Digital meets Culture

Limassol, Cyprus, 3 December 2024

Successful Workshop on cultural tourism at Euromed2024

Opening speech from the President of Blue Shield Prof. Peter G Stone, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Property Protection and Peace

The Workshop on cultural tourism, organised by the Horizon Europe SECreTour project, in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on digital cultural heritage, took place in Limassol (Cyprus) on 3/12/2024, in the ambit of the international conference EUROMED2024.

European Projects, research centres, experts and professionals on cultural tourism got together to discuss about Cultural and Creative Tourism as a Diver for Sustainable Development.

The workshop was opened by the inspiring speech of Prof. Peter G Stone, President of the Blue Shield initiative. The presentation of Prof. Antonella Fresa of Promoter srl, partner of the SECreTour project, “Cultural tourism: bridging heritage and places, learning and
promoting sustainable practices” addressed the question of the role of cultural tourism, intended as the tool to bridge heritage and places, learning and sustainable practices (Presentation is available for download >>). The opening session concluded with the very comprehensive and interesting speech of Giuliana De Francesco, Policy Officer at the European Commission, who presented the policy framework of the EU supporting innovation in the tourism sector.

Then, 13 presentations explored the theme of cultural tourism from many different perspectives, demonstrating the richness of the research in Europe.

Three pilots of SECreTour have presented their approaches in Ireland, Switzerland and Central Slovakia.

Three sister projects, SECreTour, CULTURALITY and TOURAL met at the workshop, contributing the the clustering of their activities.

Pictures of the event:

Giuliana De Francesco, EC Policy Officer

Audience at the opening

Antonella Fresa, Network Manager of the SECreTour Project, introducing the Projects’ presentations session

Manos Vougioukas, ECTN Secretary General

Representatives of SECreTour, CULTURALITY. TOURAL sister projects and UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage

Video of the USI Team presenting the SECreTour pilot in Switzeland

John Tierney presenting the SECreTour pilot in Ireland

Video presentation of University Matej Bell about the SECreTour pilot in Central Slovakia

Follow SECreTour online also on the SECreTour project’s website.

Digital Media for Island Tourism, 9 – 16 February, 2025. Madeira, Portugal

Winter School 2025, UNESCO Chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites

The 2025 edition of USI UNESCO Chair Winter School is realized in collaboration with the Higher School of Technology and Management of the University of Madeira, the Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies (ESHTE) and the Department of Geography and Tourism of the University of Coimbra.

Islands are characterized by unique ecosystems, which have given life to unique plant and animal species. Human creativity also finds distinctive manifestations on the islands, which translate into equally unique handicrafts and local traditions. Tourism on the islands must therefore be particularly respectful of this uniqueness.

The objective of the winter school is to study tourism on islands, taking Madeira as an exceptional case study, and to understand if and how digital technologies can facilitate a sustainable tourist experience from various points of view, particularly environmental and cultural.

A special attention will be given to the role of the five senses in the tourism experience and the issue of how these can be involved through digital technologies.

USI Università della Svizzera Italiana is partner of the SECreTour project funded under the Horizon Europe Programme of the EU.

Follow SECreTour online also on the SECreTour project’s website.

Brussels or online, December 12 - 13, 2024

ECHOES Policy Event and Communities Onboarding Workshop

The ECHOES Project Policy Event “Toward the Cultural Heritage Cloud” and the workshop “Onboarding communities into the Cultural Heritage Cloud” will take place in Brussels and online on 12 – 13 December 2024 and will officially launch the European Collaborative Cloud for cultural heritage!

The Cloud is envisaged as a shared platform for heritage professionals, scientists and researchers to access data, innovative scientific and training resources and advanced digital tools in collaboration with and for the cultural heritage communities.

The Policy Event “Toward the Cultural Heritage Cloud” (12 December), organized in cooperation with the European Commission, is aimed at officially launching the Cultural Heritage Cloud.

The Workshop “Onboarding communities into the Cultural Heritage Cloud” (13 December) will provide the ECHOES communities with an opportunity to discuss the challenges related to cultural heritage in the digital age and learn how to be involved in the Cultural Heritage Cloud.

The event can be attended in person at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), Brussels or online.

Find out more, download the agenda and register here.

Brussels and online, January 9, 2025

European Public Domain Day 2025

Sunny Brabant landscape, Jean Brusselmans, collection Musea Brugge, photo: Hugo Maertens, artinflanders.be, public domain.

On January 1st of every year, new heritage works enter the public domain. Unfortunately, these works often remain inaccessible to the public.

In order to share experiences and best practices in opening up this material, Meemoo, COMMUNIA, Creative Commons, Wikimedia Europe, Wikimedia Belgium, the Royal Library of Belgium and Europeana are co-organising the annual Public Domain Day, to be celebrated on 9 January 2025.

This event will highlight inspiring developments and use cases from Belgium and examine the legal, financial, technical and institutional barriers that prevent the public access to this works. Discussions will focus on strategies to overcome these obstacles, ensuring that public domain content can truly benefit everyone.

