Innovative Use Cases: European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage Programme

Deadline: 16-Sep-25

The European Commission (EC) has launched the Innovative Use Cases: European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage Programme.

Scope

• This topic aims at implementing real use cases and carrying out demanding end-to-end testing of the platform and its tools, in order to verify its capabilities and improve the ECCCH.
• The activities carried out should focus on concrete use cases, undertaken by the participating institutions, professionals and researchers with a view to improve their results or work processes.
• The activities carried out should make use of several of the key features of the ECCCH, including the user tools implemented on it. Such key features may include use of the advanced digital twins, of the large-scale cooperation and co-creation features, of the digital continuum or of the advanced features for commercial cooperation with, for example, cultural and creative industries. Activities carried out may also focus on the seamless interconnection of the ECCCH with other related platforms such as the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage and the European Open Science Cloud. Proposals should outline a focus of the planned activities that best achieve the expected outcomes, which may include some of the aspects mentioned.
• Activities should involve a wide range of different organisations from across Europe, in accordance with the focus chosen. Entities from at least five different Member States or Associated Countries should be involved as active users of the ECCCH platform. Also, entities of different characteristics should be involved, such as small and large organisations, from different subsectors/areas of activity or scientific disciplines, etc.
• The activities carried out and the results generated should be properly documented so as to serve as a good base for improvements or corrections of the platform and/or of the user tools implemented on it, and also for communicating innovative uses of the ECCCH. Contributions should be made to extend the user base of the ECCCH by promoting use cases and outreach activities, possibly together with or coordinated with other ECCCH projects.

Funding Information

• The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
  • public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
  • cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (low value grant).

Eligible Activities

• The following activities are generally eligible for grants under Horizon Europe:
  • Research and innovation actions (RIA) — Activities that aim primarily to establish new knowledge or to explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution. This may include basic and applied research, technology development and integration, testing, demonstration and validation of a small-scale prototype in a laboratory or simulated environment.
  • Innovation actions (IA) — Activities that aim directly to produce plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services. These activities may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication.
  • Coordination and support actions (CSA) — Activities that contribute to the objectives of Horizon Europe. This excludes research and innovation (R&I) activities, except those carried out under the ‘Widening participation and spreading excellence’ component of the programme (part of ‘Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area’). Also eligible are bottom-up coordination actions which promote cooperation between legal entities from Member States and Associated Countries to strengthen the European Research Area, and which receive no EU co-funding for research activities.
  • Programme co-fund actions (CoFund) — A programme of activities established or implemented by legal entities managing or funding R&I programmes, other than EU funding bodies. Such a programme of activities may support: networking and coordination; research; innovation; pilot actions; innovation and market deployment; training and mobility; awareness raising and communication; and dissemination and exploitation.
  • Innovation and market deployment actions (IMDA) — Activities that embed an innovation action and other activities necessary to deploy an innovation on the market. This includes the scaling-up of companies and Horizon Europe blended finance.

Expected Outcomes

• Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
  • Findings from thorough end-to-end testing based on real use cases contribute to a seamlessly working, user-friendly, inclusive and powerful European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH).
  • By documenting and communicating the use cases deployed, a wide collection of innovative uses of the ECCCH is elaborated, which contributes to exemplify and illustrate its benefits and attract new users and user groups.
  • By identifying and implementing improvements and engaging with users, significant contributions are made for the ECCCH to be widely used by European cultural heritage professionals and researchers, enabling new ways to interact, cooperate and co-create, thus supporting the generation of new knowledge and opening of new research paradigms.

Eligibility Criteria

• Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from no associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
• A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
• Specific cases: 
  • Affiliated entities – Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.
  • Associated partners – (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any specific call/topic conditions.
  • Entities without legal personality – Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
  • EU bodies – Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
• To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
  • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
    • Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
  • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
    • Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
  • countries associated to Horizon Europe:
    • Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

For more information, visit EC.