This afternoon, Thursday 5th November, stay connected and join the REACH project at the Euromed 2020 on line Conference

In the framework of the storytelling session of Euromed 2020 conference, the social platform of the REACH project will leave its contribution presenting a short speech titled “The Reach Project Contribution to Protecting, Preserving and Valuing Tangible and Intangible Heritage through Participation”
So far, the online high level event has gathered more than 150 followers and more than 1000 registration coming from 70 different Countries.
The 8th biannual European-Mediterranean (EUROMED) conference is co-organised by the UNESCO and the EU ERA Chairs on Digital Cultural Heritage. It brings together multidisciplinary researchers, policy makers, professionals, fellows, practitioners and stakeholders to explore some of the more pressing issues concerning Cultural Heritage today. In particular, the main goal of the conference is to focus on interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research on tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage, using cutting edge technologies for the protection, restoration, preservation, massive digitisation, documentation and presentation of the Cultural Heritage contents. At the same time, the event is intended to cover topics of research ready for exploitation, demonstrating the acceptability of new sustainable approaches and new technologies by the user community, owners, managers and conservators of our cultural patrimony.

Registration is free of charges and directly accessible by this link
Project’s paper agenda here
Euromed2020 conference webpage


Collect & Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age

Collect & Connect aims to promote exchange and discussion between researchers and heritage professionals in the field of digital heritage. The conference officially concludes the Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives research project and presents the results of finished and original research in the field of digitized archives and cultural and natural heritage collections. The 2-day program offers a mix of keynotes, a round table discussion, project demonstrations and paper presentations.

Keynotes:

  • Sharon Leon, Associate Professor of History and Digital Humanities at Michigan State University on ‘From Event to Data Set: Perspective, Structure, and the Problem of Representation in Data-Driven Digital History
  • Franco Niccolucci, director of VAST-LAB research laboratory at PIN in Prato, Italy (PIN – University of Florence) on ‘The data challenge for cultural and natural heritage
  • Lambert Schomaker, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Groningen and scientific director of the ALICE (Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Engineering) research institute on ‘From pixels to knowledge using AI: Where do the humans fit in?

Click here for the full program, including all paper presentations, the Round table and the Demolab presentations.

Connect with the other participants
One of the main aims of an in-person event is to connect with other participants. This can be a driver for new collaborations with different stakeholders in the field. We wouldn’t want you to miss out on that experience! NetworkTables enables you to connect with conference participants, exchange contact details and remain in touch with them after the conference. So please fill in your NetworkTables profile when you register for the event! You’ll find instructions on the registration page. NetworkTables is an online service which does not require you to install software on your computer.

Useful links and hashtags

International conference website Collect & Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age. 23 – 24 November 2020, The Netherlands.

About the Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives project, its goals and its research partners.

#COLCO2020

#shareyourknowlegde

#collectandconnect

Register now at http://register.makingsenseproject.org


How do museums deal with the problems that emerged during the pandemic?

Six months ago, NEMO (the Network of European Museum Organisations) published a study on the impact of Covid-19 on the European museum sector.

In recent weeks we are experiencing a second wave of museum closures across Europe and NEMO started to update the map of re-openings with dates and information concerning second closures.
bit.ly/NEMOmap.

After this first study on the impact of Covid-19 on the European museum sector, NEMO has published a follow-up survey to map the status quo and check in with the museums on how they deal with the issues that emerged during the pandemic.

The second Covid study of NEMO will present an in-depth evaluation of:

  • Income losses, its consequences and mitigation.
  • Development of digital museum offers.
  • Questions related to a “new normal”, including the re-assessment of museum priorities and success criteria.
  • Staff and visitor safety during the pandemic.

Participation in this survey will help identify the policies and measures to be proposed at European level.

The link to the survey is here  and responses are accepted until Friday 20 November 2020.


Digital Transformation for User Engagement in Cultural Heritage

This unique webinar organized by Photoconsortium in collaboration with Europeana and the Cyprus University of Technology was proposed in the contex of the EUROMED 2020 webconference. A capacity building workshop dedicated to Cultural Heritage Institutions looking at new opportunities offered by Digital Heritage collections and technological tools for getting closer to their existing network and for engaging with new audiences.


Digital Transformation for User Engagement in Cultural Heritage

Download the presentation from the event: PDF, 10 Mb


Following the pace of the digital transformation is a must that all CHIs are currently experiencing, requiring big efforts in digitization, online presence and social media actions, all with the objective to increase visibility and to become more deeply rooted in the heritage community. This is enabled and backended with services and systems for digital collections management, aggregation to online repositories, and tools for metadata enrichment and annotation.

During the covid 19-crisis, when they were forced to close their premises, museums and libraries became fully aware of the importance of leveraging their digital cultural collections as a form of compensation for the unavailability of the physical spaces. As the digital environment very much is a global one, CHIs are now engaging with users from all over the world, thus meeting new audiences with no geographic boundaries. Yet this expansion, both in terms of audience and digital features adding to the physical experience, remains complementary to the place and role of memory institutions as representatives of their local community and its history.

In the post-covid scenario, therefore, it will be more important than ever to reconnect with local communities, by compelling user engagement actions via user-driven storytelling, co-creation, crowdsourcing and citizen participation.

In this multidisciplinary webinar, success stories and best practices from international projects were presented as case studies, offering different perspectives on what is possible to achieve by leveraging digital collections, technology and tools.

