OPEN-HERIT 2026-2027 (ECHOES)
OPEN-HERIT is a capacity-building initiative designed to help small and medium-sized cultural heritage institutions, particularly open-air museums and regional heritage organisations, engage with the Cultural Heritage Cloud being developed by ECHOES (European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage, ECCCH). Building on the outcomes of the earlier RETOLD project, OPEN-HERIT addresses a significant gap: while many institutions already document historic buildings, traditional crafts, cultural landscapes, intangible heritage, and other heritage assets, they often lack the technical knowledge and organisational capacity needed to align their existing documentation practices with emerging European digital infrastructures, semantic standards, and interoperability frameworks.
Led by EXARC with technical support from REPREX and sectoral outreach through AEOM and EXARC.
Start date: 01.10.2026 | End date: 30.09.2027
Task List
| Title | Responsible for |
| 1. Review of RETOLD documentation practices Report summarising strengths, gaps, and user-identified needs in existing RETOLD forms based on workshops with museum professionals and volunteers. | EXARC / participating open-air museums – provide forms, users, and practical expertise; Reprex – methodological analysis and documentation. |
| 2. Domain research for comparable documentation Short analytical briefs (2–3 topics) identifying documentation gaps, research needs, and options for comparative or standardised description (e.g. building elements, construction features). | EXARC / subject specialists – domain knowledge and validation; Reprex – conceptual modelling and synthesis. |
| 3. ECCCH readiness and standards alignment analysis Analytical report mapping RETOLD documentation concepts to CIDOC-CRM and the Heritage Digital Twin Ontology, clarifying feasible alignment pathways, limits, and next steps. | Reprex – standards analysis and ECCCH alignment; EXARC – validation and sector relevance. |
| 4. Capacity building and dissemination Practical guidance materials supporting awareness and skills development for ECCCH engagement, including documented examples of how selected RETOLD documentation elements can be translated into ECCCH- and HDTO-aligned representations. The deliverable will include annotated sample mappings and a small illustrative dataset derived from workshop materials, published for educational and demonstrative purposes, showing interoperability between HDTO-compliant outputs and community-friendly environments such as Wikibase/Wikimedia. The examples serve as reference models and do not constitute a production ingestion or operational ECCCH service. | EXARC – coordination, outreach, and hosting; Reprex – content preparation and facilitation. |
Featured News
OPEN-HERIT Selected for Funding under ECHOES
We are happy to announce that our project OPEN-HERIT – Open-Air Heritage Documentation and Readiness for ECCCH has been selected for funding. We are excited to begin working with our partners on this new initiative and look forward to supporting open-air museums and regional heritage organisations across Europe. The project will officially run from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2027...
This project has received support through a cascading grant from ECHOES, which is funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement No. 101157364, with the support of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK Government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee No. 10110142 and No. 10110466.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.