Digital meets Culture

reflecting on the project's ambitions with capacity building towards different communities

Capacity building workshop for WEAVE project

Organized by partner Europeana and coordinated by Sebastiaan ter Burg, a workshop based on the Europeana Capacity Building playbook took place for the WEAVE project on 25th November. The methodology is designed to support organizations and projects in creating a roadmap for capacity building for digital transformation, and it is influenced by the iterative approach of the Europeana Impact Playbook, thus positioning the expected impact as the driver for reflections, strategy development and activities.

The event was attended with lively participation by project partners, including those involved in the LabDays and in content selection and aggregation. The discussion was conducted by using the Jamboard tool that allows participants to put down virtual sticky notes on a discussion table.

Although the capacity building effort of WEAVE is already well defined since the proposal stage, the results of the workshop were very useful to determine the priority, gaps and feasibility in the different capacity building related activities planned for various stakeholders, also assessing the project’s ambitions with capacity building towards different communities.

online, 27th November 2021

WEAVE Labday about Portuguese intangible heritage

image courtesy of PédeXumbo

This LabDay from the WEAVE series is dedicated to engage communities in South Portugal to re-discover intangible heritage practices linked to traditional dance. The workshop, organized by partner PédeXumbo, takes place in the framework of the annual Festival Desdobra-te, a festival of dance and other arts, organized by PédeXumbo, in Évora (Portugal).

The event is in Portuguese language.

More info: https://weave-culture.eu/2021/10/20/portuguese-dance/

the event taking place in Brussels and online on 2-3 December will bring together a network of stakeholders in digital cultural heritage

WEAVE goes to ILUCIDARE Playground

ILUCIDARE is a European funded project which promotes heritage as a resource of innovation and international cooperation. Its ambitions are to establish an international network promoting heritage and contributing to the overall objectives of the EU strategy for international cultural relations and of the EU international cooperation in research and innovation.

ILUCIDARE will maintain the legacy of the 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage also by a series of engagign events, the next of which is taking place in Brussels and online on 2-3 December. The event will be accessible from anywhere in the world through a dedicated digital platform, presenting a full programme of inspirational speeches, panel discussions, practical workshops, networking and short enticing sessions to share reflections and the latest experience of the ILUCIDARE partners in heritage-led innovation and international relations.

The WEAVE coordinator Alex Stan from IN2 will join this international event presenting our project, so to stimulate interaction and create collaborations.

More info: https://ilucidare.eu/

Initiative to celebrate European cultural heritage, fourth edition

Call for applications is now open for the European Heritage Days Stories

The European Heritage Days (EHD) is a joint action of the Council of Europe and the European Union, representing the most celebrated participatory cultural event shared by millions of European citizens.

During the EHD events, which are held in September each year in the 50 countries of the European Cultural Convention, European citizens have the opportunity to learn about their heritage, the richness and cultural diversity of Europe by enjoying free visits to monuments and sites, and become aware of the need to protect cultural heritage against risk.

Starting from the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, every year, the Council of Europe, the European Union and the EHD National Coordinators launch the Call for European Heritage Days Stories, to highlight the stories behind EHD events, recognize the role of people in heritage conservation and allow them to share their story.

The goals of the Call are:

Encourage people to engage with Europe’s cultural heritage and strengthen a sense of belonging to the common European space.
Collect stories that clarify how communities understand the European dimension of local heritage.
Promote communities that work with heritage in agreement with European values and with a long-term collaborative perspective.
Encourage communities to improve their Stories and reward their efforts.
Motivate and encourage participation in the European Heritage Days.

The call has just been opened, the stories can be submitted through the online application form at https://www.europeanheritagedays.com/Story/Add

The Stories that have passed the eligibility criteria will be promoted and published as European Heritage Days Stories.

If the Story has the potential to be developed into a specific one-off project, organisations will be invited to apply for a grant through a second round of applications.

To know the terms and conditions for sending Stories and Grant, read more at EHD Stories long english.pdf

online wokshop series organized by Europeana, 29 November - 13 December - 10 January

Open consultation sessions on Digital Transformation

Do you want to help shape the thinking on how the cultural sector embraces Digital Transformation? Do you have your own views about the challenges and opportunities digital brings? Can you help us shape our plan of action?

