The World Festive of Cultural Diversity is a year-long festival of exhibitions, events, initiatives and projects, culminating in an event at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris on 21 May 2023, the World Day for Cultural Diversity.
The festival - built on an ecosystem of partners around the world - aims to contribute to the Khalili Foundation's mission to support efforts for cultural diversity, in particular around cross-cultural exchange.
The Europeana Foundation is proud to be one of several partner organisations in the festival. Through our website and editorial activities, we tell stories of cultural diversity from across Europe, striving for a digital heritage world that is purposefully inclusive of the diversity of our societies.
Events
We will also hold a number of online events exploring the themes of the World Festival of Cultural Diversity. From April, an online 'transcribing' event on our website Transcribathon.eu will invite people across Europe to transcribe historical documents.
In May, Europeana's third Digital Storytelling Festival will explore themes relating to the World Festival of Cultural Diversity in a two-day online event discussing trends and ideas in digital storytelling.
Stories
From February to May 2023, Europeana will focus on publishing and promoting stories relating to cultural diversity across Europe and beyond. These will be added to a special Festival section on the Europeana website, bringing together stories of European culture in all its diversity under three themes: cross-cultural exchange, under-represented cultures and European cultural expressions.
Support to tell your story
In 2022, Europeana began supporting an editorial grants programme to provide funding for writers to contribute blogs that put a spotlight on underrepresented communities, voices and lived experiences. In spring 2023, as part of the World Festival of Cultural Diversity, we are dedicating this programme to supporting authors telling stories about religious diversity in Europe.
We want to support stories that reflect Europe's diverse religious cultural heritage. For example, we would like to publish stories about Europe's Islamic heritage, Hinduism, Orthodox, Yazidism and other minoritised religions. While we have published many stories about Christianity (for example, stories about monasteries or saints) and Jewish history, stories about other religions remain under-represented on the Europeana website.
Do you think you can tell a story on the Europeana websiteabout these topics? We can support you with a grant of €200 - see more information and apply through the form below.