Working with cultural institutions to promote their digital content
Unsplash is a platform through which 150,000 photographers and institutions share their imagery or license it openly for reuse. Every second, 10 photos are downloaded from Unsplash, which has millions of users throughout the US and beyond.
Unsplash has recently begun featuring images from Europeana, as well as a number of other cultural heritage institutions, including the New York Public Library, NASA, and the British Library. These institutions, including Europeana, have worked with Unsplash to create official profiles on the platform, sharing a selection of their reusable digital cultural heritage content to new audiences. These profiles connect Unsplash’s community with historical and cultural imagery from around the world.
The images featured on the Europeana's Unsplash profile were selected for their high quality and educational value, and include a variety of paintings, photographs, still lives and historical scenes. These images will become a source of creative information for the Unsplash community, who are encouraged to reuse and remix images from the platform - the Made With Unsplash blog showcases some of the most creative examples.
Unsplash for Education: Building a strong community of students and teachers
Unsplash has found that students and teachers are increasingly using their platform to create presentations, write reports and learn about the world around them. 2.2 million students a month visit Unsplash, and the platform reaches many more via direct API integrations with 300 universities. To accommodate this growing audience, Unsplash has created a dedicated space for students and teachers called Unsplash for Education. This connects the platform’s images with schools and universities around the world and supports digital learning experiences through integration with Google Slides and Instructure’s Canvas Learning Management Platform.
Unsplash for Education will help to bring Europeana’s collections to a wide student audience. Isabel Crespo, Europeana’s Business Development Coordinator, Education, says, ‘Europeana’s organisational profile on Unsplash, and the images included on it, bring our collections to the Unsplash community, expanding Europeana’s educational audience in countries including the US. In the new Europeana space, these audiences will have access to a curated selection of European cultural heritage material and the opportunity to find more gems thanks to the link with Europeana Collections.’
For Unsplash, the partnership is also valuable. ‘We were so excited to work with Europeana, an institution that works tirelessly to transform the world with culture by making Europe’s cultural heritage more available to everyone. Like Unsplash, they believe in an open, knowledgeable and creative society, and work to bring together organisations that have rich content to share.’
Unsplash plans to continue building a strong community of students and teachers, and with the rich cultural images from Europeana, which offers content from more than 3,500 institutions across Europe and beyond, these groups will be better equipped to bring their lessons to life.
Find out more about Europeana’s work in education and start to work with Europeana’s material on Unsplash.