Culture and Creativity in the digital realm

- a boost from the past

Luis FerrãoCreativity Unit

DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology

Europeana Licensing WorkshopLuxembourg, 13-14 June 2013

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Culture – EU competence: 'support, coordinate or complement'

• The Union shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore.

• Action of the Union shall be…in the following areas:• improvement of the knowledge and dissemination of the culture

and history of the European peoples,

• Conservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage of European significance…

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"…the evolution of art, science, religion, philosophy, and social thought…the living past…form the substance of what is now called 'the culture'."

" Culture is what makes life worth living."

Culture as the 'living past'

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The digital realm:- a game-change for culture…

connected, distributed environment • (www, open platforms, interfaces, smart spaces…)

unprecedented ways to search, combine and reuse• (data- and text mining, mash-ups, crowdsourcing, geo-location tools…)

real time, multi-layer, world-wide interactions • (social networks, web fora, wikis, blogs, P2P and UGC platforms...)

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…creativity…• The complexity dimension:

• creation as an incremental, mutually enriching process

• emphasis on interactions (social communities, collective intelligence, collaborative design…)

• emergence and sistemic effects (whole more than sum of parts…)

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…and the creative sector• Unprecedented possibilities to:

• help cultural institutions in digitising/preserving CH

• make digitised CH generally accessible to all (regardless of time, distance, physical or other constraints)

• use, share, combine, aggregate and disseminate CH

• re-use CH to develop new content, tools and applications

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Europe 2020 strategyDigitisation and online accessibility of cultural heritage is firmly anchored in Europe 2020 strategy and flagship initiatives Digital Agenda for Europe and Innovation Union. It is also a building block of the Open data strategy launched in December 2011 (e.g. proposed extension of the Directive on re-use of Public Sector Information to cultural content)

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Europe 2020 strategy (2)5 interrelated targets for an innovative, knowledge-based economy, incl.:

3% of GDP in R&D 40% share of population aged 30-34 with tertiary education 75% the employment rate of population aged 20-64

7 flagship initiatives, including: an Innovation Union a Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE)

Mobilizing all instruments and policies, such as: internal market and competition budget (structural funds, Horizon 2020, Connecting Europe Facility…) trade policy and external relations public procurement

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Digital Agenda for EuropeOne of the 7 flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy

- 101 specific actions, including 31 legal proposals

A vibrant digital single market

Fast and ultra fast Internet access

Using ICT to help society

Promote digital literacy, qualifications and inclusion

Interoperability

and standards

Trust and security

Research and development

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Objectives maximize the economic and social potential of ICT

Internet vital for business, work, leasure, communications and free expression

stimulate innovation and economic growth and improving the daily life of citizens and companies

reply to Europe’s main societal changes and offer Europeans a better quality of life:

eHealth efficient transport solutions cleaner environment new ways of communicating easier access to public services and cultural content

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Obstacles fragmented digital markets lack of interoperability cyber-criminality and risk of network security lack of investment in networks insufficient R&D lack of digital literacy and qualifications fragmented replies to societal challenges:

climate change and other pressures on environment ageing population and growing health care costs need for more efficient public services integration of handicaped persons digitisation of Europe’s cultural heritage and its availability for

present and future generations

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Digital knowledge infrastructure- building blocks

broadband, fast internet & accessible mobile networks interoperability of formats and applications online public services wide access to public and scientific data (open data)* online accessibility to cultural heritage comprehensive, reliable and affordable platforms for

web search and interactions (incl. rights clearance)

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Culture heritage in the digital economy

Cultural heritage as expression of European identity, diversity and wealth (global asset)

Digital access to CH breathes new life into material from the past, turning it into:• formidable asset for the individual user• important building block of the digital economy

material can be reused in new ways for developing:• learning and educational content• documentaries, tourism applications• games, animations and a wealth of other web services & apps

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Connecting Europe Facility- access to digital resources of European

heritage• Core service platform (www.europeana.eu)

• continuous coordination, operation, maintenance, enhancement and promotion of the central services of the Europeana portal (www.europeana.eu ) infrastructure and related networks

• Generic services• aggregation of content• crowd-sourcing facilities• user-friendly services; cross-language access• exchange of rights information and licensing mechanisms• competence centres on digitisation and preservation of digital CH• content repositories for cultural institutions and user-generated content

14As per CEF proposal –> reassessment in view of MFF budget cuts in progress

Bringing Europe's cultural heritage online

• 2006: Commission Recommendation on digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation

• main developments since 2006:• Launch of Europeana (2008)• Digital Agenda for Europe (2010)• MoU on out-of-commerce works (2011)• Comité des Sages Report ‘The New Renaissance’ (2011)• Directive 2012/28/EU on orphan works• Commission Recommendation 2011/711/EU

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Comité des Sages Report (2011) public domain material:

make CH digitised with public funds as widely available as possible avoid use of intrusive watermarks or other use-restricting means metadata related to digitised objects produced by cultural institutions

widely and freely available for re-use

• in © works: avoid future orphan works Collective licensing solutions + window of opportunity for digitisation and

cross-border access of out-of-commerce works backed by legislation to digitise and bring them online, if rightholders and

commercial providers do not do so

Europeana: to become the reference point for cultural content online public funding for digitisation conditional on subsequent free

accessibility through Europeana linking main digitisation activities of Europe's cultural heritage all public domain masterpieces brought into Europeana by 2016

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Digitisation and online accessibility

further develop the planning and monitoring of digitisation of cultural material

encourage partnerships between cultural institutions and the private sector

stimulate new uses of cultural material under fair & balanced PPPs

make use of EU's structural funds to co-finance digitisation activities

optimise use of digitisation capacity to achieve economies of scale

(pooling cultural institutions' digitisation efforts, cross-border colaboration…)

improve access to and use of digitised cultural material in the public domain

Improve conditions for digitisation and online accessibility of in © material

contribute to the further development of Europeana

30 m objects accessible through Europeana by 2015, incl. 2m AV and all PD masterpieces

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Facilitating rights clearance

ARROW -‘Accessible Registries of Rights Information and Orphan Works towards Europeana’• books• four countries pilot: UK, F, D, SP (2009-2011)

ARROW Plus (April/2011-Set/2013)• wider geographical coverage• embedded images

FORWARD – AV material

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Europeana – Europe's digital library, archive & museum

• More openess• open government licences

• More transparency• Open data portals

• More reusability• Open, machine-readable formats• Downwards trend on charging

Wider scope• cultural institutions (libraries, archives, museums)

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Europeana

Access point to cultural heritage

Hub for the creative industries, which already account for ca. 4% of EU GDP and jobs

Funding proposal through 'Connecting Europe Facility' (2014 – 2020)

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The Europeana ecosystem - aggregators

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Some challenges In © works

• Orphan works• Out-of-commerce works• Digital rights clearing platforms

AV material (under-represented)

Access/re-use: • visibility/usability (multilingualism, search quality, resolution…)• EDM/LOD deployment

Rights labelling• ca. 1/3 of objects un-marked*

Scalability and Sustainability

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ESMAE – Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espetáculo do Porto (PT) 2,487 objects

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To know more

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/creativity-media/cultural-heritage

http://www.europeana.eu/portal

http://ec.europa.eu/licences-for-europe-dialogue/en/content/about-site

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!24