Digital meets Culture

TEXTOUR Webinar, 19 September 2024

Supporting communities though digital cultural tourism

SECreTour project and its associated EUreka3D project participated in the Part 2 of the Webinar promoted by the TExTOUR Project and organised by the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage Lab at Cyprus University of Technology.

The webinar explored the potential use of digitised cultural heritage resources to boost cultural tourism, raise awareness about sustainability, and how to prepare for digitisation with the involvement of communities in the management and socio-economic development of places.

The presentation of SECreTour focused on the liaison and the articulation between digitisation of cultural heritage and the use and re-use of digital content in the domain of cultural tourism promotion, with a special focus on peripheral destinations and the 3D digitisation of cultural heritage recommended by the European Commission to the Member States in the Recommendation on a common European data space for cultural heritage of November 2021.

Culture and cultural heritage have a primary role to strengthen relationships and cohesion between European communities, building on similarities and differences, and promoting common roots and values. Cultural tourism together with cultural heritage offer a vehicle for promoting territories, generating benefits for local destinations to share about their history and culture. Cultural tourism is also a valuable economic driver for local communities and local territories that are able to offer visibility to their cultural and tourism assets, attracting an interested, respectful and competent tourist. Unprecedented opportunities brought by technologies, such as digitisation, AI, 3D, and XR bring cultural heritage sites back to a new life, where virtual museums and XR scenarios offer visitors the possibility of seeing art works in context and experiencing objects and sites that are difficult to be accessed by the public.

The presentation was delivered by Antonella Fresa, project coordinator of EUreka3D and SECreTour networking coordinator. The PDF of the presentation is available here for free download.

Girona and online, September 30, 2024

IV International Seminar on Sports Archives: open registrations

Registrations are now open for the IV International Seminar on Sports Archives. The event will take place on September 30, 2024, both online and on-site at EspaiCaixa Girona – “la Caixa” Obra Social, Plaça Poeta Marquina, 10 (Girona).

The biennial Seminar on Sports Archives aims to bring the history of sport closer to society from multiple perspectives, highlighting the importance of preserving and making this documentation accessible in both public and private entities around the world.

The event is aimed at sportsmen and sportswomen, clubs, organisations, sports federations, historians, journalists, researchers, doctors, physiotherapists, archivists, companies and universities (staff and students) managing documents linked to health, sport, history, sociology, etc.

The International Council on Archives (ICA), through the Section on Sport Archives (SPO), aims to make governments and the public aware of the need to preserve and conserve archives belonging to all the individuals, public and private institutions, associations and other organisations linked to the world of sport. To achieve these aims, the ICA / SPO, the Diputació de Girona, the Girona City Council, and the Generalitat de Catalunya are promoting a biennial seminar on sports archives in Girona.

Visit the website to explore the program, learn about the speakers and register.

the project presentation is part of the session dedicated to the Data Spaces and data sharing

EUreka3D at EGI annual conference

At the annual EGI conference, international scientific communities, computing and service providers, European projects, security experts, community managers, and policy makers gather to take research and innovation in data-intensive processing and analytics forward, in a safe and open environment with room for in-depth discussion, new insights, and networking. EGI Foundation is one of the technical partners in EUreka3D, with the task of developing a data hub and new services dedicated to cultural heritage institutions, to support digital cultural heritage collections management and sharing. EGI is an expert federation of computing and storage resource providers united by a mission of offering advanced computing and data analytics services for research and innovation.

EUreka3D project was presented at the conference with a keynote speech by Marinos Ioannides from Cyprus University of Technology, one of EUreka3D partners. The talk, titled “The oldest traditional Trawler of Cyprus on its way to the Data Cloud and Memory Twin”, is delivered within the session Inside Data Spaces: Enabling data sharing paradigms. This contribution discusses the boat’s characteristics, its restoration procedures, its 3D digitisation, and the positive impact for the preservation of the local Maritime Cultural Heritage by creating the exact Memory Twin and make all information and data available under open-access to the entire world.

Download presentation (PDF, 8 Mb)

A postcard promoting the upcoming EUreka3D public events was distributed during the conference.

More information: https://eureka3d.eu/egi-conference-2024/

Collaboration agreement has started between Digital Humanities Lab at University of Basel and Virtual Culture GmbH in September 2024

New collaborations of SECreTour in Basel

The SECreTour project has established new collaborations with the University of Basel and Virtual Culture GmbH.

The Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary institution of the University of Basel. Its task is to coordinate and promote research, teaching and infrastructure for digitisation in the humanities and social sciences. It is also a central institution in Switzerland for the theory and practice of the digital humanities and offers a Master’s programme and a Doctorate in Digital Humanities.

Virtual Culture GmbH offers digital sustainable strategies, capturing, FAIR and interoperable database, and much more.
It provides a network of experts and institutions and promotes young talents.

SECreTour is seeking collaborations also with individual experts.

Prof. Dr. Peter Fornaro has joined the SECreTour Network of Common Interest. Peter is expert in Imaging and Digital Preservation and Head of Research Projects and Digital Humanities Lab at University of Basel.

Berlin (Germany) and online streaming, 21-23 October 2024

EOSC Symposium 2024

The EOSC Symposium 2024 will be a critical event on the path to EOSC post-2027. It is a key event to network and exchange ideas with policy makers, funders, and representatives of research institutions, research communities, and data- and e-Infrastructures active in the EOSC ecosystem.
The EOSC Symposium 2024 will take place on 21-23 October 2024 at the H4 Hotel Alexanderplatz in Berlin, under the patronage of the German Minister for Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger.

It is divided into twenty-six sessions that address, among other things, the ambitions of the EOSC Tripartite Partnership, the EOSC Federation, the launch of the EOSC EU Node, the EOSC landscape, including the European Common Data Spaces and the Artificial Intelligence trends, and the impact and contributions of stakeholders.

Online streaming will be available, registration required.

Programme: https://eosc.eu/symposium2024/#programme

More information and registration: https://eosc.eu/symposium2024/

online, 27 September 2024

Shaping the Future of Cultural Heritage

Shaping the Future of Cultural Heritage: Connecting the Cultural Heritage Cloud with the common European data space for cultural heritage and the European Open Science Cloud.

The Cultural Heritage Cloud – or European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) – is a European Union initiative to create a digital infrastructure that will connect cultural heritage researchers and professionals across the EU. It will develop specific digital collaborative tools for the sector while removing barriers for smaller and remote institutions. The goal is to help cultural heritage institutions, research organisations and other professional organisations of all kinds and sizes to work with their digital objects in a more visible, interconnected, harmonised, and informed way, to successfully cope with the challenges the digital transition poses to the sector and seize its opportunities. The Cultural Heritage Cloud will add a new digital dimension to cultural heritage preservation, conservation, restoration and enhancement by providing cutting-edge technologies, for instance for the digitization of artefacts or for researching artworks. The implementation of this initiative has now begun with the EU-funded project ECHOES – European Cloud for Heritage OpEn Science, which started on the 1 of June 2024.

Two other initiatives are currently running at European level:

funded by the Digital Europe programme, the common European data space for cultural heritage is an EU flagship initiative to accelerate the digital transformation of the sector and foster creation, access and reuse of heritage data.
The vision for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is to put in place a system for researchers in Europe to store, share, process, analyse, and reuse data within and across disciplines and borders.

In this webinar, we’ll learn more about the Cloud and two other European initiatives, and how they are interconnected and complementary, how these initiatives interact with the Cloud, and what the added value of such connections is for the cultural heritage community.

More information and registration HERE

online streaming, 9 September 2024

ECHOES – European Cloud for Heritage Open Science launch event

The ECHOES project is set to begin the new academic year with its highly anticipated Launch Event on September 9, 2024, at the historic Château of Chambord in France. Following the project’s official start in June, this event will gather partners, stakeholders, and prominent local, national and European figures in the Renaissance Château de Chambord, a symbol of the rich cultural heritage of the Val de Loire.

The Launch Event will be an opportunity to present the ECHOES project to the public and feature keynote speakers who will discuss the importance of preserving both tangible and intangible cultural heritage across Europe. The public event will conclude with a dinner in the Château de Chambord, offering attendees a chance to network and celebrate in a setting steeped in history.