Case studies presented and discussed in the event:

Speakers:

  • Dr. Antonella Fresa, Promoter / Photoconsortium
  • Prof. Fred Truyen, KU Leuven / Photoconsortium
  • Prof. Marinos Ioannides, Cyprus University of Technology
  • Ariadna Matas, Europeana Foundation
  • Sofie Taes, KU Leuven / Photoconsortium

 


REACH Project at the #OpenKnowledgeWeek on line exhibition

From 27 to 30 October 2020, REACH will participate to the virtual exhibition organized in the framework of the Rock Open Knowledge Week, a four days on line event for city officers, policy-makers, urban researchers, cultural actors and civic changemakers. The event will be joined by more than 50 keynote speakers, hundreds of participants and offers an extensive programme of 20 sessions including talks, live sessions, thematic online seminars and the virtual exhibition to discover the technological solutions developed by ROCK partners and learn about other relevant EU-funded projects focusing on cultural heritage.
To join the exhibition you shall register to the event and then you will be free to visit the booths of the ROCK sister’s projects, to make questions to the exhibitors, to plan a B2B meeting, to participate to debates and exchange your knowledge and experience.
REACH will be waiting for you!!!
Register here https://rockproject.eu/ROCK-open-knowledge-week
Follow the event on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin
Download the Press release of the event


NEMO’s European Museum Conference 2020:Museums Making Sense

The Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) invites you to discuss how museums can help visitors make sense of complicated matters – be it climate change or migration processes or economic relations. Through storytelling methods, museums can help us understand complex interrelations. Museums can work as innovative labs to test different complex scenarios, giving the opportunity to find answers for questions like:

  • How do we want to live?
  • How could the future look like?

Register to experience the online version of the NEMO European Museum Conference 2020 – Museums making sense. The conference is free of charge.
Spread out over four days, we invite you to take part in morning and afternoon sessions. In the registration form below, please tick the boxes for all of the sessions that you want to join. We will provide you with the individual links to join the sessions shortly before they take place. The links will be sent to the email address that you enter below. In most cases will you be able to join/ leave a session later/ earlier if you have to.
Full programme is available at: https://www.ne-mo.org/about-us/european-museum-conference-2020/programme.html
Contact: office@ne-mo.org
Conference webpage: https://www.ne-mo.org/about-us/european-museum-conference-2020.html


Virus Attack! First computer pandemics

Espacio Byte, digital art museum, presents a new exhibition on computer viruses.
An approach to the aesthetic dimension of disruptive phenomena in the digital ecosystem.
The curatorial project raises an analogy between pandemics in the biological and digital sphere, and how both end up interfering in the dynamics of human activities.
A reflection on how technology has been integrated into contemporary society and it is impossible to consider human and digital as separate entities.

Link to exhibition: http://www.espaciobyte.org/virus-attack


About the museum
Espacio Byte is an online museum dedicated exclusively to digital art. A source of information to learn about its first manifestations, contemporary movements, and specific issues. The museum offers a natural environment for digital-native artworks, an interface to exhibit the work of artists who, through the use of digital technology as a means of expression, explore new languages, poetics, and aesthetic values.
The platform brings together a large spectrum of practices including software, virtual & augmented reality, visual and sound art, as well as the ones created specifically to be experienced on the Internet.
Espacio Byte is a non-profit organization focused on education, a space open to exchange and collaboration. An interactive experience for recreation without physical limitations, open 24 hours a day. Founded in 2012, Espacio Byte was created with the mission of researching, exhibiting, and conserving digital art.


GIF IT UP 2020

Throughout October, GIF-makers, history nuts, culture enthusiasts, and Internet fans are invited to take part in GIF IT UP 2020, the latest edition of the annual contest hosted by Europeana that challenges people to create animated cultural heritage images and share them online. GIF IT UP is a great and fun way to demonstrate how digital tools can foster culture and creativity. This year, it’s more relevant than ever as we all spend so much more of our lives online. The internet is where we now work, play and interact with others and the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged many cultural institutions and people to ‘go digital’ and to engage with cultural heritage – often for the first time.

This year’s contest is going even more global in its offer of inspiring and diverse content to reuse and remix and get creative with. Along with Europeana’s regular partners, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), New Zealand’s Digital NZ and National Library of Australia’s Trove, two new content partners have joined the fun – Japan Search, which gives access to digitised cultural heritage from Japan, and DAG Museums in Kolkata, India.

Website: https://gifitup.net/

HOW TO PARTICIPATE? The competition is open to people of all ages, professionals and amateurs alike. Choose among the millions of public domain works from the content partners, create your GIF, and submit your entry!

Rules: https://gifitup.net/rules/

WHAT ARE THE PRIZES? Prizes will be online art history courses from DailyArt magazine and Red Bubble gift cards. There will be a special category for the best GIF & runnersup, 1st time GIF-makers, children & teens (below 18) and a bonus category for GIPHY backdrops. Moreover, GIF IT UP has its own GIPHY Channel that exposes the participants’ creations to millions.


About Europeana

Europeana is Europe’s platform for digital cultural heritage, empowering cultural heritage institutions to share their collections with the world. Through Europeana’s collections website millions of cultural heritage items from around 4,000 institutions across Europe are available online.  The Europeana Foundation is the organisation tasked by the European Commission with developing a digital cultural heritage platform for Europe. Europeana DSI is cofinanced by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility.
More Info on https://www.europeana.eu/en