Europeana, Europe’s digital museum, library, gallery and archive, together with its Maltese partner, AcrossLimits, invites the people of Malta to The National Book Fest from 12-16 November. We need the public’s help to create a giant canvas depicting the image from Europeana.eu that they voted as representing Malta’s European cultural heritage.

Europeana will also showcase a new eBook ‘Europeana: Stories from Malta’ written by form 1 and 2 students from across the island. Each story describes a piece of Maltese cultural heritage that the students found on Europeana.eu and that they think represents them as Maltese-European citizens.

 

The image and eBook are the results from two national competitions run on both the ‘Malta in Europe – Europeana’ Facebook page and in schools as part of a nationwide campaign to introduce Malta to Europeana.eu and to Europe’s cultural treasures.

 

The winning image, an ancient map of Malta, showing where St. Paul was shipwrecked will be recreated on 3m x 2m canvas by members of the public visiting the Europeana stand during Book Fest from 12-16 November. The finished item will be displayed in December at St. James the Cavalier Creative Centre.

The eBook will contain stories from 10 children and the overall winning contribution will be chosen by Malta actor Gowdin Scerri.   At the Book Fest the public can discover all of the stories at the Europeana stand by using their smartphones with the stands special interactive panels.

Speaking about the campaign, the Executive Director of Europeana, Jill Cousins said:

“The winning entries from Europeana’s competitions show the pride and enthusiasm that people of all ages in Malta have for their cultural heritage.  I’m delighted that they have been able to explore and share that online through Europeana. We want everyone to join in the next step of recreating the winning image and discovering the children’s stories at the National Book Fest.”

By visiting Europeana.eu on your PC, tablet or mobile you can find more than 29 million items from 2,300 leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Books and manuscripts, photos and paintings, television and film, sculpture and crafts, diaries and maps, sheet music and recordings can all be discovered.

The Europeana website and the ‘Malta in Europe – Europeana’ Facebook page are accessible at www.europeana.eu and www.facebook.com/EuropeanaMalta, respectively. You are also invited to follow Europeana on Twitter@europeanaeu and #AllezCulture.