Call: European cultural heritage, access and analysis for a richer interpretation of the past

• Health, demographic change and wellbeing;
• Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research, and the Bioeconomy;
• Secure, clean and efficient energy;
• Smart, green and integrated transport;
• Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials;
• Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective societies;
• Secure societies - protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens.

This subprogramme will address social exclusion, discriminations and various forms of inequalities. It will explore new forms of innovation and strengthen the evidence base for the Innovation Union, the European Research Area and other relevant EU policies. It will promote coherent and effective cooperation with third countries. Finally, it will address the issues of memories, identities, tolerance and cultural heritage. The approach adopted in the present calls is in line with the Horizon 2020 Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) cross-cutting issue, engaging multiple actors including society, integrating the gender and ethical dimensions, ensuring the access to research outcomes. Some Topics deal specifically with formal and informal (science) education.

Collections in archives, museums, and at cultural heritage sites contain a wealth of digital texts, images, audio-visual content and 3D representations of objects or scenes as well as other information such as multispectral or thermal imaging revealing the actual state of conservation, which are largely inaccessible to both computers and humans. In addition, human beings as members of their societies can be regarded as natural archives entail information about the complex semantic and conceptual knowledge organizing a society in its cultural settings and stored in non-verbal practices and rites as well as in language.

New technologies can be a valuable instrument to process large amounts of data in order to identify new correlations and interpretations and extract new meaning from our cultural and intellectual heritage. To close, or at least narrow, the "semantic gap" would present a major step forward in digital humanities and other sciences related to European heritage, memory, identity and cultural interaction. In order to better understand and inform the present by richer interpretations of the past, actions should create affordable and efficient digital access, documentary methods analysis and preservation services for cultural resources. This should be achieved by tackling issues such as automatic contextualisation and identification of content and by developing analytical tools.

At least three legal entities. Each of the three must be established in a different EU Member State or Horizon 2020 associated country. All three legal entities must be independent of each other. 

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between 2 and 3 million € would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. This does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

EU funding rate: 100%.

Electronic application here.