European Heritage Days 2020 celebrate “Heritage and Education: Learning for Life!”

The 2020 European Heritage Days, a joint initiative of the European Commission and the Council of Europe since 1999 and supported by the Creative Europe Programme, are now taking place across Europe until October. This year’s edition celebrates the enriching cooperation between education and heritage. Despite the obstacles posed by coronavirus, the programme’s network of national coordinators proposes a wide range of creative activities in addition to the thousands of events actually taking place (with physical distancing). Organisers are being encouraged to create a digital offering in the form of a video, photo gallery, virtual tour, podcast, blog, webinar or story of their venue to be featured online. Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, said: “This year, in addition to physical events, European Heritage Days is proposing a most impressive digital offering, providing a long-term legacy for its many thousands of monuments and sites. We are proud to present a programme, which is both local-led and truly accessible by everyone across our entire continent. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the disruption of the sector’s traditional way of working, making the digital transformation of cultural heritage institutions more relevant than ever. In the light of this, the European Commission has launched a public consultation on digitisation in the cultural heritage sector with a view to shaping the appropriate policy framework and actions to preserve Europe’s valuable cultural assets and to give better visibility to its unique cultural diversity. The public consultation is open until 14 September so I strongly encourage you to contribute to it.” European Heritage Days bring citizens together and highlight the European dimension of cultural heritage in the 50 signatory States of the European Cultural Convention. More information available is available here.