TOWCHED will demonstrate transformative potential of inclusive, arts-based and heritage collections-mediated educational interventions for children and youth, using SDGs as the results framework. These interventions, piloted in collaboration between Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs), Collections-based Organizations (CBOs) and educational institutions across Europe, will be critically assessed,providing a field-tested and well-supported roadmap to enriching our learning ecology with creative use of heritage, thus making Europe, and our world, a better place for all. Our innovative approach relies on the application of the Human Rights-based Approach (HRBA) as a project planning tool, which is foundational in Agenda2030 and the SDGs. TOWCHED will actively engage with children, young people, educators, creatives, heritage professionals, policymakers and professional development providers to ensure our goals and impacts are not only achieved, but that stakeholders can shape these goals in line with the principles of Leave No-one Behind, and the Right to Development. Furthermore, we will focus on lifelong perspectives, from early childhood education and care to young adult education in formal and non-formal learning environments. We will seek to empower CBOs to be more effective in supporting sustainable development through educational activities that foster people’s active, free, and meaningful participation. Our transdisciplinary approach will lead to creation of community of practice for competence-based sustainable development education and life-long learning rooted in our rich European heritage. The project will provide practical tools, and develop capacities to use these tools. In pursuit of these objectives, we will work closely with the transdisciplinary New European Bauhaus (NEB) and other similar initiatives. By integrating our project into this broader European movement, we aspire to contribute to the transformation of societies for a sustainable future.

The goal of inDICEs is to empower policy-makers and decision-makers in the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) to fully understand the social and economic impact of digitisation in their sectors and address the need for innovative (re)use of cultural assets. To this end, inDICEs will (i) Develop a comprehensive methodology to measure and assess the economic and social impact of digitisation of cultural heritage on the access to European cultural goods and services and their modes of production; (ii) Produce in-depth comparative analyses of the impact of digitisation and IPR regulations on the access to European culture and on creative cultural production; (iii) Formulate policy recommendations and develop novel solutions and business models to overcome bottlenecks in the creative (re)use and consumption of cultural assets; (iv) Establish an open observatory to track policies and trends over the long-term; (v) Empower Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHIs) to make strategic self-assessment about their readiness for the Digital Single Market and adaptation to the current legal frameworks in order to foster their digital transformation. As a result, policy-makers will have a solid framework to assess the impact of cultural heritage and a dashboard to keep track of the advancement of the impact of cultural heritage in Europe. For their own part, CHIs will be able to make strategic decisions that will enable them to increase their positive contributions to the Cultural and Creative Industries and society and advance in the Digital Single Market. inDICEs brings together internationally renowned research groups in the domains of Cultural Economics, IP Law and Digital Humanities, representatives from the CCI with deep insights in the sector, Non-governmental organisations with substantial outreach capacity, social innovators and platform developers.

The Framework for Action on Cultural Heritage, the European Heritage Strategy for the 21st Century, the Faro Convention and Towards an Integrated Approach to Cultural Heritage for Europe agree that cultural heritage is intrinsically related to personal wellbeing and human identity and a rich but underrated and under-resourced social and economic good.The CHARTER project will create a lasting, comprehensive sectoral skills strategy to ensure Europe has the necessary cultural heritage skills to support sustainable societies and economies. The project will use strategic collaboration and innovative methodologies to bridge the gaps between educational and occupational systems and employer needs, to reduce skills shortages, gaps and mismatches, and overcome the paucity of cultural heritage statistical data. The project’s 21 full members -plus its 7 affiliate partners- from 14 EU states are leading academic/training, employer and policy stakeholders in the European cultural heritage sector.The project will collect strategic data on the five knowledge areas of the call to identify core and transversal competences, including digital, technological and green adaptation skills. It will research existing programmes, identify gaps and propose capacity-building models and mechanisms for formal education and training (using the EQF and EQAVET frameworks), non-formal and informal learning, and professional mobility. It will carry out regional pilots to test and validate these approaches. It will analyse sectoral dynamics and map stakeholders. It will propose occupational task descriptors for occupational and economic frameworks.CHARTER will build a durable cultural heritage skills alliance in Europe by mainstreaming the project’s methodologies, outputs and outcomes, maximising their impact and creating multiplier effects at the European, national and regional levels, to enable Europe to sustainably protect, promote and enhance its tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

ECHOES aims to create the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) as a shared platform for heritage professionals and researchers to access data, innovative scientific and training resources and advanced digital tools co-developed by the heritage community according to their specific needs. ECHOES will bring together fragmented communities of the Cultural Heritage (CH) field, which consists of various actors from different sectors and disciplines, into a new community around the Digital Commons. Going beyond the strict focus on assets and the mere digitisation of Heritage, ECHOES intends to generate a visionary paradigm shift in the CH field. Adopting a holistic approach, ECHOES will also enable digitising the existing knowledge of Heritage objects, whether tangible or intangible. It will create a digital environment enabling collaborative analysis of CH assets, facts, and phenomena. In this environment, actors humans or Artificial Intelligence can develop their interpretations, thereby enriching the knowledge of CH and their surroundings. The digital environment proposed by ECHOES will empower users to interact with, manipulate and enrich Digital Twins, leading to new, jointly developed scientific knowledge. The ECCCH built by ECHOES is anchored in the principles of Open Access and Open Science. It thus promotes inclusion and democratises access to knowledge and digital assets, which are understood as public goods by and for all. This digital environment will allow the creation of a new generation of heritage objects, the Digital Commons, which are semantically rich and collectively produced we see this as the heritage of tomorrow. At the end of the project, ECHOES will deliver a single platform to integrate results of EU and national projects on CH. The ECCCH will be sustainable thanks to its inclusive legal entity, which will be created before the end of ECHOES.