Image credits: Europeana DCH impact evidence bank workshop. Sebastiaan ter Burg, 2018. CC BY.
It’s important to ask ourselves why it’s important to think about impact. Some high-level reasons for Europeana, for example, include demonstrating the value we create for the heritage sector and progressing our understanding of the digital transformation of the heritage sector. At a more micro-level, it will be to understand how we bring value through specific projects and to learn how we can improve.
“In the cultural heritage sector, we work for a great cause, for the good of society as a whole, and we have ambitious goals. But it's not always easy to see whether we're achieving them. The fact of the matter is that - as a cultural institution - we have very few instruments at our disposal to assess the results of our actions. Of course, we count the direct outputs of our work fanatically - visitor numbers, Facebook likes, ticket sales. But we don't dig into the deep outcomes that result from our work - changes to attitudes, new friendships, new ideas and values.” Phase one
Why is it important to collect data and measure your impact?
Stay relevant in a changing world - think from the perspective of your audience and respond to their feedback
Inform evidence-led decision-making and iterative improvement cycles
Inform strategies and ways ahead
To contribute to the bigger narrative about what is the value of (digital) cultural heritage and our work
Help make change happen and make a better world
Contextualise your work (e.g. nationally, internationally) in comparison with others
Influence better policy making by creating more appropriate recommendations and advocacy narratives
Attract more funding and to help make your work more financially sustainable (and impactful for your audiences)
Identify the gaps and capitalise on opportunities to create impact through your work
Improve your organisation’s processes and learning processes
Read more about why institutions are thinking about their impact
➡️Interview with Helen Hardy at the Natural History Museum, London, about the economic impact of digitisation
➡️Feature about impact awareness training and what it means for DEN, the Netherlands
➡️Interview with Ana Aziza at the Fondation du Patrimoine about how impact assessment helps us to understand the value of built cultural heritage
The Europeana Impact Playbook: a history
By developing a shared language about impact, as proposed in this methodology, we believe that we can not only show our value, but speed up innovation and increase our relevance to society.
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
William Bruce Cameron
The Impact Playbook has been developed with the expertise of many, many professionals from across Europe since 2015. It has been developed iteratively, released stage by stage, beginning with Phase one in 2017. Phase four, the last phase, was published in 2022. Revisions to the content have been published in this resource.
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