Measuring impact for the cultural heritage sector

Impact

Working in the cultural heritage sector is all about making a difference to the people who visit and use our products and services. We believe that we are all better off if we understand how the things we do contribute to bringing about change. To support cultural heritage professionals to grow this understanding, we have developed the Europeana Impact Framework, at the core of which you can find the Europeana Impact Playbook, webinars, impact assessments and the Europeana Impact community. Explore and use them below!

The Europeana Impact Playbook is a step by step approach to help cultural heritage professionals design, measure and narrate their impact. Download the four phases of the Playbook, and explore accompanying resources from each phase to support your impact practice.

Download it today

Title:: impact exercise
Creator:: Europeana
Copyright:: CC BY-SA

Webinars

Watch our webinars to learn more about our approach to the Playbook and refine your impact practice.

Case studies

As a cultural heritage professional you know the work you and your institution delivers has impact - but how do you prove it? Explore examples of our own impact assessments on activities in the Europeana Initiative.

Title:: Star fruit, axial view, MRI
Creator:: Alexandr Khrapichev, University of Oxford
Institution:: Wellcome Collection
Country:: United Kingdom
Copyright:: CC BY

Impact Assessment Report: 'Europeana in your classroom' MOOC

This report focuses on the impact of the ‘Europeana in your classroom' MOOC, which supports teachers to use digitised cultural heritage material by providing an introduction to Europeana and relevant resources.

Title:: Lemon, axial view, MRI
Creator:: Alexandr Khrapichev, University of Oxford
Institution:: Wellcome Collection
Country:: United Kingdom
Copyright:: CC BY

Impact Assessment Report: Europeana 2020

This report explores Europeana’s annual conference, Europeana 2020: Crisis, Change and Culture.

Title:: Cabbage, sagittal view, MRI
Creator:: Alexandr Khrapichev, University of Oxford
Institution:: Wellcome Collection
Country:: United Kingdom
Copyright:: CC BY

Impact Assessment Report: Europeana Network Association 2021

This report sets out the findings from the second investigation into members’ satisfaction and the outcomes of their participation in the Europeana Network Association.

Explore our Impact assessment reports

We contribute towards the ongoing development of the Impact Playbook, advocate the benefits of impact assessment and support our members to develop and refine their practice.

Learn more

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

News

Title:: Detail from Vas cu flori
Date:: 1930-1940
Institution:: National Heritage Institute, Bucharest
Country:: Romania
Copyright:: CC0

How to use Outcome Harvesting to investigate your impact

Created: 8 August 2022

In 2020, Europeana piloted the use of Outcome Harvesting in our impact work, an evaluation method increasingly applied in the development sector. Here we share what we learned about the methodology, how we used it and how it could be useful to cultural heritage impact practitioners.

Impact framework impact

Title:: Detail from Landscape with a Chair
Creator:: Galanda, Mikuláš
Date:: 1929/1930
Institution:: Slovak national gallery
Country:: Slovakia
Copyright:: Public Domain

Our impact word of the year: embedding

Created: 12 July 2022

For a decade, Europeana has been working to standardise an approach that we - and others - could adopt to better understand the impact of digital cultural heritage. We look at the progress we have made towards this goal over the last year.

Impact framework impact

Explore terms used in the Europeana Impact Framework in our glossary.

Impact

Download the four-phased impact playbook

Webinars

Watch our webinars to learn more about our approach to the Playbook and refine your impact practice.

What’s in the name - what impact means for us

Design your impact: Impact Playbook Phase 1

Get the data (right): Impact Playbook Phase 2

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

Looking at the bigger picture: evaluation to increase your impact