Conference Agenda

This presentation provides an overview of the current state of the art, best practices, and emerging cross-sector initiatives linking the cultural heritage and creative industries. The success of the digital entertainment industry over recent decades has generated increased interest from the cultural heritage sector (Camuñas-García et al. 2023), with video games increasingly showcasing cultural heritage elements, such as visual art, folklore, and historical narratives (DaCosta 2024). The global success of Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science 2024), a game deeply rooted in Chinese heritage both in its visual design and narrative, has brought the topic into focus, also in light of its successful collaborations with the Culture and Tourism Department of Shanxi Province (Li 2024).

Within the cultural heritage field, policy frameworks such as the EU Declaration of Cooperation on Advancing Digitisation of Cultural Heritage advocate for the innovative use and spill-over in other sectors of digitised cultural heritage (EU Commission 2019). In parallel, a range of European initiatives—including Europeana, 5D Culture, EUreka3D, and 3D-4CH—support the digitisation of cultural heritage and its reuse beyond the heritage sector by providing capacity building, tools, and policies relevant to the creative industries, including the video game sector.

Building on this context, the presentation discusses recent outcomes from the EU Culture and Creative Sectors’ Future in the Multiannual Financial Framework 2028–2034, alongside forthcoming initiatives such as the Europeana Creative Industries Task Force, which aims to promote the reuse of public-domain digital heritage within the creative industries through activities including game jams (Europeana 2025).

Furthermore, by presenting international best practices from contexts including South Korea, China, the United States, and Italy, and by drawing on recent controversies—most notably the depiction of destructible shrines in Assassin’s Creed Shadows (Ubisoft 2025), which prompted debate in the Japanese Diet (Yin-Poole 2025)—the presentation outlines key challenges in integrating cultural heritage into video games. These challanges include access to finance, legal and regulatory constraints, and competing objectives, particularly between stakeholders prioritising commercial profitability and those committed to heritage preservation (Klimas et al. 2025). The analysis also addresses the interplay among the rights of cultural heritage communities whose traditions or symbols are represented, the intellectual property rights of institutions, the public’s right of access to cultural heritage, and, finally, the creative autonomy of game developers.

TORNE-H is a research project led by the École nationale des chartes – PSL, in partnership with the French Ministry of Culture, the Musée des Arts décoratifs (MAD), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and the Musée d’Orsay, which aims at using artificial intelligence, and more precisely computer vision, to help with the inventory of uncatalogued heritage iconographic collections. The project is anchored at the Musée des Arts décoratifs, whose collections comprise nearly one million objects, including approximately 700,000 items that remain only partially documented. The project shifts the focus from proof-of-concept experimentation to practice-based integration, asking not only what AI can detect, but how it can be meaningfully embedded into museum documentation and conservation workflows.

Beyond human-in-the-loop, our methodology is grounded in digital humanities principles such as situated interpretation and reflexive data production (Drucker 2020; Villaespesa and Murphy 2021). Rather than treating AI as an autonomous system, computational analysis is framed as a heuristic tool supporting expert inquiry, this approach requiring continuous human oversight. The workflow was developed through interviews and workshops with conservation and documentation professionals, in order to identify concrete use cases where AI could provide assistance without disrupting existing practices. Selected use cases included object recognition, iconographic pattern detection, visual similarity analysis, and assisted metadata enrichment. Several tools were developed or adapted, including the TiamaT pipeline (YOLO-based object detection), the use of Panoptic (a CLIP-based system developed by CERES–Sorbonne), and additional scripts designed to integrate and enrich human-produced documentation, reinforcing the iterative human–machine loop.

Finally, TORNE-H explicitly addresses ethical concerns related to the deployment of AI in cultural institutions. Particular attention is paid to professions potentially at risk of technological substitution, such as documentation, mediation, or curatorial work. Rather than pursuing automation for its own sake, the project integrates a reflexive dimension, in which proposed uses of AI are discussed, evaluated, and sometimes rejected. Equally significant was the process of professional acculturation to AI. Collaborative experimentation fostered a shared vocabulary and helped institutions articulate feasible, context-sensitive requirements. Moreover, TORNE-H adopts an ecological perspective on AI by privileging measured impact rather than technical escalation. Instead of large-scale model training or resource-intensive infrastructures, the project relies on targeted datasets, modular pipelines, and the reuse or adaptation of existing models. This approach limits computational and energy costs while remaining responsive to institutional needs. Ethical engagement, in this context, involves preserving professional agency, ensuring transparency in algorithmic processes, and avoiding applications that could undermine the quality, integrity, or social role of heritage work.

As the project continues, replication of the method across other partner institutions will refine both technical and cultural practices of the proposed workflows. We aim at fostering dialogue among digital humanists, museum professionals, and AI practitioners. The project demonstrates how scholarship can help with meaningfully, sustainably, and responsibly embedding AI tools and processes in heritage practices, thus significantly contributing to the enhancement of the social impact of digital humanities research in cultural heritage institutions.

Preservation, stewardship, and resilience in digital knowledge infrastructures of cultural assets refer to the frameworks and practices that support the long-term and sustainable safeguarding of cultural heritage, based on ethical, adaptable and accessible digital systems. This contribution introduces an integrative perspective in the preservation of cultural assets drawn from two recently European-funded research projects, -EXCALIBUR and MusicSphere-, which address distinct yet interconnected domains of cultural heritage through advanced digital technologies and holistic methodological frameworks. Particularly, this contribution presents the main digital toolkits and their key characteristics for enhancing the initiative of the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) [1].

