Co-creation Workshop for a Design Pilot: Re-using Europeana Content

Members of the Europeana Creative project consortium, creatives & designers from Aalto Media Factory and local business model experts from Forum Virium Helsinki, Aalto University and Hanken University all gathered on the 22-23 May in Helsinki for the co-creation workshop for Design.

The aim of the co-creation workshop is to come up with new and interesting ideas on how to re-use Europeana content . We then take the idea and develop it into a real life product, process, app or tool to illustrate how easy and fun it can be to reuse the huge amount of items stored in the Europeana database.

We already have 4 pilot applications developed on different themes, after their corresponding co-creation workshops, like Natural History Education, History Education, Social Networks and Tourism, and this co-creation workshop was all about Design.

The first day, co-facilitated between Aalto Media Factory and Platoniq, was spent scenario building and prototyping with local creatives. Animators, graphic designers, film makers and product designers collaborated together to come up with new and interesting ideas on how to re-use Europeana content for design, also based on different content samples which were prepared with the help from the design point of view by Spild af Tid .

Scenario building at the Co-creation Workshop in Helsinki

Many ideas were generated including a collaging tool to help people design and produce their own comic strips, a 3D printing process helping people to accurately recreate old artifacts, a knitting tool allowing knitters to develop knitting patterns inspired by images in the Europeana database, a paint by numbers and collage tool allowing anyone to re-create their own masterpiece at home, and finally a platform for designers facilitating easier access to historic and artistic content.

Collaging Tool idea for a Design Pilot developed at the Co-creation Workshop in Helsinki

Process of co-creation for a Design Pilot at the Workshop in Helsinki

On the second day we selected our favorite three ideas and delved further into the process of developing viable business models for each of them. Each idea was assessed on its merits, value, revenue potential and sustainability. The process we used to assess and develop the ideas is called the Business Model Canvas and it’s a fascinating process to develop and assess an idea you might have in a business context. You can read more about business model canvassing here.

eCreative Partners canvassing at the Business Model Workshop in Helsinki

We’re not going to tell you quite yet what happened at the end of the workshop, although you can still see more following the #eCreative hashtag. You will just have to watch this space to see which idea is developed based on all the above as the pilot application in the category of Design... We’re very excited to see what happens and hope you are too!

Thank you to Aalto Media Factory for hosting the workshop and Platoniq for co-facilitating it. Many thanks as well to all those who came along to share their expertise and inspirational ideas to keep innovating in the re-use of Europeana content!

Join the debate and stay tuned for upcoming news at @eCreativeEU or on Facebook.

Pictures by Platoniq, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.