Hi. My name is Harry Verwayen. I serve as General Director of the Europeana Foundation.
Here at the new year, I’d like to wish all of Europeana’s partners, stakeholders, and friends a very happy and, importantly, healthy year ahead.
Your ongoing commitment and your collaboration with Europeana helps people connect with their past, and lets teachers, researchers, innovators, and creatives do incredible things with heritage.
Yet there are barriers we must keep working to overcome. Barriers in language and translation. In accessibility. In diversity.
As you’ve seen, though, we make the most progress when we work closely together—both across Europe, and across the cultural heritage sector.
With your continued support, 2022 is going to be a big year.
This year, we will become a key part of the European Commission’s ambitious digital decade. The commission intends to put Europeana at the heart of a European common data space for cultural heritage.
This provides us with an enormous opportunity to make more digital culture available to more people in more ways.
And this will also be challenging. To make this space a good space that is fair and inspiring will require collaboration, creativity and imagination. Your networks and your expertise are essential to help make that happen.
I’m hopeful and excited to see what we can do together.
In anticipation of the ideas and partnerships we’ll nurture together in 2022, thank you!
