Art gets animated with the return of the GIF IT UP competition

What would the 'Girl with the Pearl earring' look like with different clothes? How can vintage photographs come back to life? The GIF IT UP competition animates art and heritage - and anyone around the world can enter and win prizes!

GIF IT UP is the annual competition which challenges people to reuse digitised cultural heritage material to produce unique GIFs and share them online. Now in its 8th year, GIF IT UP is organised by the Europeana Foundation in collaboration with a network of nine global partners. In 2023, new partner the Goethe-Institut is sponsoring a special category on diversity and inclusion.

Anyone around the world can use openly licensed paintings, photography and texts made available through Europeana.eu and partners' digital libraries to create, submit, and share striking new GIFs.

In 2023, in addition to online resources, three events will help get people started with digital animation: an online event on 4 October 2023, and two physical workshops in Amsterdam (13 October 2023) and London (19 October 2023).

Aleksandra Strzelichowksa from the Europeana Foundation says, 'GIF IT UP is one of Europeana's most exciting projects - the competition encourages people to explore and remix cultural heritage material while also helping them learn about image licensing in an interactive and fun way'.

The Europeana Foundation's Maggy Szynkielewska says, 'We are very excited to be working again with our network of global cultural heritage organisations, and delighted to welcome the Goethe-Institut this year. We're looking forward to this year's entries and seeing what creative and inspiring ideas people will come up with'.

GIF IT UP runs from 1 to 31 October 2023, with the winners announced in November 2023.