EUROPEAN TRANS-DOMAIN NETWORK DEVOTED TO THE DIGITAL CULTURAL HERITAGE (DCH) COMMUNITIES

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Michael Culture Association (Aisbl - Belgium) is a European trans-domain devoted to European digital cultural heritage, from aggregation, protection, preservation, valorisation and re use ; aiming to support the DCH communities.

It gathers a strong network of more than 100 public and private organizations from all over Europe. Key actor in the promotion and valorization of the digital cultural content, Michael Culture develops tools and services for cultural institutions and the general public. Linked to other major European cultural heritage networks and projects such as Europeana, Europe's Digital Library, Michael Culture Association supports European and national cultural policies. It also aims at enhancing the network of European professionals working on digital cultural heritage and advocating for DCH.

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MUSEU-HUB is a reference point for European museums and other cultural institutions hosting museum collections in the field of digital cultural heritage and aggregation for Europeana.

It provides services, good practices, training, help-desk, documentation, updating on digitisation, standards, aggregation, IPR and reuse, multilingualism and terminologies, digital exhibitions, digital storytelling tools.

Museu is managed by Michael Culture.

Access to MUSEU - Hub online platform 

In our Newsletter you will find news about MCA , Members and Partners as well as news related to EU events and policies.

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Amplify Project comes to a close!

June 2022

Today, Culture Action Europe finishes the 18 months collaboration between communities across 12 European countries working to bring attention to the voices of underrepresented voices at the Conference on the Future of Europe and beyond. Over 350 motivated people debated what the priorities of policymaking should be at both the national and European levels and proposed a diversity of ideas, concerns and recommendations in the shaping of the future of Europe. Michael Culture Association is particularly proud to have led the French Hub. Thank you Culture Action Europe.

More on Amplify: its outcomes and results 

Europe’s top heritage awards honour 30 exemplary achievements from 18 countries.

June 2022

The European Commission and Europa Nostra have just announced the 2022 winners of the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards, funded by the EU Creative Europe programme. This year, which marks the 20th anniversary of Europe’s most prestigious Awards in the heritage field, 30 outstanding heritage achievements from 18 European countries have been awarded in five categories. These categories are in line with the latest developments and priorities related to heritage policy and practice in Europe.

Discover the winners here!

Free training webinar on data model for GLAMs! July 13 - 15:00-17:00 CET

Has your institution already published its collection online? Do you want to make it visible in Europeana? Try with a small dataset, even ten records are enough! The higher the quality of your records is, the more they will be visible in Europeana. First, you need a correct mapping from your data model to EDM, the Europeana Data Model.

In this interactive training webinar led by Maria Teresa Natale and Marco Scarbaci, Michael Culture Association - Museu-Hub and Antonio Davide Madonna, Technical coordinator at CulturaItalia, you will learn how to do it using an Excel file.

More information and registration here!

This webinar is organized in the framework of Europeana DSI4-2. DSI4-2 is a Europeana Initiative project, and it is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.

Call for paper and registration: Image and Research Conference 2022

June 2022

The Image and Research Conference (Antoni Varés Conference) has been held in the city of Girona since 1990. This event brings together every two years experts and the public interested in debating, reflecting and teaching different aspects related to the management of photographic and audiovisual heritage.

The 17th edition of the Image and Research Conference (Antoni Varés Conference) will be held between 16 and 19 November 2022, which this year will regain its presence after the break caused by the pandemic.

Check out the call for papers (Deadline June 30th) and call for participation (Deadline July 31st)!

The ENUMERATE Self Assessment Tool: gain insight into your institution’s digital transformation!

June 2022

Do you work in the cultural heritage sector and would you like a better understanding of your institution’s digital capacity, audience development and more? Use the ENUMERATE Self Assessment Tool to receive insights and recommendations based on the latest research. Your input and answers in the period between 25 May and 30 June 2022 will be used to inform the ENUMERATE report in 2022.

Find out more and discover how to take part here!

Save the Date - Europeana Conference - 28-30 September 2022!

