A continent of craft now on Europeana website, thanks to the CRAFTED project

An important european project for intangible and crafts heritage, CRAFTED, recently came to an end. The project, in which the National Documentation Center participated as a partner, aimed to promote tangible crafts heritage and preserve intangible knowledge from craftspeople and artisans across Europe. A celebration of European craftwork is now on the Europeana website, thanks to the recently completed CRAFTED project.

More than 60 editorial pieces tell the story of crafts across Europe, with 23 blogs, 10 galleries and 3 online exhibitions available on the Europeana website at https://www.europeana.eu/making-culture.

A Youtube playlist brings together more than 30 behind-the-scenes videos with craftspeople from five European countries (Greece, the Netherlands, France, Croatia, and Italy). Altogether, the editorials cover craft heritage on a diverse range of topics: pottery, lace making, analogue photography, glassblowing, weaving, jewelry, and much more.

These editorials are complemented by around 170,000 cultural heritage items available on the Europeana website - including images, video, audio, 3D models, and more - from 28 cultural heritage institutions in seven European countries including museums, universities, sound and video archives, research centers, theatres and galleries.

A dedicated educational manual for education professionals working in high schools showcases how to engage students with craft heritage collections to study the history of crafts, contemporary art, media history, and more. It presents six learning scenarios stimulating students to use technological tools and innovative methodologies to improve their skills - from simple actions like making a gallery to more in-depth learning like holding an edit-a-thon.

Project coordinator Eirini Kaldeli from the National Technical University of Athens, said, 'Crafts are a living expression of the traditions and beliefs of cultural communities around the world, brought to life in tangible objects such as hand-made jewelry, textiles, furniture and more. The techniques and skills required to create these objects are a form of cultural heritage, requiring preservation as much as the objects themselves.'

Jolan Wuyts from Europeana Foundation said, 'The CRAFTED project may have been completed but its legacy lives on. Crafts heritage is a vibrant and accessible living heritage that engages audiences across Europe creatively and actively. The project's items on Europeana, editorials, videos, educational material and more are valuable resources that can be further exploited in various contexts - from schools and exhibitions by cultural heritage organizations  to hands-on workshops and research initiatives.'

The project - which ran from September 2021 and ended in June 2023 - was co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.

The National Documentation Center (EKT) participated with the SearchCulture.gr, the National Aggregator for Digital Cultural Content, showcasing its ethnology collections and highlighting aspects of traditional crafts of Greece. 

The CRAFTED partners were:

• National Technical University of Greece (NTUA)
• Modemuseum Antwerpen (Belgium)
• Datable (Belgium)
• Paris Musées (France)
• European Fashion Heritage Association (Italy)
• Europeana Foundation (Netherlands)
• National Documentation Centre (Greece)
• Museo del Tessuto di Prato (Italy)
• Michael Culture Association (Belgium)
• Mobilier national (France)
• Museum of Arts and Crafts (Croatia)
• The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (Netherlands)
• Open University of the Netherlands (Netherlands)
• Stowarzyszenie Miedzynarodowe Centrum Zarzadzania Informacja (Poland).

About Europeana

Europeana shares and promotes Europe's digital cultural heritage to be used and enjoyed by everyone for learning, for work, or just for fun. The Europeana website provides cultural heritage enthusiasts, professionals, teachers, and researchers with access to Europe's digital cultural heritage. Millions of items from around 4,000 providing institutions across Europe are available - discover artworks, books, music, and videos on art, newspapers, archaeology, fashion, science, sport, and much more.

Europeana is at the heart of the common European data space for cultural heritage, a flagship initiative of the European Union to support the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector. It is funded by the European Commission under the Digital Europe programme as part of Europe’s Digital Decade.

The CRAFTED project was a Europeana Generic Services project, co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union. It ran from September 2021 to June 2023.

About SearchCulture.gr

SearchCulture.gr, developed and made available by EKT, is the National Aggregator of Digital Cultural Content and the accredited national aggregator for the European digital library Europeana. It collects metadata and preview images of digital cultural resources from the websites and repositories of the participating institutions and publishes them enriched on the Search Portal.

The upgrade and expansion of the SearchCulture.gr aggregator with new functionalities is being carried out by EKT under the ‘National Research and Technology Information System: Infrastructure for the Aggregation, Documentation and Disemination of Digital Content ensuring interoperability, long-term preservation and open access’ action. The operation is implemented under the Operational Programme ‘Public Sector Reform’ (NSRF 2014-2020) and is co-financed by the European Union - European Regional Development Fund and national resources.