Communia Salon: Which digital policies work for cultural heritage in the 2020s?

Communia organised the fourth Salon of 2020. During the online event, organised in cooperation with the #NoWorries project, discussions focussed on policies that concern digital cultural heritage. The meeting took place right after the European Commission closed its consultation on opportunities offered by digital technologies for the culture heritage sector.

In the consultations, the European Commission referred to the “Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation”, from 2011.  Almost a decade has passed since then, and large amounts of heritage have been digitised. The term “digitisation” has been replaced with the idea of digital transformation. At the same time, barriers and challenges to access and reuse still remain – heritage in digitised form is a potentially underused resource.

During the salon, key stakeholders from the heritage sector shared their knowledge about the effects of digital technologies on the cultural heritage sector, and how they should be shaped with appropriate policies? With regard to copyright regulations, we discussed whether the reform went far enough, and whether it struck the right balance.