Is it possible to engage people with culture in an entertaining way? It is. Europeana enabled professionals and the general public to engage better and access cultural heritage assets.

How did they manage to do it? The GIF IT UP initiative challenges people to reuse digitised cultural heritage material to produce unique GIFs and share them online. In fact, the competition encourages people to explore and remix cultural heritage material at the same time as helping audiences learn about image licensing in an interactive and fun way. Encouraging learners to make GIFs in educational contexts can also offer them an opportunity to animate and engage with cultural heritage.

Aleksandra Strzelichowska of Europeana will help us explore the initiative and will lead the participants to create their own first GIF! So join us if you want to engage practically with this innovative way of interacting with art!

Aleksandra is a Senior Online Marketing Specialist at Europeana, Europe’s platform for cultural heritage. Passionate about creative ways to engage people with culture, she firmly believes that art and culture are for everyone. She is the organiser of GIF IT UP - an annual gif-making competition, and of the Digital Storytelling Festival - inviting people to create meaningful stories using digitised cultural heritage content. She also created a series of Europeana Colouring Books on various themes.

Christin Cieslakis is head of Programmes and Stakeholder Engagement at EAEA. Gerontology and Adult Education/Lifelong learning graduate from Germany, with deep knowledge and working experience in transnational cooperation on a European level. She has worked for four national Agencies, assessed LLLP and E+ applications for over ten years, and was the EPALE CSS project manager.