Digital meets Culture

Specialist university-level training in organising, exploiting, managing and commercialising photographic fonds, collections and archives

Postgraduate course in Management, Preservation and Dissemination of Photographic Archives

On November 2023, FUAB Formació School – Archival Studies and Records Management at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Centre for Image Research and Dissemination (CRDI), and the Institute of Photographic Studies of Catalonia (IEFC) will start a new edition of the online Postgraduate in Management, Preservation and Dissemination of Photographic Archives, an universitary training that offers a specialisation within archival and photography studies.

This programme has a double purpose:

To respond to many public and private entities’ need to properly organise and exploit their photographic fonds and collections;
To equip photography professionals with different strategies and knowledge tools that will help them in managing and commercialising their photographic production.

The programme takes into account the various aspects that must allow a correct management of these photographic documentary collections, collected in the contents of the different modules that make up the study plan. It is developed with the collaboration of professionals from the sector of recognized prestige in the fields included.

Who is it for:
Archivists, photographers, librarians, documentalists, museologists, curators, researchers, collectors and people interested in photography in general.

More information: https://scur.cat/2YEXD2

The research laboratory collaborates in the various activities of EUreka3D and is exploring the possibility of embedding an advanced 3D viewer in EUreka3D cloud-based platform

EUreka3D established a cooperation agreement with Archéosciences Bordeaux

Archéosciences Bordeaux is a research laboratory part of the Université Bordeaux Montaigne, and is focused on the chronology of human settlements, the circulation of materials and ancient techniques, and imaging applied to heritage. The laboratory also collaborates with Bibracte, one of the partners of EUreka3D, for the digitisation and metadata preparation of their cultural and archaeological collections, which will be published open access in Europeana.

The cooperation with EUreka3D is progressing with various activities, in particular on the development of the EUreka3D pilot dedicated to Cultural Heritage Institutions for managing digital assets, and especially 3D collections. The pilot relies on a cloud-based platform managed at EGI the European Grid Initiative together with ACK Cyfronet AGH, offering advanced services and tools for digital collection management, especially with 3D objects and their metadata and paradata management.

To support visualization of the 3D models, it is currently under discussion the possibility to embed an advanced viewer developed by Archéosciences Bordeaux. The viewer is already in use at the Conservatoire National des Données 3D (CND3D), the French National 3D Data Repository, also providing a backup solution for 3D data produced in the context of projects in higher education and research in digital humanities in France.

image courtesy of Archéosciences Bordeaux

The Archeovision 3D viewer is a dynamic viewer, based on Potree and 3DHop, that is able to load 3D files on demand, thus permitting to handle even very large 3D models in web-based environments. The capability of the viewer is extremely flexible, so to accomodate any type of 3D digitized cultural assets, from large ground models to tiny artefacts. This viewer would be a perfect solution for the visualization needs of cultural heritage institutions who make use of the EUreka3D platform to store and handle their 3D collections, supporting the variety of formats and types deriving from 3D digitization projects.

image courtesy of Archéosciences Bordeaux

The technical teams of Archéosciences Bordeaux, EGI and Cyfronet are currently at work to understand the integration needs between the viewer and the EUreka3D platform. As part of the development work, interoperability with the Europeana platform is also an important aspect that will enable the 3D models, visualized via the Archeovision 3D viewer, to be accessible in the Europeana website.

Content partners in the project started the work to digitize in 3D their assets, with final aim of sharing the collections as open access in Europeana, the European Digital Library

EUreka3D project: latest updates on 3D digitisation of heritage collections

all images in this post courtesy of CRDI/Ajuntament de Girona via the EUreka3D Twitter profile.

The EUreka3D project coordinated by Photoconsortium has just started the action on high-quality 3D digitisation, which will make great collections of cultural heritage 3D digitised objects accessible to everyone in the Europeana website.

The content provided by project partners is very diverse, and ranges from monuments at risk to archaeological objects, early cinema items and filigree paper moulds. EUreka3D will aggregate on Europeana about 5,000 new 2D and 3D records, digitised in high quality from various providers: CUT Cyprus University of Technology, Bibracte, Museo della Carta and CRDI Ajuntament de Girona, some of which have never featured on Europeana before.

The project is also creating a cloud-based platform managed at EGI the European Grid Initiative. dedicated to Cultural Heritage Institutions offering advanced services and tools for digital collection management, especially with 3D objects and their metadata and paradata management.

