Europeana Impact Playbook

The Europeana Impact Playbook offers a four-phased approach to help you design, measure, narrate and evaluate your impact. On this page you can download each phase of the Playbook, as well as explore its accompanying resources.

The Impact Playbook is designed to be an intuitive, flexible and adaptable resource that you can follow from the start to the finish or apply in your own way. It has been developed so that you will:

Feel more confident to lead an impact assessment
Feel comfortable introducing colleagues to impact assessment
Be able to help others in their impact practice
Better convince and communicate the benefits of an impact approach
Plan and design future projects with your impact for your stakeholders in mind
Write better funding bids, strategies and plans (organisational impact)

For inspiration about how to use the Playbook and support and good practice from the Europeana Impact Community, see our main Impact page. If you need any help or advice, or if you want us to introduce the Impact Playbook at your conference or training, contact us at impact@europeana.eu!

Phase One has everything you need to take your organisation through the process of impact assessment design. Its tools can also help you design an impactful project from scratch. Download the English version using the button below or the Polish version.

Download Phase one

Title:: Europeana Strategy meeting “Migration and culture: how can our past educate our present”
Creator:: Sebastiaan ter Burg
Date:: 2017-05-24
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY

Resources

Explore the main tools that are used at different stages of Phase one, which you can download individually as PDFs.

Title:: Europeana Strategy meeting “Migration and culture: how can our past educate our present”
Creator:: Sebastiaan ter Burg
Date:: 2017-05-24
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY

Slide deck

An online slide deck that you can copy and download with all the tools you need in one place.

Title:: Empathy map
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Empathy Map

A collaborative tool that you can use to gain a deeper insight into your stakeholders.

Title:: Change pathway
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Change pathway

A method for connecting the activities and outputs of an organisation with outcomes experienced by the stakeholder.

Title:: Pathway builder
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Pathway Builder

A way to document the Change Pathway and identify associated measurements.

Title:: Strategic Perspectives
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Strategic Perspectives

A tool which provides a strategic context for decision-making on what impact is to be measured and why that measurement is needed.

Title:: Value lens
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Value Lens

A tool that enables us to zoom in on a specific type of value attributable to activities.

Title:: Ballando in città
Creator:: Alice Pasquini
Date:: 2013
Institution:: Associazione culturale GoTellGo
Country:: Italy
Copyright:: CC BY

Design your impact: Impact Playbook Phase 1

How can you use the Europeana Impact Playbook to start designing and assessing your impact? This webinar covers the basics.

Phase two of the Impact Playbook helps you to design your data collection all the way through to the interpretation of the data you collect. Download a colour version using the button below, or a printer-friendly black and white version.

Download Phase two

Title:: Europeana Strategy meeting “Migration and culture: how can our past educate our present”,
Creator:: Sebastiaan ter Burg
Date:: 2017-05-24
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY

Resources

Explore the resources we have to help you move through Phase two of the Playbook.

Title:: Vitamin C
Creator:: Gwyneth Thurgood
Institution:: Wellcome Collection
Country:: United Kingdom
Copyright:: CC BY

Europeana standardised question bank

A bank of standardised questions relating to Europeana’s work in digital cultural heritage that you can also use in your own work.

Title:: Data collection workshop sheet
Creator:: Europeana Foundation
Date:: 2021
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Data collection workshop sheet

An extension to the Change Pathway to support data collection in Phase 2 - available as a Google document.

Title:: Ballando in città
Creator:: Alice Pasquini
Date:: 2013
Institution:: Associazione culturale GoTellGo
Country:: Italy
Copyright:: CC BY

Get the data (right): Impact Playbook Phase 2

This impact webinar takes you through Phase two of the Impact Playbook, focusing on data collection and analysis.

A revised version of Phase two should be available later in 2022; get in touch at impact@europeana.eu if you’d like to share feedback or help us finalise this revision.

In Phase three we guide you through the narration of your impact, from building your narrative to visualising your data and publishing your findings in different ways for different audiences. Download it below.

Download Phase three

Title:: Europeana Business Plan 2017 Workshop
Date:: 2016-05-17
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Resources

Explore the resources we have to help you move through Phase three of the Playbook.

Title:: Europeana Business Plan 2017 Workshop
Date:: 2016-05-17
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Narrative Builder Canvas

This resource shapes your findings into a narrative arc, helping you to draw out the most important messages for your audiences.

Title:: Europeana Business Plan 2017 Workshop
Date:: 2016-05-17
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Mapping your stakeholders

Use this document to map your stakeholders and think about what they need from your impact findings.

Title:: Europeana Business Plan 2017 Workshop
Date:: 2016-05-17
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Dissemination plan worksheet

Use this resource to set out how you share your findings, what you do with your stakeholders and what success looks like.