We would like to invite you to participate in one of the three open online consultation workshops held by the Europeana Digital Transformation Task Force. This is the first cross initiative taskforce for Europeana and couldn’t come at a more important time as we all face the challenges of surviving and thriving in the pandemic.

Understanding digital transformation and knowing how to build the digital capacity of individuals, organisations and networks is not simple. People’s understanding of the issues is defined in part by their own digital literacy, confidence and maturity, which for many working in the sector is still low. Added to this, the sector faces other multifaceted and complex challenges.

Each of the three consultation workshops will last for 2.5 hours and will be facilitated by Jane Finnis and Anra Kennedy from Culture24. The workshops have been shaped by the newly formed task force as a way to gather wider input from the sector, and to inform the creation of a digital transformation action plan (the main output of the DT Taskforce).

Dates are:

Workshop 1. Monday 29th November 2021 – 3.30pm and 6pm CET.
Workshop 2. Monday 13th December 2021 -3.30pm and 6pm CET.
Workshop 3. Monday 10th January 2021 – 3.30pm and 6pm CET.

The consultation workshops are open to anyone who wants to participate. You can sign up to take part in one or more workshops by filling out the form below. All workshops will take place in Zoom and details will be shared with participants a week in advance. The workshop will be run in English but there is flexibility for some break out sessions to be in other languages depending on the makeup of the group and availability of a bilingual facilitator.

The Initiative wide digital transformation task force consists of 8 members:

Rob Davies and Vera Kriezi (Europeana Network Association)
Kerstin Arnold and Chiara Latronico (Europeana Aggregators Forum)
Marta Peinador and Susanna Anas (Independent members)
Ariadna Matas and Sebastiaan ter Burg (Europeana Foundation)

The task force have taken on the task of producing an action plan for adoption across Europeana Initiative stakeholders that includes:

Recommendations for activities to support and guide the sector
Recommendations for the future of the DT Taskforce and the possibility of a longer term working group to continue to support this work
Recommendations on the assessment and measurement of digital transformation
A review of the current definition of digital transformation

They recognise the need for a united approach and a clear plan of action to help us understand how to harness the potential that digital transformation offers.

https://pro.europeana.eu/project/digital-transformation-task-force

A common European data space for cultural heritage

EU Commission recommendation to accelerate the digitisation of cultural heritage assets

A new European Commission recommendation has been published, aimed at promoting and accelerating the digitisation of cultural heritage.
The purpose is to protect and preserve it and incentive its reuse in domains such as education, cultural creative sectors and sustainable tourism.

The Commission encourages Member States to digitise by 2030 all monuments and sites that are at risk and half of the most physically visited monuments and sites.

The task is to preserve the European cultural heritage, exploiting technological knowledge, artificial intelligence, data and extended reality.

This recommendation will contribute to the objectives of the Digital Decade (presented on 9 March 2021 by Commission for Europe’s digital transformation by 2030) by fostering a secure and sustainable digital infrastructure.

Europeana, the European digital cultural platform, will be the basis for building the common data space for cultural heritage:
museums, galleries and archives across Europe will be able to share and reuse digitized images as high-quality scans of paintings or 3D models of historic sites.

Read the press release on the European Commission website.
Here the link to download the recommendation and its annexes.

in collaboration with WEAVE project, INCULTUM was part of an interactive session abour communities engagement with cultural heritage

INCULTUM presented at Europeana 2021

The Europeana conference is the annual flagship event in the sector of digital cultural heritage. The Europeana 2021: Recover, Rebuild, Grow took place online in November, with 70% of the programme – over 30 sessions – co-created with cultural heritage professionals across the sector who responded to a call for proposals. Among those, the WEAVE project community was happy to present the work that is ongoing for enabling engagement of various communities with their cultural heritage, during a interactive session introduced by Antonella Fresa on 11th November.

Within WEAVE project’s presentation, the collaboration established with INCULTUM was highlighted, to showcase the effort done by INCULTUM in engaging local communities with their territory and heritage, that is of relevance also in the light of leveraging digital resources and tools to support such engagement.