Europeana 2022 will take place from 28 - 30 September 2022. It will be a hybrid conference, welcoming cultural heritage professionals from around the world both in person, to the KB, National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague, and digitally. It aims to explore how we can collaboratively build a common data space for cultural heritage and raise voices from across the sector to empower digital transformation and explore the role digital cultural heritage plays in today’s and tomorrow’s world. 

More on Europeana 2022!

Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO)

May 2022

SUCHO is a group of cultural heritage professionals – librarians, archivists, researchers, programmers – working together to identify and archive at-risk sites, digital content, and data in Ukrainian cultural heritage institutions while the country is under attack. They are using a combination of technologies to crawl and archive sites and content. So far they have saved more than 30TB of scanned documents, artworks and many other digital materials from 3,500+ websites of Ukrainian museums, libraries and archives.

Get involved: more on SUCHO, here!

Voices of Culture: (Re)-Engaging Digital Audiences – Challenges and Opportunities

June 2022

We are delighted to announce the publication of the Brainstorming Report on the topic ‘(Re)-Engaging Digital Audiences – Challenges and Opportunities’ to which MCA contributed as a board member of Culture Action Europe.The Brainstorming Report provides guidelines and recommendations to cultural practicioners and the European Commission in three main chapters. COVID-19 recovery, Digital audience management and data collection! 

Written in an accesible and inclusive language, this document is aimed at both cultural practicioners on a local level, with concrete tips and practices but also provides people in policy making positions with useful tools for their work.

Read it here

4CH for Ukraine: Discover SUM!

March 2022

The 4CH initiative, titled SUM – Save the Ukraine Monuments, aims to duplicate all the digital documents locally available on safe servers in the EU, to preserve them and return them to the legitimate owners when peace will be re-established. On 3 March the network was operational,and the first transfers could start. Security system and a robust  uploading procedure were in place. INFN (Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics), the 4CH coordinating institution, set up the necessary storage system, paralleled by a similar one in Poland  at the Poznan Supercomputing Center and by analogous provisions at the University of Luxembourg.

More on SUM here!

Available now: The GLAMers's training modules!

April 15, 2022

Based on the collection of resources on youth participation in GLAMs, project partners are pleased to announce the release of their 5 open-access digital training suites!

This aims to produce guidelines and offer hands-on training for the benefit of GLAMs in their digital transformation processes and outcomes through youth participation. In other words, the training suite will translate the project's first study (IO1) results into a set of actionable advice as well as training opportunities for GLAMs and youth sector stakeholders, as means to ensure knowledge transferability and better connection to the needs of the target groups!

The training package is now available in English! It will be available in Croatian, Greek, and French soon!

Get involved!

Explore support actions organised by museums for Ukraine!

March 2022

Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) is monitoring and collecting support initiatives and offers for Ukraine on a new webpage.

Museums across Europe have been quick in organising different support actions to help their Ukrainian museum colleagues and everyone else in need of aid. On the new webpage, NEMO is continuously collecting and publishing new initiatives relating to:

• Storage and Housing
• Donations
• Education and Exhibitions
• Statements issued by European museum organisations

If you want to contribute an offer to the webpage, please send your initiative (including location and description in English) to weber@ne-mo.org

NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS- 07.03.2022

[Joint Research Centre - European Commission]

Open call: Transform places of learning

The call has recently been launched. It is an invitation to experts, thinkers, doers, neighbours, ministers, students, educators or researchers to come together and make waves for beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive spaces that will shape our future ways of learning and thinking. Participants can share their projects and join other passionate individuals and organisations making a difference in where and how people learn across Europe and beyond - from classrooms to streets and from playgrounds to libraries. More information on the call can be found here. 

Online Europeana conference under the French Presidency - Building the common European data space for cultural heritage together!

March 2022

In collaboration with Mobilier National and the French Ministry of Culture and under the auspices of the French Presidency of the Council, Europeana organized an online conference on 1 March 2022.

The conference 'Building the common European  data space for cultural heritage together: The role of Europeana, content aggregation and strategic frameworks' explored the creation of the Data Space for Cultural Heritage. It took place in the context of the European Commission’s Recommendation 2021/1970 of 10 November 2021.