ECCCH, also known as Cultural Heritage Cloud [2,3,4], is a shared platform that will provide heritage professionals with access to data, training material and digital tools to address the various needs concerning the documentation, preservation, and presentation of cultural material. ECCCH infrastructure is based on the principles of Open Access and knowledge-sharing facilitating access to a new generation of highly enriched digital commons using Digital Twins (DT). Meanwhile, both projects leverage high-precision 3D digitization tools, material characterization techniques and AI-assisted simulation to capture physical and mechanical properties, develop dynamic DTs, understand material behavior and support computational reconstruction. Extended reality technologies enable the rigorous visualization and presentation of cultural assets, enhancing interactive accessibility and experiential engagement. In this context, we introduce two research projects, namely MusicSphere [5,6] and EXCALIBUR [7,8] that aim to enhance the ECCCH ecosystem, through different perspectives.

MusicSphere project (A Multimodal Approach for Digitizing, Analysing, and Simulating Traditional Musical Organs Through 3D Technologies, Acoustic Analysis and Interactive Experiences) focuses on the preservation of musical organs, namely church organs and their ancient Greek counterpart, Hydraulis. By combining 3D digitization, acoustic analysis, and simulation, MusicSphere develops detailed DTs of the complex structure and sound behavior of the musical instruments. Moreover, the project extends its research to AI-assisted reconstruction of missing parts of non-functional instruments, as well as spatial acoustics, capturing the mechanical behavior of the environments and validating sound simulation within both ancient and modern soundscapes.

EXCALIBUR project (Advanced toolkits for interdisciplinary and enhanced study, conservation, and restoration in burial excavations and findings) addresses burial sites, tomb structures, artefacts, and human remains within archaeological contexts. It proposes a centralized, interoperable, and human-centered digital infrastructure based on DTs to support enhanced study, conservation, and restoration workflows across multiple contexts – from excavation sites and funerary architecture to artifacts and bioanthropological remains. By integrating heterogeneous datasets, advanced 3D documentation, material characterization, and AI-assisted interpretation within an open and sustainable framework, the project enhances interoperability, transparency, and long-term stewardship of archaeological data.

Both projects emphasize open-source, cost-affordable, and sustainable solutions aligned with ECCCH requirements and framework, ensuring long-term preservation, accessibility, and reuse. They illustrate how multi-functional digital knowledge infrastructures can support cultural heritage resilience by integrating data-driven insights and end-user design into a cohesive ecosystem. This contribution argues that resilience of cultural heritage infrastructures relies not only on technological robustness but also on interoperability, jointly developed scientific knowledge, participatory stewardship, and openness.

Sustaining participatory digital infrastructures in the cultural heritage sector requires integrated policy frameworks, stable governance mechanisms, and interoperable technical systems that empower both institutions and citizens. This paper presents the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media’s digital infrastructure centered on the national public portal eKultura as a model for long-term, participatory, and standards-driven cultural heritage management. The development of this infrastructure has enabled the establishment of national-level standards, policies, and procedures that guide cultural institutions in digitising their collections and publishing digital content in the central system and on the public portal. By situating the model within broader discussions on participatory infrastructures and governance, it examines how national policies foster transparent decision-making, inclusive participation, and sustainable digital systems.

Since the early 2020s, the Ministry has developed strategic instruments aimed at strengthening systemic capacity for digitisation, data harmonisation, and open access. The Digitisation Plan for Cultural Heritage 2020–2025 established the first fully coordinated national roadmap, setting priorities for digitisation activities across archives, libraries, museums, galleries, and other institutions. It defined methodological standards, promoted cross-sectoral coordination, and ensured alignment with national and international best practices. Building on this foundation, the infrastructure expands the strategic horizon by embedding inclusivity, interoperability, participatory governance, and user-centric design as core principles. The infrastructure emphasizes not only technical standards but also long-term capacity-building, open-data principles, and mechanisms that enable cultural heritage communities to engage meaningfully with digital content. It is aligned with emerging European strategies and recommendations for the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage.

At the operational level, the Ministry maintains the eKultura infrastructure, a national digital ecosystem designed to support the creation, management, aggregation, and public dissemination of cultural heritage data. The public portal serves as a central point of access, enabling users to explore digital objects, metadata, collections, and narratives from a wide range of cultural institutions. The infrastructure is supported by extensive governance and technical documentation that standardizes workflows and ensures institutional participation. These materials include national Guidelines for the Digitisation of Cultural Heritage, prescribing standards for imaging, documentation, preservation metadata, accessibility formats, and quality assurance. Detailed user manuals cover metadata entry, object management, validation processes, authority control, and publication workflows, complemented by instructions for central administration, portal management, and specialized guidance for transferring complex digital assets and for making virtual exhibitions on the portal.

The Ministry continuously updates legislation to reflect digital needs, incorporating digitisation requirements into laws governing museums, libraries, and archives. Institutions are required to submit annual digitisation plans, ensuring alignment with national priorities and strategic objectives. The Croatian eKultura framework demonstrates that sustainable participatory infrastructures rely not only on technological innovation but also on governance models that encourage openness, collaboration, and the active involvement of diverse cultural heritage stakeholders. By combining strategic planning, standardized practices, and inclusive participation, the framework exemplifies a scalable, resilient, and user-centered approach to digital cultural heritage management.