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How can cultural heritage institutions measure the impact of their work on audiences, stakeholders and the general public? How to evaluate their events to improve them? What tools can they use to understand the effect of their services and products, especially as they move online?
Europeana has helped cultural heritage institutions answer these questions by developing resources, organizing events and bringing a community together around impact in the heritage sector. We want to standardize an approach to impact that we – and others – can take, in order to better understand the impact of digital cultural heritage. Read on to find out more about what we’ve been doing over the past year to achieve these goals!
Development of the Europeana impact framework
The Europeana Impact Framework defines how we apply and integrate impact assessment within the Europeana Foundation and the wider Initiative. Over the past year, we’ve refined its various elements, including the Europeana Impact Playbook, a step-by-step, step-by-step approach to helping cultural heritage professionals design, measure and tell their impact. We recently released Phase Three of the Playbook, which guides professionals through storytelling of impact, from building a story to visualizing data and publishing the results in different ways for different audiences. This year, we were also excited to share the Europeana Standardized Question Bank, a new resource that accompanies phase two of the Playbook. The question bank aims to support cultural heritage institutions and our partners in their data collection and impact assessment practices, in particular by questioning stakeholders.
In addition, we have created a central impact database on Europeana Pro to bring together all of our impact assessments for others to refer to and learn from, and we have updated and updated our Impact online toolkit so you can find all the resources you need in one place.
The Europeana impact community
We were delighted to see that over the past year the Europeana Impact community has almost doubled in size and has been active in creating a platform for learning and discussion around the practice of impact. A five-part Impact Community webinar series explored the impact of digital cultural heritage in digital transformation, while a successful two-day symposium, ‘Research and Digital Cultural Heritage: New Horizons of Impact’, addressed topics ranging from policies and innovation to participatory practices to digital audiences. and new socio-political perspectives. Recordings of all of these events can be viewed on our webinar page.
Community members have also been busy working on the Impact Lite working group and at Europeana looked for relevant opportunities to encourage discussion on Europeana’s approach to impact, as in the working group of the European Union. HERIWELL project.
Impact research
Our ongoing impact research aims to strengthen our understanding of the impact of convening the sector through our events and network. This year we have published impact assessment reports of the Europeana digital agenda and the 2019 and 2020 conferences, as well as exploring our Portuguese Presidency event in June 2021 and carrying out a survey of members of the association of the Europeana network. For anyone looking to replicate our evaluation approach, our new event toolkit includes a section dedicated to impact and measuring event success!
Integration of impact practices into the Europeana Initiative
Along with our efforts to support impact practices across the industry, we are also integrating an impact approach within the Europeana initiative. It was great to see that three of the six most recently funded generic service projects include an impact evaluation as part of the work plan, and we also established an evaluation template for all of our events, guided by the ‘Impact Playbook. We have adapted the methodology of the first phase of the Impact Playbook to create impact-oriented planning and strategy workshops, notably for the working group on new professionals of the Europeana Network Association and the cross-team. Diversity and inclusion of the Europeana Foundation.
Future plans
We keep our eyes on the horizon for more opportunities to explore what our work can tell us about the value of digital transformation for digital heritage practitioners, organizations and audiences, and society at large. . Over the coming year, we will improve our data collection approaches and continue to build the evidence base. We will ensure that our impact toolbox is relevant through a review of phase two (data collection) and publication of phase four (assessment) so that it meets the needs of the sector in a context of rapid social and environmental change and digital transformation. We will organize capacity building activities, such as training on the use of the Impact Playbook, and aim to animate the community to increase the timeliness of the discussion on the impact on digital cultural heritage.
To be the first to hear about this work as it progresses and the opportunities to get involved, join the Europeana Impact community – it’s free and easy to join today!
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