Rewatch the event here

Read Culture Action Europe's new publication: Culture in the EU’s National Recovery and Resilience Plans.

January 2022

This publication, developed by Culture Action Europe and its membership, offers an overview of the place of culture in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) of the Member States of the European Union.

This brief overview aims at analysing what types of investments and reforms (if any) are contained in the NRRPs directly supporting Europe’s cultural ecosystem, which has been among the most affected by the long crisis and the subsequent containment measures.

It follows up on the call by the European cultural and creative sectors, and backed by the European Parliament, to specifically earmark  at the very least 2% of each NRRP for culture.

Read the publication here

2022 Creative Europe Programme (CREA) with a budget of around 385 millions euros from the European Commission is now adopted!

February 2022

On January, the European Commission adopted the 2022 work programme of Creative Europe, followed by the launch of a Call for Proposals for EU action grants in the field of Culture under the Creative Europe Programme. The publication of its programme gives an overview of the structure and objectives of Creative Europe, the budget for each action in the
different strands, a description of the grants to apply for and on the implementation of the programme

Read the report: A Cultural Deal for Europe policy conversation by Culture Action Europe

February 2022

The third edition of the Annual Policy Conversation “A Cultural Deal for Europe” brought the European cultural ecosystem in a dialogue with  EU policy-makers, advocating for culture to be central in the EU’s green and sustainable future.The online event happened in the framework of the #CulturalDealEU campaign, jointly developed by Culture Action Europe, the European Cultural Foundation, and Europa Nostra also in its capacity as coordinator of the European Heritage Alliance.

Read the detailed report of the event here

 Endorse the #CulturalDealEu here!

Discover 4CH's advisory board

January 2022

The project Advisory Board is a consultative body formed by high-level experts representing cultural institutions, heritage agencies and ministries, international organizations, professional associations or having special expertise on key technologies. It advises the project, provides feedback on its products, and liaises it with the civil society and the heritage community, serving as ambassadors of the  project. The Advisory Board members are invited to join since project start.  It is convened jointly with project management meetings. It will self-organize its activity with administrative support from the project.

Watch the video on the advisory board here!

Discover PREVISION's promotional video

December 2021

Watch  PREVISION's promotional video! The five minutes video highlights the most important tools and services generated to cope with the project. It also brings forward the possible cases in which it can be applied.

Watch it by clicking here!

Have a look at PREVISION's Youtube channel!

More about the project here!

CulturEU, the new “one-stop-shop” for funding opportunities for culture

November 2021

Commissioner Mariya Gabriel officially launched CulturEU, a new user-friendly tool for cultural stakeholders to navigate available funding opportunities for the cultural and creative sectors in EU programmes 2021-2027. CulturEU is available as an interactive online webtool and as a printable guidebook. It covers opportunities linked to around 20 EU funding programmes that can support projects with a cultural and creative dimension, from the environment, to digital Europe and EU Structural Funds. The tool has been developed by the European Commission to support all types and sizes of cultural and creative stakeholders by helping them navigate the EU funding landscape and access EU funding more easily.

You can find the tool here.

Watch Michael Culture Association at the EVA/Minerva Conference 2021

December 2021

Michael Culture Association has been invited to present different projects and initiatives at the EVA/Minerva Brazil International Conference in São Paulo, Brasil. The conference hosted a rich meeting between cultural heritage professionals, developers and suppliers of advanced technologies from Brazil and Europe.

On December 8th, Michael Culture  Association presented educational, social and cultural projects in a workshop & round table on "Digital Cultural Heritage supporting Social and Educational Innovation".

Watch the panel session by clicking here!

More about EVA/Minerva here!

Read the Commission's recommendation on a common European data space for cultural heritage

November 2021

The European Commission has published a recommendation on a common European data space for cultural heritage. The aim is to accelerate the digitization of cultural heritage assets!

