Foundation

“EUscreen is an independent, inclusive network, supporting durable and contextualised access to Europe’s television heritage.
We actively promote awareness of audiovisual heritage in various domains, including education, research, media production and towards the general public.”

(EUscreen Mission Statement)


EUscreen Foundation

The EUscreen Foundation (Stichting EUscreen) was officially set up under Dutch law on August 30, 2013 in Utrecht. The Foundation is responsible for governing the EUscreen network. It is organised around four core activities:

  • maintain an online platform offering high-quality standardised access to digitised audiovisual heritage content;
  • initiate activities and maintain a network of partners that contribute to the mission of the Foundation;
  • provide a legal framework to govern the Foundation and manage its assets;
  • publish VIEW Journal, a peer-reviewed, multi-media and open access e-journal in the field of television studies.

Benefits

Foundation members benefit in three distinct ways from their involvement:

  1. Access to an additional channel for distribution and engagement of content
    • international rather than national reach (new audiences, opportunity to become involved in multinational partnerships);
    • showcasing contextualised content as part of Europeana’s thematic collections;
    • scholarly publications via the peer-reviewed, open access VIEW journal
    • increased visibility and awareness through multiple communication channels (e.g. social media, newsletter, events).
  2. Access to infrastructure which facilitates the publication and curation of metadata and content on the web
    • providing high-quality standardised and multilingual access via innovative EUscreen infrastructure
    • harvestable by Europeana and others (published as Linked Open Data);
    • roundtrip’ enriched metadata available for download.
  3. Being a member of a unique and evolving expert hub in the AV domain
    • develop funded projects involving members’ collections;
    • share knowledge on best practices and standards in the sector, influence pan-European policy making, i.e on IPR;
    • benefit directly from revenues generated through external project funding.

Structure

Foundation members are referred to as “Participants” and their profile is linked to financial contributions.
Members are either:

  • Participants (non-contributing)
  • Supporting Participants (contributing an annual fee).

Please note that participation in the Foundation is for institutional members only.

The Participants and Supporting Participants together form the Participant’s Council, which is instrumental in shaping the mission of the Foundation. The spokesperson for the Council is the Participants’ Chair.

The Foundation Board consists of five appointed Participants who are jointly responsible of managing the Foundation.

The duties and prerogatives of the governing bodies have been identified following the articles of the Foundation’s deed:


Participants’ Council Chair

  • The Participant’s Council is an advisory board to the Foundation Board. It supports it by identifying the Foundation’s goals;
  • The Chair is the representative of all the Participants and Supporting Participants gathered under the Participants’ Council;
  • The Participants’ Council intends to meet at least once a year;
  • The Chair of the Participants’ Council is the contact point for the Foundation’s Board and will chair the meetings of the Participants’ Council;
  • If and as soon as a vacancy arises on the Foundation’s Board, the Chair is in charge of the election process;
  • The Chair is not entitled to remuneration. He/she will, however, be entitled to reimbursement of expenses (i.e. travel costs) reasonably incurred during the performance of his/her duties;
  • The chairperson of the Participants’ Council will be appointed as such for a period of two years. Reappointment is permitted once.
Current Participants’ Council Chair (March 2018-February 2020)
Martin Bouda, Česká Televize, Czech Republic
Martin Bouda has been working with Czech television since his graduation from Information and Librarian Science at the Charles University in Prague. He has worked at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts Library in his hometown of Brno and, through the EUscreen project in 2010-2016, coordinated promotion of Czech Television by using almost 1,300 curated videos to explore Czech’s rich and diverse cultural history. 2008 signalled the beginning of his work in the Czech Television Archives. Since 2017, Bouda has been supervising the Audiovisual Archives and has been involved in their digitization, reconstruction, and online archival publication projects. Bouda is also active in the international field, with presentations promoting Czech television history and its archives, including an “Unlocking Broadcast Archives from Eastern Europe” seminar in Bucharest, a “1968 in the Media” seminar in Paris and a „Prague Spring 50“ at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, USA.

