Taking a good look at Europeana Awareness
The Europeana Awareness project is at its halfway stage. To mark this milestone, project partners got together at the National Museum in Prague this week for the Europeana Awareness Assembly.
Thank you to our hosts at the National Museum, Prague!
Walking around Prague during this two day event, it struck me just how many ways there are to get around the city - I saw trams, buses, boats, pedalos, vintage cars, pedalos that look like vintage cars, segways, tricycles and even a hot air balloon. So many different ways of achieving just one thing - getting around. One goal with many solutions.
As you might expect from its name, the goal of the Europeana Awareness project is to raise awareness of Europeana. Like transport in Prague, there are many ways in which the project approaches its goal and we got to hear about them all throughout the event.
Look closely at this view from the Charles Bridge in Prague and you can see at least four different ways of solving the problem of how to get around the city.
The scope of Europeana Awareness is immense and the activities varied. A key part of the project is its series of month-long PR campaigns - one for each of the 30 partner countries involved. Each campaign aims to achieve media coverage online, in print and on TV or radio and we're doing well so far! Over 1,200 media mentions achieved to date. At this event, we heard about recent PR campaigns in Bulgaria, Italy, Belgium and Poland, and looked ahead to future campaigns in France and the Netherlands.
Just some of the headlines made by Europeana Awareness this year
People across Europe are, thanks to Europeana Awareness, finding out about Europeana through a number of means - travelling exhibitions, Europeana 1914-1918 First World War family history roadshows and the new Europeana 1989 programme of events, as well as Wikipedia editathons, use of the Europeana API, through a public libraries network and through the #AllezCulture campaign. And there is more to come - a digital story telling platform is in the making, as are partnerships with organisations in the tourism sector and links with family history/genealogical services. All of this activity is supported by advances in the legal framework and progress on Europeana's rights labelling campaign which are making more and more of Europeana's dataset available for re-use.
The event included an expert guided tour of the National Museum of Musical Instruments. To the right, a giraffe piano. To the left, a piano played by Mozart himself!
Over the course of the event, it became clear just how much work and effort is involved in the project. We heard many success stories as well as tales of challenges and discussions about how they can be overcome. We're building on what we have learnt so far - the event brought partners involved with the Europeana 1989 launch events in Poland, which achieved the most media attention of any campaign so far, together with those from the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany who will be launching their own 1989 events shortly.
Discussions at the Europeana Awareness Assembly
Partners were congratulated for their fantastic work and reminded that we still have a long way to go - the project continues until the end of 2014. Interim Programme Manager, Els Jacobs, said, 'This event has been great, one of the main achievements being the exploration of common ground between the work packages. We need to keep doing this and we also need everyone involved in the project to build on what has been accomplished, to take advantage of the work already done and to use the structures already put in place. To achieve our goals and to raise awareness amongst policy-makers, we need everyone to join forces, to build local partnerships and to tell more people about Europeana and the great work being done.'
So, what are you waiting for? Keep up the good work and tell the world about it by tweeting #AllezCulture or sharing it on this blog!