Echoes: A Strategic Season for the Development of the Cultural Heritage Cloud

The summer season opened on May 5th in Athens with the CAA 2025 ECHOES Workshop, launching a particularly active and strategic period of initiatives aimed at building and strengthening the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH).

At the annual “Preserve, Protect, Reuse” conference, held during Europeana 2025 (June 11–12, Warsaw), ECHOES was given a prominent role. Represented by Vania Virgili (CNR ISPC) in the panel “Achieving Strategic Independence through Collaboration” at the POLIN Museum, the event emphasized the Cultural Heritage Cloud’s strategic role in enhancing shared digital capacities and ensuring cultural data sovereignty.

The DARIAH Annual Event (June 19) featured the Co-design Users & Research Scenarios Workshop, focused on co-designing collaboration scenarios between users and researchers. Participants discussed how to identify ECHOES’ target users and their needs, with the aim of improving and assessing the project’s interdisciplinary collaboration potential.

“The Human in the Loop – Intersecting Perspectives on the Archaeologists’ Future in the Age of AI and Automation” was the title of the June 27 workshop in Paris, which explored ethical and methodological challenges in human–AI collaboration for cultural heritage. Among the participants was AUTOMATA, one of the first projects of the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage, working closely with ECHOES to ensure consistent integration of data, tools, and workflows into the future digital infrastructure.

Also of key importance was the webinar “The Cultural Heritage Cloud Call 2025: Implementation Update” (June 30), organized in collaboration with ECHOES, which explored how future projects funded under the Horizon Europe Cluster 2 Work Programme 2025 will interact with other Cloud initiatives and be integrated into the overarching Cultural Heritage Cloud framework.

Looking ahead, ECHOES will take center stage at Digital Heritage 2025 (Siena, September 8–13). On September 8, the project will host a workshop to present project updates and the current state of ECCCH development. It will also organize a special session titled “Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage,” focusing on scientific progress in the fields of research, conservation, and enhancement of cultural heritage. The session will spotlight digital twins, cloud infrastructure, and the tools, services, and applications that contribute to a digital ecosystem for collaborative heritage research.

Dimitris Kotzinos (ECHOES – University of Cergy Paris) will co-chair, together with Anaïs Guillem (ERIHS – CNRS MAP) and Bruno Fanini (H2IOSC – CNR ISPC), the track on Infrastructures, Dataspaces, and International Projects. The call for contributions spans all aspects of digital technology and cultural heritage: collaborative clouds, connectivity infrastructures, digital archives and libraries, digital accessibility, as well as cultural heritage cybersecurity, blockchain, and NFTs.

Dimitris Kotzinos (ECHOES – Università di Cergy Paris) co-presiederà, con Anaïs Guillem (ERIHS – CNRS MAP) e Bruno Fanini (H2IOSC – CNR ISPC), la traccia su Infrastrutture, Dataspace e progetti internazionali. La traccia invita a presentare contributi su tutti gli aspetti della tecnologia e del patrimonio culturale: cloud collaborativo, infrastrutture di connessione, archivi e biblioteche digitali, accessibilità digitale, nonché cybersicurezza del patrimonio, blockchain e NFT.

Additionally, Xavier Rodier, coordinator of the ECHOES project, will join the roundtable “Digital Technologies for the Conservation and Management of Heritage” to discuss the role of digital technologies in heritage conservation and management—both in terms of systems used and the long-term preservation of the data they generate.