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2 minutes to read Posted on Friday June 26, 2015

Updated on Monday November 6, 2023

eCreative: A Journey’s end is the beginning of a new adventure #CultJam15

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This post was written by Max Kaiser, Susanne Tremml, Elisabeth Stricker, Kristin Dill

It has been nearly 30 months since the Europeana Creative kicked-off in January 2013 at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. What an exciting time filled with many achievements, a number of challenges, a few setbacks but even more steps forward. It is difficult not to get a little melancholic knowing the final weeks of this great collaboration are approaching, but our pride in the accomplishments outweigh any sadness we might feel. Let’s have a closer look at this fantastic project and its journey from a great idea to even better reality, and with so much to celebrate in between.


Group photo at first All Staff meeting CC-BY-SA Europeana Creative

We started with 26 partners from 13 European countries aiming to bring together Creative Industries with the Cultural Heritage Institutions in order to demonstrate what can be achieved by reusing digital content from Europeana for realising creative ideas. We started with implementing the project structures - There was a great deal of work ahead of us, ranging from identifying suitable content in Europeana, setting up a co-creation methodology to defining the requirements for an online lab for experimentation with digital content.

Already in the first project year we built three pilot applications, Historiana, the Memory Match Game, the Secret Legacy Game, which demonstrate what can be done with Europeana content in (natural) history education. As usual, the first year sped by far too fast.


First recreation for VanGoYourself CC-BY-SA Europeana Creative

In the second year we focused on the VanGoYourself Pilot which created a lot of buzz and with our social networks pilot, Sound Connections. Based on the Pilots we carried out at our Open Innovation Challenges, where we invited creatives to submit their ideas for creative use of cultural heritage, we selected a number of great projects from events in Brussels, Barcelona and Manchester. These received incubation support from Europeana Creative in order to transform their ideas into sustainable products. In parallel, our Pilots continued to make great progress. A mesmerizing example of an application for designers is the Culture Cam, finding similar shapes and patterns within pre-selected content from Europeana. The platform Europeana Labs, an environment for experimentation with content, tools and business services, was released in April 2014. It steadily grew and was constantly improved. We took some significant steps to solve some of the policy and technical challenges faced when making available suitable content to creative industries. We delivered the Europeana Content Re-use Framework (the Europeana Publishing Framework) which allows the user to determine the value of content for re-use, e.g. by filtering just those images in Europeana which are available in high resolution. Also the planning of the Image Embedding Service (Embedr.eu) took shape.


Trying to recreate “Wiener Kongress” CC-BY-SA Europeana Creative

After 29 months of hard work and continuous effort, it is now time to celebrate! At the Europeana Creative Culture Jam we will start off by sharing what we have learned about Co-Creation by presenting our Pilots, and celebrating our Challenge winners. As well as getting special demonstrations of services created in the project, you will also get to look past the borders of our project and present what is going on in the wider world of creativity and cultural heritage. There will be great keynotes by Lev Manovich, Mike Edson and Chris Wild. You will learn about British Library Labs and how the Statens Museum in Copenhagen sets art free. We will discuss the business of culture, where digital heritage is going, and the future of heritage and creativity. You will also have the opportunity to meet with the experts by taking part in lively discussions at Chef’s Tables. To show the possible magic of re-using Cultural Heritage, explore the Culture Cam installation and watch a 3D movie from the team of “One Night in Hell”.

The Europeana Creative Culture Jam will be the perfect final event to celebrate the achievements of Europeana Creative, and the legacy it leaves. We hope you will join us. See you soon in Vienna! #CultJam15

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Europeana Foundation
Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5
2595 BE Den Haag
Netherlands

Our mission

Europeana empowers the cultural heritage sector in its digital transformation. We develop expertise, tools and policies to embrace digital change and encourage partnerships that foster innovation.

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Europeana Foundation is registered at the Chamber of Commerce under number 27307531, RSIN number is 8186.80.349.

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