Foundation Board

  • The Board should consist of individuals with solid managerial skills, and other skills in different areas of professional expertise and backgrounds;
  • The Board is responsible for managing the Foundation, i.e. it initiates activities and maintains both the euscreen.eu platform and the EUscreen network that contribute to the mission of the Foundation;
  • The Board oversees the process of setting up new projects and finding new funding opportunities;
  • The Board is responsible for creating an annual plan and keeping financial records;
  • Board Members are not entitled to remuneration. They will, however, be entitled to reimbursement of expenses (i.e. travel costs) reasonably incurred during the performance of their duties and may receive a moderate attendance fee for their work for the foundation;
  • Board Members are appointed for a period of four years. They may be reappointed once.
Current Board Members (February 2016- January 2020)
Sonja de Leeuw, Utrecht University (NL)
Sonja de Leeuw is Professor at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at the Utrecht University. Her research and teaching interests are (trans)national television culture, digital television heritage, Digital Humanities and Media and cultural diversity.
She participated in the EU funded research project CHICAM, Children in Communication about Migration (2001–2004) and coordinated the EU funded project Video Active, Creating Access to Europe’s Television Heritage (2006–2009) and its successor the EU funded research project EUscreen, Exploring Europe’s Television Heritage in Changing Contexts (October 2009–2012) and was a consortium member of the EU funded project EUscreenXL, Discovering Europe’s television’s past (2013–2016). She chairs the EUscreen Foundation that builds on and continues the results of the formerly mentioned projects.
She is co-founder and co-editor in chief of the e-journal VIEW. Journal of European television history and culture, released in March 2012. She co-founded and coordinates the ETHN (European Television History Network, with prof. Dr. A. Fickers, University of Luxembourg) and was co-leader of a research project on satire The Power of Satire: Cultural Boundaries contested (funded by NWO). Other research projects in which she was involved include BRIDGE (Building Rich Links to Enable Television History Research), in co-operation with Computer Studies (UvA) and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Digital Humanities). Sonja de Leeuw is currently involved in a few other Digital Humanities projects, and is a member of the Digital Humanities Lab at Utrecht University. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Digital Humanities Lab Denmark, and a member of the Scientific Board of DARIAH-EU.
Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NL)
Johan Oomen is head of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision R&D Department (20 FTE) and researcher at the Web and Media group of the VU University Amsterdam. He is elected board member of the Europeana Association, of the EUscreen Foundation and of CLICKNL, the innovation catalyst for the Dutch Creative Industries. He is the director of the PrestoCentre Foundation. Oomen and his group are working on research projects (Horizon 2020, ICT-PSP, national) that focus on providing durable access to digital heritage on the Web. Oomen holds a BA in Information Science and an MA in Media Studies. His PhD research focuses on the relation between participatory culture and institutional policy. He has worked for the British Universities Film and Video Council and commercial broadcaster RTL Nederlands and has talked at high profile events in six continents.
Maria Drabczyk, National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (PL)
Project manager at National Audiovisual Institute in charge of international cooperations. In 2014–2016 involved in EUscreenXL project in charge of dissemination and set-up of creative external partnerships (with a special focus on research and education). Member of the Audiovisual Media in Europeana Task Force. In the past, she acted as co-creator of a crowdfunding site for culture wspieramkulture.pl and international relations expert at the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Sociologist by training, practitioner in cultural diplomacy by choice.
Marco Rendina, Istituto Luce Cinecittà (IT)
Project manager and IT specialist. Since 1996, he has been collaborating with Istituto Luce – Cinecittà, where he followed the development and realization of various international projects, like ECHO, Video Active, European Film Gateway, EUscreen, EUscreenXL, Presto4U, Europeana Cloud and Europeana Space. He is a member of the Italian Organization for Standardization Working Group on Cinematographic Works and deputy member for Italy of the European Technical Committee for Standardization on Cinematographic Works, where he has been one of the editors of the EN 15907 standard on “Film identification – Enhancing interoperability of metadata”.

Arne Stabenau, National Technical University of Athens (GR)

After his degree in Computer Science, Arne worked for 8 years in the area of Bioinformatics, in Heidelberg and Cambridge. He then moved to Greece and joined the NTUA where he architected and co-developed the MINT system. Over the last ten years, he has worked exclusively on projects and systems in the area of metadata storage, search and conversion. He participated in EUscreen and EUscreenXL, Europenana Fashion, Carare, LoCloud and many other Europeana and Aggregation related projects.