What is the public domain?
The public domain is the collection of all creative works that are not (or no longer) subject to exclusive intellectual property rights, such as copyright and neighbouring rights. Every year, new works enter the public domain because in many countries copyright protections expire 70 years after the death of the author or artist.

Join the event on 9 January 2024 at KBR (Kunstberg 28, 1000 Brussels). The morning session is split into two tracks, for which you can register separately. The Belgian track will be mainly in Dutch, with some possible interventions in French or English, depending on the speaker. The European track as well as the afternoon plenary will be held exclusively in English.

Take a look at the full programme and speakers, and register now!

Please note that online participation will be limited to the plenary morning session, the European track and the plenary session in the afternoon.

Collaboration agreement has started between the Šalek Valley Tourist Board, in December 2024

New collaborations of SECreTour in Slovenia, Šalek Valley

The SECreTour Network is growing!

The Šalek Valley proves that tourism is more than just an economic sector – it is the heart of the community, a bridge between cultures, people, and nature. The valley, recognized as one of the most welcoming destinations in Slovenia, is a place where collaboration, culture, and opportunities for shared growth come together.

The key task of the Šalek Valley Tourist Board is to develop a high-quality and comprehensive tourist offer, as well as to promote and encourage sustainable tourism development in this unique part of Slovenia.

The Šalek Valley is the only destination in Slovenia that boasts three five-star products within the Slovenia Unique Experiences program, further confirming the quality and uniqueness of our tourism offering:

Villa Bianca
Velenje Beach
Viste – a park with stunning views.

The Tourist Board is committed to developing and promoting these unique experiences, offering to visitors the experience to go deeper insight into the cultural and natural heritage.

You can find out more about the Šalek Valley Tourist Board on:

Social media accounts: FB, IG, Linkedin, YouTube
Hashtag: #visitsaleska
Website: https://www.visitsaleska.si/

Follow SECreTour online also on the SECreTour project’s website.

Workshop at Euromed 2024, Limassol, Cyprus, 3 December, 2024

Cultural & Creative Tourism as a Driver for Sustainable Development

The Programme of the workshop on Cultural and Creative Tourism at the international conference Euromed2024 is available online.

The workshop is organised by the Horizon Europe SECreTour project, in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage at Cyprus University of Technology.

Cultural Heritage has always been a net attractor for tourists from ancient times (Pausanias’ Description of Greece 2nd century AD) through to the medieval pilgrimages (Codex Calixtinus: Iter pro peregrinis ad Compostellam – Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela 12th century AD) and from the “Grand Tour” of the 17th and 19th centuries to modern bucket list destination package deals. Figures for EU tourism in 2019 placed the value of the whole EU tourist market sector at approximately €572 billion, and that 40% of all destination selections are based on cultural offerings.

Tourism can significantly contribute to local economies, bring investment and infrastructure developments into regions and support employment. As a tool to revitalise marginalised or underdeveloped regions and promotion of cultural tourism can bring significant benefits to communities, but this is not without risk or consequences. Notably since the anthropause of the global pandemic, there has been a global backlash to tourism from local residents with high profile destinations like Venice, Italy, Mount Fuji, Japan and The Canary Islands, Spain, rethinking tourist activities and access.

This workshop aims to consider the role that Digital Cultural Heritage can play in supporting informed, responsible and sustainable Cultural Tourism from both sides the service provider and the consumer tourist.

The Book of Abstracts of the presentations delivered at the workshop is available for download >>.

Follow SECreTour online also on the SECreTour project’s website.

Following the presentation at PPAM 2024,

Paper showcasing EUreka3D to be published on FGCS journal

The Lambousa Fishing Boat case and the data managing within the scope of EUreka3D project was presented by Michał Orzechowski at the 15th International Conference on Parallel Processing & Applied Mathematics.

Following the presentation, Future Generation Computer Systems journal invited the authors of the presentation to write a paper. FGCS aims to lead the way in advances in distributed systems, collaborative environments, high performance and high performance computing, Big Data on such infrastructures as grids, clouds and the Internet of Things.

Title: Cultural Heritage 3D Object Management with Integrated Automation Workflows

Authors: Written by Michał Orzechowski, Łukasz Opioła, Ignacio Lamata Martínez, Marinos Ioannides, Panayiotis N. Panayiotou, Renata G. Słota, Łukasz Dutka and Jacek Kitowski

Abstract: The complexity of high-quality 3D digitised cultural heritage
objects creates challenges for existing data management systems as they
need to develop metadata management and processing capabilities to
provide semantic insight into the interconnectivity of data that consti-
tute cultural heritage objects. To address these challenges, we propose
a data and metadata management system, together with the federated
authentication and authorisation mechanism, and an integrated system
for designing and executing automated workflows that facilitate the pro-
cessing of both data and metadata. The solution is evaluated with a
3D digitised cultural object of Lambousa Fishing Boat and presents the
complete process from data upload to publication.

Download the paper at this link.

Collaboration agreement has started between CREATOUR Observatory at the Centre for for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, in November 2024

New collaborations of SECreTour in Coimbra

The SECreTour Network is growing!

