Programme

Horizon Europe

Funding Scheme

IA (Innovation Action)

Project Number

101233418

Starting Date

1 January 2026

Duration

36 months

Website

https://arxive-eccch.eu/

Project Description

ARXIVE revolutionizes the documentation, analysis, and dissemination of cultural heritage objects by developing cutting-edge tools and methodologies integrated into the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage. Addressing fragmented on-site workflows and the challenges of preserving both tangible and intangible cultural assets, ARXIVE introduces a semantic archival system that provides advanced solutions for annotating evolving digital twins. These tools empower cultural heritage professionals to create semantically rich, context-aware documentation while streamlining processes for research, preservation, and dissemination. The project enhances the accessibility, organization, and contextualization of cultural heritage objects by integrating high-fidelity 3D reconstructions, granular annotations, AI-powered annotated bibliography tools, and narrative-building applications. It ensures interoperability with established standards principles, fostering seamless collaboration and long-term sustainability. Through two Use Case Pilots (Greece and Portugal) the tools will be tested and validated in real-world environment, a through a comprehensive Financial Support to Third Parties program to funding and accelerating at least twenty projects via two diverse Open Calls, ARXIVE will engage different stakeholders, promote knowledge sharing and capacity building, and foster the scalability and wider adoption of ECCCH tools. Leveraging the expertise of a multidisciplinary consortium of nine partners from five countries, ARXIVE establishes strong synergies with ECCCH initiatives to amplify the impact of European cultural heritage. By advancing cutting-edge methodologies and fostering collaboration, ARXIVE positions European heritage at the forefront of innovation, ensuring its preservation and relevance for future generations.

ViLabs’ Role

ViLabs plays a central role in ensuring that ARXIVE’s solutions are user-centred, inclusive, and ready for real-world adoption. It leads stakeholder engagement and requirements elicitation, establishing hubs, applying design thinking methods, and translating stakeholder input into practical directions for the project’s tools and methodologies. In parallel, the team develops the project’s ethical and intersectional framework to ensure that ARXIVE’s approaches remain practical, inclusive, and responsive to the evolving needs of cultural heritage professionals.

ViLabs further leads impact assessment, exploitation, and sustainability activities, analysing the effectiveness and efficiency pilot and training results, identifying lessons learned, and supporting uptake beyond the project through developing exploitation plans and analysing market, and scaling-up opportunities. At the same time, it acts as ARXIVE’s compliance anchor, overseeing gender, ethical, legal, social, and cultural accountability throughout.