European Commission has launched a dialogue with Member States on the joint creation of a Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage to help safeguard European cultural treasures through a digital infrastructure.
The Cloud aims at fostering cooperation and co-creation among cultural, creative and technology sectors.
With an envisaged budget of €110 million until 2025 from Horizon Europe, the Collaborative Cloud will be a unique infrastructure that will enable unprecedented transdisciplinary and large-scale collaboration between specialists, such as cultural heritage scholars, curators, archivists and conservators.
It will provide cutting-edge technologies for digitising artefacts, researching artworks, and documenting data, all of which will significantly advance and add a new digital dimension to cultural heritage preservation, conservation, and restoration. It aims to facilitate the access to advanced technologies and remove barriers for smaller and remote institutions.
Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture Education and Youth, together with Ministers of Culture and Science, as well as high-level representatives from Member States and from the European Parliament have laid the groundwork for the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage.
So far, only 30% to 50% of the cultural collections in Europe have been digitised. The statistics are even lower for three-dimensional representations of large cultural heritage structures and landscapes, the basis for in-depth scientific research.
Furthermore, most standards in use are not uniform, traceable or secure, putting Europe's tangible and intangible cultural treasures at risk.