The SECreTour project has established a new collaboration with CREATOUR^® Observatory on culture and tourism for local development at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal.

The CREATOUR Observatory is an internationally recognized leader in researching, advising on, and guiding creative tourism development in low-density territories. The CREATOUR Observatory focuses on three thematic fields:

1) Ecologies of Culture and Creativity

2) Cultural, Creative and Regenerative Tourism

3) Local, Regional and Community Development

Adopting a transdisciplinary perspective and critical reflection and informed by the creative tourism development work conducted in the research-and-application project CREATOUR (www.creatour.pt), the CREATOUR Observatory is an intersectoral platform that brings together researchers and professionals from the cultural/creative and tourism sectors.

Following a logic of capacity-building, evaluation and knowledge co-production with practitioners and decision-makers, it aims to design and promote training, capacity building, clarification and awareness-raising actions that stimulate reflection and dialogue on ideas and practices, reinforce broad knowledge and establish links between researchers, professionals and public decision-makers in these allied, but often disconnected, fields.

The Observatory’s work is based on methodologies and approaches of cultural mapping; strategy, ideation and prototyping in creative tourism; intersectoral collaboration and cooperation; and strategic planning and governance, involving different types of organizations and target groups, such as companies, municipalities and other territorial administration entities, cultural agents, local communities and tourists. Also, it serves also as the hub of an emerging international network – CREATOUR International.

You can find out more about the CREATOUR Observatory on:

Website: https://ces.uc.pt/observatorios/creatour/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creatour.pt/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/creatour.pt

Follow SECreTour online also on the SECreTour project’s website.

online, 13th December 2024

PRESENCE Joint Business Clinic about XR/VR experiences

The PRESENCE project aims to enhance how people interact in XR environments by developing tools that make virtual experiences feel more realistic, immersive, and engaging. PRESENCE is working in three core areas:

Holoportation: We aim to improve realistic visual interactions between people in different locations. This means you can see and interact with others in 3D, as if they are right there with you, using live volumetric capturing and advanced compression techniques.
Haptics: We are working on technology that lets you feel touch in virtual environments. This includes developing new devices that provide realistic tactile feedback when you interact with virtual objects or other users.
Virtual Humans: We are creating highly realistic virtual avatars and AI agents that can mimic human behaviors and expressions. These virtual humans can represent real users or function as intelligent agents within the virtual space.

Why Join the Joint Business Clinic?
We are organizing this JBC to better understand your needs, challenges, and gather insights to guide the development of PRESENCE. It is important for us to build the right thing, so we need to know how to build the thing right. As such, we cannot do without a thorough market and problem validation. Therefore, we want to co-create PRESENCE in a feasible and future-driven way with you; your insights will help us ensure that PRESENCE meets the needs and expectations of its future users.

The objectives of the PRESENCE Joint Business Clinics are to:

Market & problem validation by identifying and verifying market and user needs.
Investigate external partnerships that may have the potential to accelerate the exploitation of PRESENCE results for future market uptake.

The session will include interactive breakouts on the following topics:

Professional Collaboration: Using VR to enhance remote teamwork and design.
Manufacturing & Training: Applying XR in training for manufacturing.
Health: Utilizing XR for pain and stress relief in medical settings.
Cultural Heritage: Enriching visitor experiences in European heritage and culture through XR.

How to Register
The Joint Business clinic will be an online co-creation session taking place on Friday, December 13th, 2024, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM CET.

If you are interested in joining, please click here to register by December 10th, 2024.

Learn more: PRESENCE project is dedicated to revolutionizing human interactions in virtual environments by enhancing the concept of presence in eXtended Reality (XR) experiences through innovative technologies and interdisciplinary research – https://presence-xr.eu/

EUreka3D project presented during Workshop 1 at EuroMed 2024 (2nd December)

Paradata, Metadata, and Data in 3D Digital Documentation for Cultural Heritage: #DigitalTwins or #MemoryTwins

Since its adoption in 2006 as part of the London Charter for the Use of 3D Visualisation in the Research and Communication of Cultural Heritage, the concept of Paradata has played an essential role in ensuring transparency in the creation of scholarly 3D Cultural Heritage assets. With further recognition by the ICOMOS Seville Charter (2017) and the European Commission’s EU VIGIE2020/654 Study on quality parameters for 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage, Paradata has emerged as a key aspect of 3D digital documentation.

Paradata, alongside Metadata and Geometrical Data, forms a “trinity” of elements essential for ensuring high-quality, reusable 3D digital resources. However, despite its growing importance, the Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) community continues to grapple with fully defining and differentiating Paradata and Metadata, as well as understanding their role in supporting scholarly research, sustainability, and compliance with the European Commission’s recommendations for 3D-digitised cultural heritage.

This workshop brings together professionals from across the spectrum of Digital Cultural Heritage to share their experiences, aiming to establish a common understanding of Paradata and lay the groundwork for a community-built set of standards and best practices for its application in 3D documentation.

Download the full agenda here.