ECHOES will feature in the ENCATC Congress Projects Showcase Session 2026 with a presentation entitled “A Community-Centred Path to a Sustainable Cultural Heritage Cloud”.

ENCATC Projects Showcase 2026 banner

The Showcase will take place as part of the ENCATC Congress in Nice, France, on the 23rd September 2026 under the theme “Artists and Cultural & Creative Professionals at the Centre: Rethinking Work, Policy, and Cultural Ecosystems“. The session offers a unique opportunity to present work to an international audience of educators, researchers, artists, cultural practitioners and policymakers, and to engage participants with the Cultural Heritage Cloud.

The presentation will be given jointly by Claudio Prandoni (ARIADNE) and Sophie Döppen (University of Antwerp) and is structured as follows:

  1. Why start from communities?A brief introduction explaining that the success of the ECCCH depends not only on the technical infrastructure, but also on whether heritage communities adopt it and integrate it into their daily practice.
  2. Understanding community needsThe consultation activities, including the survey, workshops and focus groups, and personas, explaining how ECHOES identified the different communities, explored their digital practices and literacy levels, and collected their expectations for the future Cloud. This part will conclude with the main needs that emerged, such as accessibility, interoperability, FAIR data, collaboration, trusted governance, capacity building and sustainable infrastructures.
  3. From expectations to evaluationA short transition making the link explicit: identifying users’ needs is only the first step. If ECHOES wants to build a user-centred infrastructure, we also need to understand how to evaluate, over time, whether those needs are actually being addressed.
  4. Assessing long-term sustainabilitySophie will introduce the ex-ante sustainability assessment and explain the methodology, including the literature review, AI-supported indicator scoping, Delphi process and expert focus groups, before presenting the proposed indicators and measurement framework.

Further information about the Congress and the Project Showcase Session.