Collections Trust CEO Nick Poole explores the relatively little-known EU Joint Programming Initiative for Cultural Heritage and finds out why it could be very big news indeed for UK museums, galleries and heritage sites.

Hands up who knows what a 'JPI' is? Chances are, if you didn't put your hand up, you're not alone. 'JPI', in terms of European funding at least, stands for 'Joint Programming Initiative', and while today it remains relatively little-known, it might soon become very important indeed for the UK's cultural heritage sector.

To start at the beginning - under its new strategic framework, the European Commission has stated an ambition to address what it calls 'societal challenges'. These focus mainly on economic and social welfare and health. To address these challenges, it has established a number of programmes with the aim 'to pool national research efforts in order to make better use of Europe's precious public R&D resources and to tackle common European challenges more effectively in a few key areas. [Joint Programming Initiatives] will follow a structured strategic process whereby Member States agree common visions and strategic research agendas to address major societal challenges.'

Essentially, then, Joint Programming Initiatives are a way of joining up intellectual effort, funding and national programmes to make a real difference to important contemporary issues which affect peoples quality of life. 

The European Commission has announced the final call for project proposals under the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) for cultural organisations to build on the existing content base for Europeana (www.europeana.eu), the central point of access for Europe's cultural heritage online.

The Collections Trust will be leading a consortium to propose an exciting new project called Europeana Food and Drink. The aim of the project is to celebrate Europe's cultural identity through its shared food and drink culture, using innovative participatory techniques to engage the public in creating, sharing and learning from information about Food and Drink. 

A unique insight into Art Nouveau architecture in the UK has resulted from the Collections Trust’s highly-successful “Love Art Nouveau” campaign, which was launched on Valentine’s Day. Almost 650 images of over 35 buildings and sculptures in the UK have been combined on a Flickr page at www.flickr.com/photos/loveartnouveau.

In the past month three EC-funded cultural heritage projects which are being coordinated by Collections Trust have been successfully reviewed by the European Commission.

Do you Love Art Nouveau? If so, you will love a new campaign brought to you by the Collections Trust and being launched, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day.

Love Art Nouveau is a crowd sourced campaign to encourage people across the UK to find local Art Nouveau architecture and “digitise” it for Europeana, Europe’s online cultural heritage portal.

Horizon 2020 is part of the European Parliament's proposed large-scale funding programmes for 2014-20. It replaces a number of current programmes, including the EU ICT Policy Support Programme, which have provided funding for cultural heritage organisations in the fields of research and digitisation.

The European Commission has announced the latest funding call (call 7) in the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP), offering up to €125.7m in new funding for digital projects across Europe. Of this, €36m is allocated to a strand which directly addresses the digital work of museums, archives, libraries and creative media organisations. 

The ICT Policy Support Programme is a key funding programme in the Digital Agenda for Europe. Its objective is to stimulate smart, sustainable and inclusive growth by promoting the use of digital technology by European businesses and citizens. 

Cultural organisations worldwide are finding new ways of engaging audiences with richly described digital content delivered across mobile and social platforms.

The current generation of museum, library and archive professionals are responsible for converting analogue collections into a digital format so that they can be enjoyed by current and future generations of consumers.

But with millions of objects, books and records to deal with, how can we develop strategies which help us prioritise what we digitise and when?