Design Challenge OPEN for applications

We are once again looking for designers, artists, developers, start-ups and other entrepreneurs to re-use Europe’s digitised cultural heritage from Europeana in innovative and creative ways! Europeana Creative is pleased to announce its final challenge encouraging YOU to design and submit products, applications and designs that reuse Europeana content in the theme of Design.

The Design Challenge

The aim of the Europeana Creative - Design Challenge is to engage designers, artists, developers and entrepreneurs to explore and experiment with with cultural heritage content available in Europeana.

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

We challenge ingenious minds and makers to rethink and redesign our common culture, and produce innovative and novel interpretations that make use of digital cultural content and data sourced from Europeana or Europeana Labs. The Europeana API allows you to access 2000+ collections and incorporate them into apps, games, products and websites. You can even create mash-ups when connecting Europeana's API with other sources or APIs. The possibilities are endless!

The challenge opens on the 30th October and online submissions are welcome until the deadline: 15th January, 2015 at 20h00 CET via http://ecreativedesign2015.istart.org/

What should you create?

We welcome a wide range of works for the Challenge, and appreciate contemporary and creative approaches to the digital cultural heritage materials. For example, including but not limited to results of digital fabrication, media art, design objects, web/mobile applications and services.

Please keep in mind that the submitted works must re-use materials that are sourced through Europeana. Please also check the license of the content, making sure that re-use for your project context is allowed. To make things easier, discover here reusable content available in both the Europeana portal and API.

To give you some more concrete idea of works that could be made using the Europeana content, below are some examples. These are meant as examples only, so let your inspiration run free and propose new innovative ideas:

· Make a fabric print using pictures from a museum

· Create an installation using audiovisual media from archives

· Program a piece that generates algorithmic music from old sound recordings

· 3D print contemporary designs based on old objects

· Design an app that remixes old paintings

Where to find content and inspiration?

In order to help inspire you Europeana Creative has developed a pilot application to demonstrate the things you can do with Europeana content and a little bit of imagination.

Culture Cam has been developed by partners Spild af Tid & AIT - Austrian Institute of Technology as the design theme pilot; a “live” digital similarity tool that takes you on a playful journey into the fascinating collections within Europeana by using your web camera. You can easily scan an object, and Culture Cam captures and analyzes it and comes up with search results of similar color, shape or pattern. This pilot is still in its demo phase so please watch this space for more information.

To discover further pilots that have been developed over the course of the project (in natural history and history education, social networks and tourism) click here. Ideas and examples of creative re-use are also available on the Europeana Creative blog. Find out about our previous Challenge winners from the 1st and 2nd Rounds.

Explore Europeana Labs

Additionally, why not explore Europeana Labs? This platform sets out to provide everything needed to get started using the Europeana APIs to develop apps and re-use digitised cultural heritage objects. You can learn about the data, see what others have created and find out how to build simple but powerful queries to extract bespoke results from a dataset of over 30 million objects, which include books, art and artefacts, audio clips and more. To make things easier, discover reusable content available in both the Europeana portal and API. If you would like additional support in finding suitable content, accessing digital objects, license conditions or anything else connected to Europeana please don’t hesitate to contact [email protected]

Entry Criteria

The Europeana Creative Design Challenge is open to any private, public or non-profit organisation within the EU or EFTA. For a successful application you need to be a legal person registered in one of the 28 EU member states or EFTA member states. Your application must be written and submitted in English.

What is the prize?

Following an online assessment by a panel of experts and industry judges the best applications will be invited to a pitching event to be hosted at Future Everything Festival at the end of February 2015 in Manchester, UK. Successful applicants will be notified the week commencing Monday 3rd February.

Following the pitches, the winners will be chosen and rewarded with a three-month mentoring & incubation program from a team of experts. The prize consists of specialist support providing business mentoring, technical support, assistance with identifying and accessing finance, facilitation of business partnerships, access to specialised testing environments, marketing and promotion support.

How to apply?

We use the iStart platform via http://ecreativedesign2015.istart.org/ for accepting submissions for the challenge. If you have not used iStart before, please click on the the REGISTERbutton in the top right-hand corner and follow the instructions. If you have already registered, please log in using your e-mail address and password. Once logged in you will be able to see the entry guidelines and questions you have to answer. Your application can be edited at any point up until the Challenge deadline of January 15th at 22h CET.

Additional Support

For additional support you can look at our previous blog posts where we have additional inspirational ideas & support in completing your application available to you. We will continue to publish new guides and share ideas over the coming months to further support your application.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us at [email protected] . We will be delighted to help!

GOOD LUCK!