The Open Observatory

The Open Observatory facilitates the creation of a community amongst organisations and participants. It engages stakeholders to actively participate in online activities by contributing to surveys, debates, collaborations that innovate existing practices and priorities of CHIs online and offline. The main features of the participatory space, processes and assemblies, have been used in different instances to stimulate discussions and participation around the decisive topics of the project. For instance, the assembly on Empowering IPR for the Commons was created to discuss the place of Intellectual property rights in the value chain of CHI. The assembly was part of a consultation process and workshop to gather information on how cultural institutions experience the IPR status of their collections, and what opportunities or threats they see in their efforts to engage online with their audiences. 

Another example is the assembly with the Europeana Impact Steering Group where members of the Europeana Impact community were invited to discuss the sector’s need and help design phase 3 of the Europeana Impact playbook. Participants were also invited to join online debates and a survey on Culture 3.0, aiming to collect cases of value chains generated by (re)use of digital cultural heritage in bottom-up initiatives and communities of practice. Participants can also find all the relevant information and documents about the activities on the platform.