The Commission recommends Member States to accelerate the digitization of all cultural heritage monuments and sites, objects and artefacts for future generations, to protect and preserve those at risk, and boost their reuse in domains such as education, sustainable tourism and cultural creative sectors.

One of the objectives is to digitize all monuments and sites that are at risk of degradation and half of those highly frequented by tourists by 2030 within member States.

Download and read the recommandation here

Michael Culture Association joins of the New European Bauhaus

November 2021

We are pleased to announce that Michael Culture Association is now a member of the New European Bauhaus!

The New European Bauhaus brings a cultural and creative dimension to the European Green Deal, aiming to demonstrate how sustainable innovation offers tangible, positive experiences in our daily life. It intends to translate the European Green Deal into tangible change on the ground that improves daily life, in buildings, in public spaces.

As a trans-domain network devoted to the digital cultural heritage communities, MCA is proud to be able to contribute to the discussion of the NEB, introducing it to our members, audience and partners made of aggregators, museum professionals, cultural institutions, etc.

Download the Commission communication on the NEB here

Download the report on the NEB co-design here

Download the NEB Policy ecosystem here

Discover the Europeana climate action manifesto!

November 2021

The Europeana Foundation, the Europeana Network Association and the Europeana Aggregators' Forum, have agreed to advocate for and embed working practices that minimise the digital cultural heritage sector’s impact on the climate and environment through a manifesto.

The objective is to ensure that the sector’s digital transformation is environmentally efficient and sustainable. The manifesto brings forward a set of rules and principles guiding how we can plan, collaborate, operate and advocate in ecologically responsible ways. The manifesto has four major principles which will guide the action plan and activities: planning, collaborating, operating and avocating.

Read more about the manifesto here

MCA at Europeana 2021

November 2021

As the cultural heritage sector looks to recover, rebuild and grow in post-pandemic times, Europeana 2021 - from 10 - 12 November 2021 - aimed to raise voices from across the sector to empower digital transformation and explore the role digital cultural heritage plays in supporting a sustainable, responsible and inspiring cultural heritage sector for today and tomorrow.

On this occasion, Corinne Szteinsznaider, Maria Teresa Natale and Pier Giacomo Sola from Michael Culture Association animated a workshop on "Culture Heritage supporting Creative and Critical Thinking in Education" on Wednesday 10 November 2021. The workshop included a presentation of 3 Erasmus+ projects MCA is involved in: Creative School, CrowdSchool & The GLAMers as well as a practical session.

You can (re)watch MCA's session here!

Explore Europeana 2021 and get ready for Europeana 2022!

New project alert: PITCHER 

November 2021

Michael Culture Association is proud to announce its participation as a project partner in PITCHER, a brand new Erasmsus + project (2021-2024) coordinated by Bibracte (France).

The main objective of the project consists of the design and  test of a set of open educational resources, to be made available also  online, focusing on improving the educators’ capacity in preparing new   learning experiences to support the fight against looting and illicit  trafficking of cultural goods, thanks to the rich repositories of digital cultural heritage accessible through the web.

The project  intends to propose a new model for addressing young people about the problem of fighting the looting and illicit trafficking of cultural  goods, focusing on school teachers, in order to raise their awareness and enhance their professional development in this field.

More about the project here

News about the MEMEX project: Policy Brief 2 uploaded and capacity building events on the way!

November 2021

The second MEMEX Policy Brief (PB) has just been released. It analyses the stakes of social impact assessment and evaluation tools with a special focus on "Societal Readiness Levels".

Read the second Policy Brief here!

The project's pilots are currently organising a local capacity-building event that aims at presenting the first results to social-cultural professionals as well as to policymakers. These capacity-building events will take place in Lisbon (6th of December) and Barcelona (17th of December) and Paris (2022).

Read more about the pilots here!

