Europe at Work, Europeana's season for autumn 2019, brings stories of personal working lives together with archive material on industrial and labour-related heritage. For cultural heritage institutions, the season provides an opportunity to engage audiences by inviting people to share a story about their work alongside pictures, diaries, videos and letters.
Some institutions are recording these stories through collection days, but social media also offers a fantastic opportunity for galleries, libraries and museums to encourage people to participate in the season and showcase their own collections - as the Swedish National Heritage Board’s (Riksantikvarieämbetet) campaign demonstrates!
A social media campaign to encourage engagement
The Swedish National Heritage Board planned a social media campaign around Europe at Work to draw attention to the season and encourage Swedes to share stories of their working lives.
Since September, their social media channels have had a weekly focus on a different sector, object, or profession to encourage people to engage with Europe at Work; for example, the Instagram post below invites anyone who has been employed as a seasonal worker to share their experience with Europeana. They also wrote a post in Swedish to explain to people in their own language how they could contribute to Europe at Work.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3..." data-instgrm-version="12" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);">
A post shared by Riksantikvarieämbetet (@raa_se) on Oct 3, 2019 at 4:54am PDT
As well as reaching out to the public, the Swedish National Heritage Board has encouraged existing and potential data partners to join the social media campaign with their own material. Engaging with Swedish cultural heritage institutions was an especially important part of their strategy, as many smaller data partners deliver data to the Swedish national aggregator for Europeana (SOCH). By encouraging these partners to engage with the campaign, the Swedish National Heritage Board created an opportunity to show them how their material is being used through Europeana Collections.
This approach has allowed the Swedish National Heritage Board to highlight and share their data partners' collections and give audiences examples of the diversity of material that makes up Europe’s industrial heritage - hopefully inspiring more people to make contributions!
Get involved
If you’re inspired by the Swedish National Heritage Board’s example, there are lots of ways to get involved with Europe at Work on social media:
Follow the hashtag #EuropeatWork and retweet content from Europeana.
For many centuries and on all continents migrant labour has offered solutions for agricultural employment. From the mid-20th century, other forms of #migration gained importance because of rapid industrial growth.
Learn morehttps://t.co/WRkLGJaHbF#EuropeAtWork pic.twitter.com/hUXXkJtWE1— Europeana (@Europeanaeu) October 20, 2019
Share industrial content from your own institution related to the world of work - make sure you include the hashtag #EuropeatWork.
#EuropeatWork är en kampanj av @Europeanaeu kring det industriella kulturarvet. Här används material från våra samlingar - bland annat detta foto! https://t.co/JkSq1q1xDx
Du kan själv bidra m personliga historier runt arbetslivet & yrken: https://t.co/9HebNqJr1E #kulturarv pic.twitter.com/aaEDY7qYYM— Jönköpings läns museum (@jkpg_lansmuseum) September 26, 2019
'#EuropeatWork is a campaign by @Europeanaeu on cultural heritage. It also makes use of our collections - among others this photograph! You can also share your personal story on your working life and job!'
Encourage staff and visitors to share their stories of their working lives with clear calls to action in digital posts. People can share their stories through our website.
Kulturarvssajten Europeana har startat projektet "Europe at Work" om arbete och det industriella kulturarvet i Europa och bjuder in privatpersoner att bidra med foton och berättelser om sitt eller sin släkts arbete.https://t.co/Telvr8LTLB#kulturarv #svhist pic.twitter.com/d2EAnYtDW1
— Svensk Historia (@svenskhistoria) October 16, 2019
‘The cultural heritage website Europeana has started the project ‘Europe at Work’ about work and cultural heritage in Europe and invites people to share photographs and personal stories about their own or ancestors' working lives.’