Title:: Ballando in città
Creator:: Alice Pasquini
Date:: 2013
Institution:: Associazione culturale GoTellGo
Country:: Italy
Copyright:: CC BY

Narrating and sharing your impact story: Impact Playbook - Phase 3

This webinar explores Phase 3 of the Europeana Impact Playbook, which is dedicated to narrating and sharing your impact.

The final stage of the Impact Playbook, Phase four introduces different ways to evaluate and improve your approach to impact assessment, as well as tips to embed an impact approach to support your organisation’s development.

Download Phase four

Title:: A Vision for European Cultural Heritage 2025
Creator:: Sebastiaan ter Burg
Date:: May 2018
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY

Resources

Explore the resources we have to help you move through Phase four of the Playbook.

Title:: Europeana Strategy meeting “Migration and culture: how can our past educate our present”
Creator:: Sebastiaan ter Burg
Date:: May 24, 2017
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: The Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY

Debrief template

This simple tool helps you to evaluate what worked well, what didn’t and what improvements you’ll make next time.

Title:: Europeana Strategy meeting “Migration and culture: how can our past educate our present
Creator:: Sebastiaan ter Burg
Date:: May 24, 2017
Institution:: Europeana Foundation
Country:: The Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY

Team-based inquiry worksheet

This worksheet takes you through the four stages of team-based inquiry to help evaluate your impact assessment approach.

Title:: Ballando in città
Creator:: Alice Pasquini
Date:: 2013
Institution:: Associazione culturale GoTellGo
Country:: Italy
Copyright:: CC BY

Looking at the bigger picture: evaluation to increase your impact

This webinar explores how to evaluate impact process - and takes a bigger perspective on how we evaluate to improve our work.

The Impact Playbook in practice

Impact assessments guided by our Impact Playbook

Title:: SmartSquare, Hamburg
Creator:: Jens Bley
Date:: 2018
Country:: Germany
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

What the Europeana Impact Playbook taught a city about revitalising an inner city square

Professor Jens Bley discusses SmartSquare, an initiative using digital culture in the revitalisation of an urban square in Hamburg, Germany, and some of the theoretical questions posed by running an impact assessment with multiple stakeholders.

Title:: Europeana Impact Playbook Change Pathway
Creator:: Marco De Niet
Date:: 2018
Institution:: Leiden University Libraries
Country:: Netherlands
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Using the Impact Playbook to raise awareness and build confidence with impact

Everybody wants to understand the impact of their work better, but for many the process can seem daunting. In this case study, we hear from Leiden University Libraries’ Marco de Niet on their novel approach to an impact workshop.

Title:: TuEuropeana workshop: Myślenie Efektami
Creator:: Klaudyna Schubert
Date:: 2018
Country:: Poland
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Running workshops and translating impact in Poland - a user perspective

We’ve been delighted to see how many institutions have been using and testing the first phase of the Impact Playbook and holding their own impact workshops. We hear from Maja Drabczyk, Chief International Projects Expert at the National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute Poland on her work running impact workshops in Poland.

Title:: Talin Impact Workshop
Creator:: Dafydd Tudur/The National Library of Wales
Date:: 2017
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

How the Impact Playbook is empowering libraries - a user perspective

Since our Impact Playbook was launched in October 2017 it has been downloaded over 1,500 times by cultural heritage professionals. Dafydd Tudur, Head of Digital Access at the National Library of Wales tells us about his experience using the Playbook.

Title:: Clémentine Daubeuf / ILUCIDARE
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

How the Europeana Impact Playbook is influencing a toolbox for heritage-led innovation and diplomacy

What can we learn from the design of the impact playbook? And how can we use that to help us think about the design of our own resources? These are the questions asked by the EU ILUCIDARE project meeting held in Krakow, Poland. We talk to Julia Fallon and Maja Drabczyk who were there to help answer them.

Title:: Patagonia Edit-a-thon and Bring-a-long 1
Creator:: Jason J. Evans
Date:: 2017
Copyright:: Public Domain

Exploring our impact at the National Library of Wales

Dafydd Tudur and Jason Evans from the National Library of Wales tell us about their experiences with the Europeana Impact Playbook.

Title:: Maaike Verberk at the DEN Digitale Daadkracht sessions
Date:: 2021
Institution:: DEN, the Dutch Knowledge Institute for Culture & Digital Transformation
Country:: The Netherlands

Developing an impact mindset: a journey from outputs to outcomes

The Europeana Impact Playbook offers individuals and institutions a tool to better understand, measure and share their impact. Maaike Verberk shares how DEN, the Dutch Knowledge Institute for Culture & Digital Transformation, was inspired by the playbook.