Shaping digital citizenship through Europeana’s digital cultural heritage
In our tech-based world, mastering the art of online interaction (with people, businesses, services, and so on) is crucial, and so is getting the skills to become “digital citizens”. Digital citizenship education is more important than ever, helping us in this process.
The Council of Europe defines digital citizenship education as allowing learners of all age to gain “competences for learning and active participation in a digital society” on which the exercise of their democratic rights is grounded.
As 2025 was marked as the European Year of Digital Citizenship Education, there is renewed momentum to bring digital responsibility into curricula across the continent. The Europeana initiative has joined the tide by bringing forward the role of digital cultural heritage in strengthening digital citizenship and media literacy.
In the Cultural Heritage and Digital Citizenship Education workshop earlier this year, the role of digitalised heritage in analysing media and providing primary sources to question contemporary narratives were among the key points discussed. Understanding how information is constructed and training oneself to identify bias by going back to the source is something we all need to master to navigate today’s often misleading digital environment.
Europeana’s digital cultural heritage collections offer many ways for students and educators to think about what it means to be a digital citizen. By working with historical letters, photographs, or posters, they learn to question who created a source, why it exists, and whose perspectives it reflects or leaves out. Materials linked to civil rights, migration, or memory, can spark discussions about ownership, access, and the responsibilities we have when using digital content.
To support this mission, Europeana and European Schoolnet® have trained a group of about 50 educators on how to reuse digital cultural heritage from the Europeana platform in educational contexts. These “Master Trainers” will then run peer-learning workshops to spread the knowledge and skills they gained within their teaching communities at national level. These actions aim at reaching thousands of students, helping them become more thoughtful, informed, and responsible participants in the digital world.
Europeana’s digital cultural heritage database can serve as a window to the past to open up a path for future active and reflective citizenship. Many educators have already proved the potential of Europeana’s resources in providing meaningful, fun, and interesting learning experiences to their students. Explore Europeana’s Learning Scenarios and Stories of Implementation to draw inspiration from these creative stories reusing digital cultural heritage!
CC BY-SA: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by Gooi en Vechtstreek Archive, Netherlands.