addressing the challenges of the coronavirus, and they can all be accessed on demand. 

Assessing new initiatives

If your organisation has already begun activities to bring collections, events and initiatives to its audiences virtually, how can you understand whether these activities are making a difference to the people who access them; how can you assess their impact? Europeana’s Impact Playbook and toolkit can support this work by providing tools to help you develop and refine your impact practice and assess the success of your digital initiatives. 

Get reading

If you’ve got some time to read around the sector, are looking to the future, or want a break from thinking about COVID-19, why not explore some of our other articles, like our current series on Europeana Pro focusing on 3D and the cultural heritage sector? If you’re planning for next year, get inspiration on how you can support and celebrate the public domain in 2021. Or explore the work of our Education community and get ideas on how to bring cultural heritage into education and in your country. Find articles like this and more via Europeana Pro news. 

Join our professional community 

Across the world, cultural heritage professionals are facing the same challenges as we come to terms with new ways of working and sharing content online. The Europeana Network Association offers a way to connect with colleagues all over Europe to share best practices, resources and support. Join the Network for free to receive regular communications with news about practice and initiatives in the sector, and sign up to our specialist communities for professionals working in communications, research, education, tech, copyright and impact.

Share your thoughts

Coming together to support each other is something we think is important, and we are keen to support a collaborative, networked approach. We want to showcase more best practices, tools and resources from and for the cultural heritage sector, so if you’ve got ideas, please tell us! If you would like to share how your own organisation is facing the challenges of COVID-19 through a post for Europeana Pro, please also get in contact.