The session was an occasion to communicate about INCULTUM to the over 100 session’s participants.

extract from WEAVE presentation at Europeana 2021 conference

online via zoom, 2-3 December 2021

Driving engagement – participatory approaches to digital cultural heritage

Under the Slovenian Presidency of the Council it is announced the Europeana conference ‘Driving engagement – participatory approaches to digital cultural heritage’ on 2 and 3 December.

The conference is mainly aimed at digital cultural policy makers from EU member states ministries and institutions, and the European Commission’s Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage Expert Group but it’s also open to the wider cultural heritage professionals on the first day.

An accompanying event of the Slovenian Presidency, the conference will explore aspects of public engagement and participation with digital cultural heritage in a series of speeches, presentations, and moderated Q&A sessions. A diverse line up of speakers will introduce current practices and trends in digital participation, and discuss the current opportunities and challenges in this area. We will delve into how cultural institutions are addressing the sustainability of digital participation; engaging communities with cultural heritage; crowdsourcing, citizen science, and enrichment; digital storytelling; and recommendations for audience participation and public engagement.

More info: https://pro.europeana.eu/event/driving-engagement-participatory-approaches-to-digital-cultural-heritage

conference in Turin at Palazzo Madama, 18th November 2021

“Come bianche farfalle”: visual imagery of tennis

This conference illustrates and discusses about the various motifs of visual heritage linked to tennis, which entered culture since the end of 1800 until modern times. A fine selection of paintings, sculptures and prints will support the talk, showcasing the imagery of one of the most aristocratic sports, with hints and suggestions that also touch upon emotions.

“Come bianche farfalle”: immagini del tennis nella modernità
conference by prof. Alessandro Tosi (Università degli Studi di Pisa)

Palazzo Madama, Museo Civico d’Arte Antica

Piazza Castello, 10122 Torino

18 novembre 2021, ore 17.30

https://www.palazzomadamatorino.it/it/eventi-e-mostre/conferenze-occasione-delle-atp-finals

WEAVE LabDay, online 24th November 2021

Castellers in the World: discovering a tradition that is also Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

Image: «Diada castellera».Credit: Aniol Resclosa (CRDI). 1st November 2012. At the moment the human tower goes up, the group members have to push together to strengthen the structure they want to erect.

In the framework of the WEAVE LabDay series, an online event hosted by CRDI, the Centre for Image Research and Diffusion in Girona, will present the tradition of castellers. CRDI owns a large Image Archive that holds a wealth of materials reflecting different aspects of daily life in Girona and its rich cultural heritage, and for WEAVE it has curated a collection of 6.500 photographs and 186 videos about castellers (human castles). It has also curated a collection of daguerreotype photographs and plans to digitise more than 100 in 3D and aggregate them to Europeana.

CRDI is a Department inside the Record Management, Archives and Publications Service of Girona City Council . It is a member of Photoconsortium Association and very involved in different international initiatives regarding Photography Heritage. Its mission is to know, to protect, to promote, to offer and to disseminate the Image Heritage of Girona. The main services it provides are: preservation and conservation; on-site and online consultation: reproduction of original images; advice on the organization and management of fonds and collections; assessment and selection; implementation of technologies; management of intellectual property rights; guided tours for schools and specialists, and collaboration on outreach and training activities in connection with images.

This introductory panel about Castellers Culture will explain the values implicitly involved in this activity. This is something very specific to Catalan culture, although Castellers groups exist around the world. In this LabDay we will connect with Castellers’ associations in different countries and share experiences and points of view. The aim is to explain the phenomena of the Casteller.

More information and registration: https://weave-culture.eu/2021/11/04/castellers-labday/

Fires i Festes de Sant Narcís 2016. Pilar de 4 dels Marrecs de Salt a les escales de la Catedral de Girona. Credit: CRDI – Ajuntament de Girona

The content it provides to the project are relevant for the cultural communities represented, that is: castellers (human castles) and communities linked to early photography. Regarding castellers it must be taken into account that in 2010 UNESCO approved the inclusion of castellers in its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In this way, castells acquired a universal status, with the highest possible recognition to which a popular culture element can aspire. After a long selection process, the final decision was made in Nairobi (Kenya) on the 16th of November 2010. In its decision, among other elements, the Committee highlighted that: “Human towers are recognized by Catalan people as an integral part of their cultural identity, transmitted from generation to generation and providing community members a sense of continuity, social cohesion and solidarity”.