ARXIVE Showcased at the ECCCH Webinar on “The Cultural Heritage Cloud: new projects, lasting impacts”
On 1 December 2025, a dedicated webinar brought together the 10 newly selected projects of the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH). The event complemented the Cultural Heritage Cloud Call 2025 webinar and offered a first collective glimpse into how the next generation of digital tools will contribute to the future of European cultural heritage research and practice.
Alexandra Garatzogianni, Coordinator of ARXIVE, participated in the event and presented the ARXIVE project alongside the other newly funded initiatives. The webinar marked an important moment for the new consortia to introduce their work, engage with the wider community, and build connections within the growing Cultural Heritage Cloud ecosystem.
A growing European initiative
The webinar highlighted the broader vision of the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage, an ambitious EU initiative supported by around €110 million under Horizon Europe. The Cloud aims to create a shared digital infrastructure connecting cultural heritage researchers and professionals across Europe, enabling advanced collaboration, co-creation, and access to cutting-edge digital technologies. A key objective is to lower barriers for smaller and remote institutions, ensuring inclusive access to digital innovation.
The implementation of the Cultural Heritage Cloud is currently underway through ECHOES – European Cloud for Heritage OpEn Science, the EU-funded project responsible for developing the Cloud infrastructure, which officially started on 1 June 2024. Three sister projects selected under the 2023 call are already contributing tools and methods to this evolving ecosystem: AUTOMATA, TEXTaiLES, and HERITALISE.
The new ECCCH tools projects
From the 2024 ECCCH call on innovative tools, ten new projects were selected, representing a total investment of €48 million. These projects were presented during the webinar and reflect the diversity of challenges and opportunities in the cultural heritage sector. They address areas such as the digitisation and analysis of dynamic heritage objects, advanced data enrichment, documentation and interoperability of heritage data, immersive visitor experiences, and the study, conservation, and restoration of heritage collections.
Within this context, ARXIVE was presented as a project focusing on interoperable research, data organisation, and value creation across European heritage datasets. During her presentation, Alexandra Garatzogianni outlined how ARXIVE will contribute to the Cultural Heritage Cloud by supporting structured, connected, and reusable heritage data that can be shared across disciplines and institutions. More specifically, Alexandra contributed to the discussion rounds by addressing key questions on the project’s scientific innovation and technical approach. In the first round, she outlined how ARXIVE introduces fresh and innovative perspectives by building on existing scientific work while advancing interoperability and structured knowledge exploration across European heritage data. She highlighted the project’s potential to generate new scientific insights by enabling researchers to connect, analyse, and reuse heterogeneous heritage datasets more effectively, addressing a long-standing challenge for the heritage community: the fragmentation of data across disciplines, institutions, and formats. In the second round, Alexandra focused on ARXIVE’s relationship with the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage, explaining how the project will actively leverage the Cloud’s infrastructure to support scalable research workflows, shared services, and cross-project collaboration. She also discussed the technical challenges involved in ensuring interoperability, sustainability, and alignment with the evolving Cloud architecture, as well as the importance of close collaboration with ECHOES and the other ECCCH tools projects to maximise impact and long-term value for the heritage sector.
Building connections from the start
Beyond the project presentations, the webinar served as an important space for dialogue. Participants were able to submit questions in advance and engage directly with project representatives during the live session. This interactive format encouraged early knowledge exchange, helped identify complementarities between projects, and laid the groundwork for future collaboration within the ECCCH framework.
For ARXIVE, participation in this event was a key step toward positioning the project within the wider Cultural Heritage Cloud landscape and strengthening links with other initiatives working toward shared goals of interoperability, accessibility, and innovation.
Watch the webinar and get involved
The full webinar recording is available online and provides a comprehensive overview of the projects shaping the next phase of the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage.
The Cultural Heritage Cloud is a community-driven initiative, and interested stakeholders are encouraged to join the European Heritage Cloud community to stay informed about project developments, events, and collaboration opportunities.
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