Voices of Culture - (Re)-Engaging Digital Audiences In The Cultural Sectors – Improving Audience Data

Michael Culture Association will participate as a representative of Culture Action Europe in the structured dialogue on ‘(Re)-Engaging Digital Audiences In The Cultural Sectors – Improving Audience Data with the European Commission

 alongside 35 experts organizations. Experts will engage on the topic of understanding digital audiences, 
with a special focus on performing arts and cultural heritage. 
In light of COVID-19, discussions will focus particularly on lessons 
learned from lockdown-induced practices to understand existing digital 
audiences and engage new ones, as well as to collect and manage digital 
audience data. Participants will produce a Brainstorming Report, which will be presented to the European Commission at the Dialogue Meeting on 8th March 2022.

More about the dialogue here

Amplify, make the future of Europe yours

Today, project partners submit their visions and recommendations to the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) platform, as a result of a series of community listening sessions organised in their local areas. The #Amplify project calls on the cultural and creative ecosystem to engage on the CoFoE platform and bring visibility to the less represented voices.

Through working sessions occurring until January 2022, these panels will meet to discuss the key topics and ideas from the CoFoE online platform and present the outcome of their discussions and debate them with other participants in the Conference Plenary.

In order for culture to have a chance to be taken up in the Conference, Amplify recommendations need to be seen by as many people as possible.

In order for Culture and its values to find their rightful place in the European debate and the CoFoE, support the recommendations published by the Amplify Hubs from different countries !

WE-Hope at Frequency International Festival of Digital Culture

October 2021

We are proud to announce that WE Hope has selected its two artists to develop the public artwork driven by the stories housed within the project and due to premiere in October 2021 at Frequency international Festival of Digital Culture in Lincoln, UK.

Zach Walker of Make Amplify developped the visuals and interactivity. MakeAmplify is an award-winning collective of artists and technologists under the artistic directorship of Jennifer Irons and Zach Walker. They create spectacular outdoor and immersive events that connect people and transform public spaces, engaging communities and audiences in experiences that combine the physical, emotional and digital.

Alongside, acclaimed composer and vocal artist Juliet Russell performed a musical and vocal score, accompanied by a local choir. Juliet’s music has been performed by Choirs to bhangra bands – heard in Cathedrals, Castles, Mayan temple sites and football stadiums. Her solo performances have spanned venues from the National Theatre rooftops to under the Brooklyn Bridge.

More about WE-Hope at the Frequency Festival in Lincoln

CRAFTED Kick-Off Meeting

The CRAFTED-2020 partners gathered in Athens on the first of October 2021 for the project Kick-Off meeting. The CRAFTED project aims to support the transfer of European crafts to future generations by aggregating, enriching and promoting tangible crafts heritage and preserving intangible skills and knowledge from craftsmen and artisans.
This project is a Europeana Generic Services project, and it is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.

The project aims to enable the preservation of both material and immaterial aspects of craftsmanship and thus ensure a comprehensive understanding and appreciation of the communities and cultures from whom it belongs to. For this, the project will aggregate more than 186,000 new high-quality records that showcase tangible objects produced or used by artisans and document their immaterial context, such as techniques and knowledge. Additionally, it will upgrade over 26,000 records already existing in Europeana to an open license.

Last update about the NEW BAUHAUS (September 2021)

On September 15th, the European Commission provided additional information on the New European Bauhaus (NEB). The New European Bauhaus intends to translate the European Green Deal into tangible change on the ground that improves daily life, in buildings, in public spaces, but also in fashion or furniture.

In the report and its Annex, the EC presents the Report on the co-design phase ; the mobilisation of 85 million euros among existing EU programs such as ERDF and Creative Europe to finance the NEB ; and the NEB policy ecosystem.

The first edition of the NEB prizes has been celebrate with 20 winners selected on the base of the  three New European Bauhaus values: sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion.

• Download the full communication here
• Read about the NEWS BAUHAUS here  
• Access to the NEB Award 2021 (replay) here

Following the CAE board elections in June, the board members have recently met and decided upon the new presidium.

Therefore Corinne Szteinsznaider, coordinator of Michael Culture, is joining the board presidium of Culture Action Europe as co-treasurer.

With renewed forces, CAE and its board are looking forward to continuing joint efforts to put culture at the heart of public debate and decision-making.

More info and full presidium on Culture Action Europe website