The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is looking for partners to join their large-scale cooperation project “Activating Literary Collections Online” in the fields of heritage, literature and digitisation. They are looking for cultural organisations and technology partners from Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia and Croatia.

Organisation: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

The Trust is the independent charity that cares for the world’s greatest Shakespeare heritage sites in Stratford-upon-Avon, and promotes the enjoyment and understanding of his works, life and times all over the world. The Trust holds the world’s largest Shakespeare-related library, museum and archives open to the public, with over 1 million documents, 55,000 books and 8,000 museum objects. The Trust runs a world-class, award winning programme of formal and informal educational programmes and literary lectures, to encourage the appreciation and study of Shakespeare’s works, and the advancement of Shakespearian knowledge on an international scale.

In recent years, the Trust has coordinated and led on a number of projects on a national and international scale. Examples include Shakespeare Week, a national celebration of Shakespeare in primary schools involving more than 12,000 schools. On the international stage, the Trust has cooperated on projects like Shakespeare Documented, a free and publicly accessible online exhibition that provides a rich portrait of Shakespeare. Since 2016, the Trust is a partner organisation in the ErasmusPlus funded multilingual learning project CultureShake, where Shakespeare’s plays are the medium to investigate multilingualism and mulitculturalism in European classrooms.

Project: “Activating Literary Collections Online”

Many cultural organisations that look after literary collections have made good progress in recent years to digitise their collections and make these resources available online. However, too often these resources unfortunately remain underused. The proposed project wants to take digitisation of literature-focussed collections one step further to bring online resources to life for the general public and educators to enjoy and use, and to open up digital collections from a number of access points for our audiences to connect with the object/text.

Possible activities and work areas within the project:
– research into audience needs and impact of the project;
– activating literary collections online;
– Europe-wide element: connect the individual writers/literary movements with each other, e.g. through online courses, or a touring exhibition, or creation of a European Literature Trail that promotes the idea of a shared European literary heritage;
– digital up skilling of partner organisations: sharing of best practice and acquiring new skills.

See more in attachment (.doc).

Contact: Lisa Peter
E: lisa.peter@shakespeare.org.uk, W: https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/