New digital strategy brings the House of European History’s collections online

First of all, please share a little bit about yourself and your day-to-day role.

My name is Blandine Smilansky. I have worked at the House of European History since 2015, two years before it opened as a museum, and am Head of the Communications and Partnerships Department. This involves a range of activities providing multiple physical and digital entry points into the contents and programmes of the museum.

What does digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector mean to you, personally? 

There is huge creative potential in digital transformation. By putting history into a digital space, you can see many more angles and allow even more perspectives than you can have in a physical space. It is quite exciting. But this kind of ‘no limits’ idea is also a bit scary - it’s certainly not less demanding or challenging than putting history into a physical space onsite. 

What led to the House of European History creating a new digital approach? 

We’re a European museum and we tell a transnational story. We have a mission to speak to audiences that are not physically present or close to the museum. Digital allows us to tell the stories we want to tell as we aim to become increasingly audience-centred and increase participation and engagement. 

Even before having our digital strategy, we had a blended approach to physical and digital, for example with a permanent exhibition with interpretation and narration in 24 EU languages available through a multimedia tablet. 

Like many museums, in the pandemic, digital is the only way. The pandemic corresponded with the moment we decided to put our digital ideas into a real strategy, with short term, mid term and long term activities. 

What are the key points of the new approach? 

We have a set of guiding principles. First is the blended approach that sees physical and digital complement and amplify each other. Next is multiperspectivity by design, allowing for multiple voices, different angles on historical events. Then we have a participation and collaborative approach, which we hope will lead in time to co-creation or user-generated content on our platforms. Finally, there’s a community building aspect - we want to use this digital space as a way to build our community across Europe, widening the audiences - to be a museum for all Europeans. We’ve seen that starting to work already - when we had to switch our events programme online, we had participants from Hungary, Poland, Spain and beyond Europe. 

Tell us about the new collection that you have recently shared online. 

This online collection highlights eight years of collecting for the House of European History. It showcases 50 items that have been photographed in high quality and documented by the curators. In addition to the general base story you’d find in the physical exhibitions, there is an extra layer of a curator’s note giving more insight into the history of the object, designed to enrich what you learn.

The collection is geographically and chronologically diverse and represents our permanent and temporary exhibitions as well as our public collecting actions, such as one on COVID. We’ve chosen objects that are especially revealing or potent, and have both a European relevance and a relevance for today.

For example, I would like to mention Block 30 of the Dutch AIDS Memorial Quilt, a significant example of the actions aimed at commemorating the victims of AIDS, a disease that first came from the United States before spreading throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Created as a memorial, these quilt blocks were also used as a powerful visual tool to raise awareness of the AIDS pandemic. Today, they are either kept by the NAME foundations or are being integrated into museum collections. This quilt block was donated to the House of European History by Aidsfonds/NAMENproject, the Netherlands, and was on display in the museum’s temporary exhibition Restless Youth, Growing up in Europe, 1945 till now, in 2020.

What are the next steps for the House of European History in terms of sharing your collections online?

We’re working on the next batch of objects to be uploaded and looking into how this online collection can become richer, more linked and possibly also offer some type of interactivity for audiences.

We want our online collection to be relevant and for our educators to reuse it for their learning programmes. We’re working on how it can become something we all benefit from across the museum sector, an online collection we can use in our programmes, and of course something that the public visitor enjoys. We’re exploring possibilities like tagging, creating your own gallery, and linking more to other collections. 

What change do you hope to see for the House of European History as a result of your new digital approach? 

We hope to see a leap forward in our ability to engage with a diversity of audiences. It’s about telling our stories differently, and making sure we have the right tools for it. 

For example, for our temporary exhibition on the history of waste in Europe that'll open in 2023, we are working on the physical exhibition as well as a website on which somebody who can't come to the exhibition in Brussels can experience it. We have a partnership with around 10 museums in Europe who will contribute content and co-organise activities. The online content will be a unique and comprehensive offer for digital audiences. And it gives these exhibitions an afterlife - which is a new thing that we have to build on and include in our work systematically. 

How does the strategy address building capacity for digital skills? 

One thing we want to do is to try and use the knowhow in the institution - we’re a museum attached to the European Parliament where there is already knowledge, training opportunities and colleagues with expertise in digital engagement. And we are trying to recruit people who have those digital skills and background, or are trained in digital humanities, which is an interesting field combining history and the digital. 

Thinking specifically about digital transformation in museums - we look to what networks like Europeana, ICOM and NEMO offer and make sure we’re represented there. As well as your day job, you have to commit to time for training and there is a lot available at the moment for museums. And finally, the digital transformation we are undergoing informs also new recruitments in our museum team.