During these days, CRDI / Ajuntament de Girona is one of the partners fully involved in the digitisation process. Around 50 pre-cinema objects from the Cinema Museum of Girona are being digitised: magic lanterns, zoetropes, optical boxes, early cinema cameras and movie projectors. The 3D objects are being digitalised following the recommendations of the unique Study on Quality in 3D Digitisation of Tangible Cultural Heritage (VIGIE 2020/654), produced by partner CUT.

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The digitisation of these objects is done using the photogrammetry technique, and is possible thanks to the great contribution both of the Cinema Museum and specialized company La Tempesta.

On July 9 a research symposium to reflect on developments and challenges regarding cultural heritage information and visualization took place at the Kunsthaus Graz

Smashing the Silos! The Future of Cultural Heritage Information and Visualization

img courtesy: InTaVia website

On the 9th of July, a one-day research symposium (held both online and at the Kunsthaus Graz, co-located with DH2023) was organised by to reflect on novel developments and challenges in the field of cultural heritage information and visualization.

The symposium started from a reflection on the InTaVia project main questions and results, and aimed to expand, deepen and contextualize the impulse of this European initiative with inputs from digital humanists, visualization scholars, and GLAM practitioners. It also aimed to strengthen the collaboration between actors from the cultural heritage, digital humanities, and visualization fields, and to discuss open challenges for the research field, reflecting on future means to build new bridges between communities and different perspectives.

Read more at this link.

Europeana-Ki Culture's insights through their sustainability workshop series

EUreka3D promotes awareness on climate change

Dyschoriste erecta
Institution: Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Copyright: CC BY-SA

The Europeana Initiative’s Climate Action Community recently ran a series of workshops which explored climate action, better digital information management practice and more. The aim of the workshop series was to explore key topics, share best practices and discuss the role of digital cultural heritage in the fight against climate change.

An abstract is now published on Europeana Pro website, retracing the three workshops to showcase learnings and thoughts on sustainability for culture, climate action and digital management.

Furthermore, the links to the webinars’ recordings are now avaiable, along with the four main takeaways on the series:

Collaborative action
Awareness and education
Balancing priorities
Digital transformation

Since EUreka3D is committed to raise awareness on the matter of sustainability and climate action in the cultural heritage sector, we would like to encourage anyone involved in any way in the digital preservation or management of digital content in your organisation to contribute to sector wide understanding by taking the Community’s Environmental Sustainability practice survey, by sharing your ideas, experience and challenges. The survey will be open until Wednesday, 13 of September 2023.

More information about the workshops can be found at this link.

Brussels (Belgium), 27-28 June 2023

International Conference on Cultural Tourism Summary

img courtesy: Fundación Santa María la Real’s Twitter

The Conference was co-organized by Be.CULTOUR, IMPACTOUR, INCULTUM, SmartCulTour, SPOT and TEXTOUR, the EU H2020 projects operating the area of sustainable tourism promotion on the territory. Selected and presented papers will be published in a Springer book reflecting the breakthroughs and future perspectives of cultural tourism.

“While exact estimates are difficult to make, it has repeatedly been mentioned that approximately 40% of all European tourists make a destination choice based on the cultural offerings. This leads to significant economic effects and has further strengthened the view of cultural heritage as a strategic resource for its economic impact, but also for its role in creating and enhancing social capital and achieving the goals of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. At the same time, economic effects have been distributed unequally – often being more prevalent in urbanized areas – and the exponential growth of tourism (notwithstanding the dip during the Covid-19 pandemic) created issues of both over-and underexploitation.

The goal of this Conference was to get a further understanding of the sustainable development potential of cultural tourism by focusing on successful policy interventions, new cultural tourism trends, advances in visitor management systems, and new business and/or governance models.” (via KU Leuven the Conference website).

During the sessions of the second day, a general overview of the outcomes of the six organizing Horizon 2020 projects was given, while good practices based on the finalized and ongoing experimentations in diverse European regions were identified. INCULTUM’s coordinator Jose Maria Martin Civantos presented the project, its achievements and innovations.

Conference programme: Cultural Tourism Conference Programme

The Conference was organized by KU Leuven in collaboration with the European Research Executive Agency and the projects IMPACTOUR, SPOT, TEXTOUR, BE.CULTOUR; SMARTCULTOUR and INCULTUM.

