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ECHOES
European Cloud for Heritage Open Science

Project Goal

ECHOES aims to create the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) as a shared platform for heritage professionals and researchers to access data, innovative scientific and training resources and advanced digital tools co-developed by the heritage community according to their specific needs. ECHOES will bring together fragmented communities of the Cultural Heritage (CH) field, which consists of various actors from different sectors and disciplines, into a new community around the Digital Commons. Going beyond the strict focus on assets and the mere digitisation of Heritage, ECHOES intends to generate a visionary paradigm shift in the CH field. Adopting a holistic approach, ECHOES will also enable digitising the existing knowledge of Heritage objects, whether tangible or intangible. It will create a digital environment enabling collaborative analysis of CH assets, facts, and phenomena. In this environment, actors – humans or Artificial Intelligence – can develop their interpretations, thereby enriching the knowledge of CH and their surroundings. The digital environment proposed by ECHOES will empower users to interact with, manipulate and enrich Digital Twins, leading to new, jointly developed scientific knowledge. The ECCCH built by ECHOES is anchored in the principles of Open Access and Open Science. It thus promotes inclusion and democratises access to knowledge and digital assets, which are understood as public goods by and for all. This digital environment will allow the creation of a new generation of heritage objects, the Digital Commons, which are semantically rich and collectively produced – we see this as “the heritage of tomorrow”. At the end of the project, ECHOES will deliver a single platform to integrate results of EU and national projects on CH. The ECCCH will be sustainable thanks to its inclusive legal entity, which will be created before the end of ECHOES.

The Cultural Heritage Cloud is a large-scale European Union initiative for a digital infrastructure that will connect cultural heritage institutions and professionals across the EU. It will develop specific digital collaborative tools for the sector while removing barriers for smaller and remote institutions. The initiative was launced in 2023 based on the expert group report (Brunet et al., 2022) below.

Press Release June 2024

The ECHOES consortium was selected to oversee the creation of a Collaborative European Cloud for Cultural Heritage

In June 2022, the European Commission announced its commitment to supporting the creation of a collaborative cloud for cultural heritage. This initiative aims to strengthen connections between various heritage institutions and sector professionals, enhancing the understanding, documentation, preservation, and promotion of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage across Europe. The initiative will establish a digital ecosystem to interconnect and harmonise practices related to digital objects.

Funded under the Horizon Europe program, the Cloud for Cultural Heritage has been allocated a budget of €110 million until 2025, marking the largest investment ever made in Europe for a cultural heritage initiative and more broadly in the humanities and social sciences (HSS). Two calls for proposals were launched in 2023, with additional calls planned for 2024 and 2025.

The European Cloud for Heritage OpEn Science (ECHOES) project, led by CNRS under the scientific coordination of Xavier Rodier, Director of MSH Val de Loire, has won the Horizon Europe 2023 call "A European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage" (HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-ECCCH-01-01). ECHOES has been awarded €25 million for five years of work (2024 – 2029). The project aims to create the collaborative cloud, a European reference platform for both tangible and intangible cultural heritage professionals.

For the ECHOES project, CNRS, together with CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy) and FSP (Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine), has formed a consortium of 51 European partners. These partners include research organisations, networks representing cultural heritage communities (museums, libraries, archives, restoration, etc.), universities, and private sector entities. As a pilot project, ECHOES aspires to create the infrastructure and legal entity for the cloud in collaboration with and for the cultural heritage communities. ECHOES promotes a holistic approach to digital transformation, encouraging the co-construction of knowledge.

The ECHOES project will foster the emergence of Digital Commons through this digital environment, allowing collective enrichment and analysis of cultural heritage objects, facts, or phenomena. Actors—both human and artificial intelligence (AI)—will be able to develop their interpretations and thus contribute to the construction of knowledge. Thanks to a transparent governance approach and the application of open science principles, ECHOES will also integrate other European and national projects within the cloud.

Project Partners

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