As with the blogs, the galleries helped to highlight newly contributed collections and to tie them in with existing Europeana records. Different aspects and types of Intangible Heritage were touched upon, as well as visual themes likely to attract a wide audience. Whenever possible, synergies with blogs were generated so that references to galleries could be included and generate forth-and-back traffic.
The methodology to devise this set of engaging articles, coupling stories with targeted selections of records, was data-driven and community-oriented. As for data, the partner collections to be contributed over the course of WEAVE, operated as a lighthouse: each of the blogs was centered around a theme emerging from the new content. Secondly, a good balance between project partner’s collections was envisaged, as well as a seamless merge with existing Europeana content.
As WEAVE is a pioneering project in the context of Europeana when it comes to addressing Intangible Cultural Heritage, the partners also saw it fit to provide a broader framework for understanding. Two of the blogs therefore focus on setting the scene, by discussing the 5 domains of intangible heritage as proposed by UNESCO, and by raising awareness on the ‘why’ of digitising and preserving collections that are – from a material point of view – ‘untouchable’.
This workshop engaged minority communities and Cultural Heritage Institutions to enhance their participation in Europeana. It was moderated by the Coventry University team in conjunction with Europeana and with collaboration of Photoconsortium and KU Leuven.
In particular, this event covered 3 main topics:
Introducing what Europeana is and why it is beneficial to share cultural collections in this environment and across the Europeana network of partners, stakeholders and followers
Understanding the copyright framework that is at the basis of Europeana and the labels which are included in the Europeana Publishing Framework, so to enable content partners find the best solution to share and showcase their collections in a lawful way
Explaining Europeana’s editorial strategy and publication formats to include partners’ collections, including engagement with Europeana audiences and stakeholders and the more specific WEAVE Editorials strategy. The LabDay included interactive moments such as small polls and Q&A time.
Speakers: Alex Stan (IN2), Julia Fallon (Community & Partner Engagement at Europeana), Adrian Murphy (Collections Manager at Europeana), Ariadna Matas (Policy Advisor at Europeana), Sofie Taes (KU Leuven).
Additionally, colleagues from Photoconsortium in its role of Europeana accredited Thematic Aggregator and from the Europeana Data Publishing team were available during the LabDay, to handle any possible questions which may arise from the participants about the more technical part of metadata sharing and aggregation-ingestion of content to the Europeana infrastructure.
Speakers’ biographies:
As Collections Manager at Europeana, Adrian Murphy develops ways of engaging audiences across Europe with the digitised cultural heritage collections found on the Europeana website. He works on participatory campaigns, audience communities and editorial strategies, as well as curating and writing editorial features such as blogs, galleries and exhibitions. Often working in partnership with cultural heritage institutions and consortia across Europe, he has worked on Europeana’s campaigns: Europeana Migration, Women’s History Season, Europe at Work, Discovering Europe and Europeana Sport. Prior to Europeana, he was the Digital Manager at south London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens where he led on digital strategy, website and social media activities.
Julia Fallon is the chair of the rights statements consortium. At Europeana, she is the manager of the Community and Partner Engagement Team – together we support the development of professionals and organizations working in and around digital cultural heritage. Together we lead the development of our digital programme & a knowledge hub of events, webinars and resources all supporting the sector in their digital transformation journey. Also passionate about supporting emerging professionals & advocating for inclusive and diverse conversations.
Sofie Taes is an alumna of KU Leuven (Belgium), where she graduated in musicology and Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Currently she works at the Institute for Cultural Studies (CS Digital) at KU Leuven and at Photoconsortium – Europeana’s thematic aggregator for photography – as a digital curator. She has curated a wide range of editorials and virtual exhibitions for Europeana as well as the physical exhibitions All Our Yesterdays, Thousands are Sailing and Blue Skies, Red Panic. Currently she is active in several European projects involving digital cultural heritage and user engagement strategies, among which Europeana XX: Century of Change, PAGODE – Europeana China, WEAVE and inDICEs.
ARCTUR (Slovenia) co-created the Digital Innovation of Cultural Heritage LabDay that took place on 1st October 2021 online. The LabDay was moderated by COVUNI. ARCTUR was joined by Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal) to discuss the MotionNotes tool, an open web-based video annotator for both video streams and recorded videos which focuses on the annotation of movements, targeting dance and performance professionals. MotionNotes has been developed within the CultureMoves Generic Services project. The current version of MotionNotes allows only for manual annotations. In WEAVE they will integrate innovative ML/AI algorithms to perform semi-automatic recognition of specific gestures and movements (dance steps, for instance), outputs which can be used to identify Europeana videos containing dance or be re-used outside the toolbox as a software library and dataset. Moreover, MotionNotes will be extended to allow annotations in 3D space, representing information about what the performers are doing, and also about where they are in the physical space, along with their moving patterns. For the visualization of the performance space, images and 3D models will also be used, thus opening up new possibilities of re-using 3D content of Europeana. MotionNotes will be a 3rd party hosted tool that will connect with Europeana CSP via Europeana APIs.
The target group of participants comprises: project partners, museum staff, cultural heritage organizations, students, etc. from partner countries. The aim of the workshop is to offer information about the digital innovation of cultural heritage in a holistic manner, including various aspects of digital innovation, with the main focus on 3D objects.
Topics covered during the LabDay include:
The advantages of investing in cultural heritage tourism
A short presentation of the development of interactive experiences (3D movie, hologram, 3D printing, virtual tours with the 3D objects, interactive table with 3D objects, enriched reality, VR360movie with the 3D objects, VR games, etc.)
How to prepare a good concept with defined target groups and user experience
Cooperation of key stakeholders in the process of digitisation and the digitalisation of cultural heritage
The digitising process: digital capture, point clouds, photogrammetry and laser scanning, data processing, simulated reconstructions on practical case studies of cultural heritage objects.
