The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage held an expert conference on behalf of the Polish EU Presidency on 19 and 20 July 2011 in Warsaw. EUscreen was represented by its co-ordinator, professor Sonja de Leeuw.
Competences in Culture, Polish EU Presidency, Warsaw 2011
Conference Report by Sonja de Leeuw
The conference was titled COMPETENCES IN CULTURE and covered three main themes:
- Creative potential of digital archives (Audiovisual)
- Management of copyright and related rights in the digital environment (IPR)
- Cultural competences – the role of culture and creativity in the building of the intellectual capital of Europe (Culture).
The audiovisual theme of the conference was inscribed in the Digital Agenda for Europe and consisted of three panels, each addressing topical subjects:
- The future of digital content
- Education through the archives
- The wide distribution of digitized archive materials (VOD, Cinema, etc.).
The audiovisual panels allowed for exchanging best practices of digital archiving, new emerging business models, as well as building workflows for digital preservation of film and audiovisual archives and mapping out new approaches to valorization of archives that include collaboration with education and research centers, publishers, documentary film makers, and the users.
Sonja de Leeuw presented EUscreen in the panel on The future of digital archives. This panel very much addressed issues of digitisation of the audiovisual and film content and the creative potential of digitized materials, taking into account a user’s perspective. The future of the European digital library was a central issue as well as the developments of partner projects such as the European Film Gateway and EUscreen.In her presentation she anticipated future uses of audiovisual material, television heritage in particular. To that extent, she emphasized two features: Linking and Context. Linking relates to Metadata and Content, but is also related to uses in the sense that television heritage online links the present’s past to the user’s present. Explained was the level of interoperability as well as that of user interactivity with the help of the common metadata schema, integration into Europeana and the use case scenarios. Context relates to how EUscreen provides different access routes to the content, notably with the EUscreen platform, with virtual exhibitions on the EUscreen platform and with the establishment of a multimedia e-journal on the EUscreen platform as well.
This one and a half day conference indeed provided a great opportunity to meet colleagues in related fields and to discuss topical problem and solutions. It fitted well into the scope of the Polish Ministry covering Culture and National Heritage equally. It stressed the importance of culture for the social and economic well being of citizens and the need for developing specific competences to take up the challenges offered by the digital cultural landscape.
Links
- Find the slides of Sonja de Leeuw’s presentation at http://competencesinculture.pl/static/documents/AUDIO_Sala2_Sonja_de_Leeuw_Panelista_WT_11_45.pdf