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Across Summer 2023, the show which narrates the stories at the local Ethnographic Museum will be represented several times

Promoting the stories of San Pellegrino in Alpe through performances

text and images courtesy of University of Pisa

The summer performance season in San Pellegrino in Alpe, in the municipality of Castiglione di Garfagnana, opened again on 25 June 2023. This is part of the programme for cultural tourism promotion of the INCULTUM Pilot 5 in Garfagnana (Tuscany).

The first of a series of five performances that will take place between June and September was held in the rooms of the Don Luigi Pellegrini Ethnographic Museum, which were set up especially for the occasion. The actress Elisabetta Salvatori narrated the museum’s exhibits and its incredible history through her performance ‘A priest, two saints, a border and 4000 unique pieces‘: visitors were numerous, all the seats made available were occupied and the event was a success.

This performance was the first ever to take place directly inside the museum, and indeed it was a winning solution, as many of the spectators praised the suggestiveness of the combination of the actress’s words and the fact that they were in the museum rooms. The opening day was attended by Dr. Adele Cogno together with Dr. Andrea Pedri, accompanied by the project’s scientific director and pilot coordinator Enrica Lemmi.

At the end of the show, the spectators were able to visit the remaining rooms of the museum and, at the end of the tour, they were asked to fill in a satisfaction questionnaire that will be useful to understand what, if any, tricks and improvements can be adopted to enrich the visitor’s experience inside the museum.

The dates of the next shows will be 16-30 July, 6 August and 3 September 2023.

Download the posters for the events – PDF 4.7 Mb

From this training, new promotional materials were created and distributed to the local operators

Second training session of INCULTUM’s San Pellegrino in Alpe

Text and Images courtesy of University of Pisa.

On 29 May 2023, the INCULTUM Pilot set in Garfagnana (Tuscany) organised a second training meeting for local tour operators held in the halls of the Unione dei Comuni in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana.

Download the presentation (PDF, 13 Mb, Italian language)

The meeting, which was important to discuss in more detail the problems and opportunities presented during the first meeting in San Pellegrino in Alpe on 15/5/2023, was the venue for the idea of designing information brochures financed directly by the businesses around San Pellegrino in Alpe. An Italian and an English version of this brochure was designed, so that they could be useful to locals and visitors from nearby, as well as travellers from abroad.

The brochures were produced by the team and have been printed. They are currently working on distributing the material to all areas of the valley. The enthusiasm and spirit of initiative shown by the property owners was important to understand how much they actually believe in the potential of the INCULTUM project, which is now in its third year.

Brochure (EN) – PDF, 4.5 Mb

Brochure (IT) – PDF, 4.5 Mb

Lahti (Finland), 19-21 November 2023

“and… ACTION! Museums in the climate crisis”

Join 200+ museum colleagues from all over Europe to explore how museums can take action for the climate and a sustainable future during NEMO European Museum Conference 2023 “and… ACTION! Museums in the climate crisis”, that will take place in the European Green Capital (2021), Lahti.

As the sector stands at the brink of change, NEMO wants to offer guidance on how museums can be part of the solution and identify where they can contribute to climate action, as the sector is evolving and standing at the brink of change. The conference will draw on learnings from NEMO’s recent report to explore sustainability strategies, risk management as preventive measures and how to transform museums into futureproof and sustainable organisations.

The conference will host inspirational keynote speeches, enlightening panel discussions and engaging workshops. Several occasions for networking with European colleagues, inspiring museum visits and opportunities to explore the local nature and culture, in order to build strong alliances to find collective strength to contribute to global action for climate.

Learn more at this link.

Aubervilliers, Campus Condorcet, Paris, 19-21 October 2023

Upcoming “Connect. Collaborate. Create.” conference in Paris

Jointly coordinated by two Horizon 2020 projects, COESO and PRO-Ethics, “Connect. Collaborate. Create.” will be an interactive conference to bridge European communities for fostering ethical participatory approaches to research funding and activating participatory research and citizen science.

While the conference has a strong focus on the social sciences and humanities, researchers and citizen science practitioners from all backgrounds are welcome! Keep an eye on the COESO and PRO-Ethics websites, which will soon be updated with more details.

Get updated at this link. Download the flyer here (PDF, 3,04MB).

SAVE THE DATE: October 19-21, 2023

Location: MSH Paris Nord 20, Avenue George Sand, 93210 La Plaine St-Denis

COESO has received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (2014-2020) SwafS-27-2020 – Hands-on citizen science and frugal innovation, under Grant Agreement No.101006325.