The public part of the event will be streamed online from 16:00 to 18:00 CEST/UTC+2, with the following agenda:

Introduction by Rickard BUCKSCH, Policy Officer, EU-DR Research and Innovation
Presentation of ECHOES by Xavier RODIER, CNRS. Scientific coordinator, ECHOES
Presentation of the ECHOES main Pillars: Community Pillar: Isabelle PALLOT-FROSSARD; ECHOES Pillar Coordinator. President, FSP; Knowledge Pillar: Dimitris KOTZINOS; ECHOES Pillar Coordinator. CY Cergy Paris University, ETIS Lab, Innovation Pillar: Paolo CIGNONI; ECHOES Pillar Coordinator. Research Director, CNR-ISTI; Sustainability pillar: Vania VIRGILI ECHOES WP Leader, Long-term Sustainabilty. Director of Technological Research, CNR
Keynote speaker Sally CHAMBERS Director, DARIAH-EU: “Interconnecting knowledge: cultural heritage data from a Digital Humanities perspective”
Keynote speaker Livio DE LUCA Researcher, CNRS/Project ‘Notre-Dame Numérique’: “Notre-Dame de Paris: a cathedral of digital data and multidisciplinary knowledge for heritage science”
Q&A session

For more information, please visit the website.

Collaboration agreement has started between the SECreTour project ad the DHRLab in August 2024

SECreTour and the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage at the Cyprus University of Technology

The SECreTour project has established a collaboration with The Digital Heritage Research Lab (DHRLab) in Cyprus.

The Lab, established in 2013 at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Informatics at the Cyprus University of Technology, is devoted to research on the digitisation, documentation, archiving, preservation, protection and promotion of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

At European level, the DHRLab collaborates with a network of over 150 key partners from academic, research and industrial sectors, working towards the development of new tools and applications, including the cultural tourism domain. To this regard, it is worth to mention that the Lab participated in the former IMPACTour and TEXTour EU projects funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme.

DHRLab is hosting the unique UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage. It has rapidly achieved world-spectrum of collaborative research projects and has created a remarkable wide research network and an agenda with great potential for future activities (such as the H2020 ViMM Manifesto, Roadmap and Action Plan).

Some of the latest achievements in the Lab are significant with unique international awards like the EU Best Innovation Award at the Fair of European Innovators in Cultural Heritage, European Commission Research Executive Agency REA: 10 years supporting excellence in science/REA’s life-changing projects and Innovation Radar Capturing, Digitisation technologies in Cultural Heritage, the EU Study VIGIE2020/654 Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage, as well as the establishment of the first Competence Center on 3D Documentation in Cultural Heritage on the island of Cyprus.

The collaboration of SECreTour and DHRLab has just started, but it is already planning joint initiatives, among which the next workshop on cultural tourism at the EUROMED2024 conference that will run from 2 to 4 December 2024 in Limassol.

Ghent 16-20 September, 2024

iPRES 2024 International Conference on Digital Preservation

The 20th edition of the International Conference on Digital Preservation is taking place in Ghent from 16 to 20 September 2024.

Four organizations act as a core consortium for the organisation of iPRES 2024. They are: Digital Archives Flanders, Ghent University, Meemoo, Flemish Institute for Archives, and VRT is the public broadcaster of the Flemish Community in Belgium.

iPRES is a major conference series on digital preservation, which runs since 2004, with annual iPRES conferences in rotation on four continents.

This conference offers a very rich programme, bringing together a strong community of scientists, students, researchers, archivists, librarians, digital content providers, and other experts. Workshops, presentations, tutorials, panels and posters will be the occasion to share recent developments and to learn about the results of innovative projects.

Further information about iPRES are available at https://ipres2024.pubpub.org/

2 July, 2024 online

1st cluster meeting of projects on cultural tourism in rural areas

The four sister projects funded under the Horizon Europe call HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-01-05 met on 2/7/2024 for the 1st cluster meeting on cultural tourism in rural areas.

Representatives of the projects participated in the meeting together with the Project Officer of REA (Research Executive Agency) and of the Policy Officer of the European Commission.

Each project presented to the others their objectives and expected outcomes with the aim to establish a factual collaboration and to identify opportunities of further exchanges and networking.

The SECreTour project was presented by Antonella Fresa of Promoter srl, leader of the work package on Cooperation, networking, macro-regions, crossborder. The Project Coordinator Jose Maria Martin Civantos of University of Granada and Carsten Jacob Humlebæk of Copenhagen Business School participated in the debate to illustrate the SECreTour initiative.

The presentation of SECreTour is availble here for download.

You can read more about partners and workplan of the initiatives at the respective project’s websites:

CULTURALITY: https://culturalityproject.eu/

SECreTour: https://secretourproject.eu/

Toural: https://toural-project.eu/

For the CROCUS project you can look at the fact-sheet available on the EU CORDIS service: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101132454