Competition Wants You to Turn Cultural Heritage Into GIFs

Some vintage artwork is about to get a lot more animated. The website GIPHY, along with four international digital libraries, are soliciting your best GIFs for the fourth annual "GIF It Up" contest. 

The competition, which launches October 1 and runs throughout the month, lets you submit GIFs in a variety of categories using public domain content from Europeana, DPLA, DigitalNZ or Trove. The grand prize winner will receive a special electronic frame for displaying (what else but) GIFs. Runners-up will receive gift cards, and special prizes will also be awarded in themes of transport, holidays, animals and Christmas cards. While a panel from GIPHY, DailyArt and Public Domain Review will be deciding most of the winners, anyone can vote for the people's choice award, which will award one creative user a Giphoscope.

"The competition encourages people to create new, fun and unique artworks from digitized cultural heritage material," the Europeana Foundation, one of the participating digital libraries, said in a statement about the contest.

The animated competition is now in its fourth year, and while we wait for this year's champions to be announced, check out a few of the winning GIFs from last year:

Ben Panko | READ MORE

Ben Panko is a staff writer for Smithsonian.com