The IMPULSE project (IMmersive digitisation: uPcycling cULtural heritage towards new reviving StratEgies) addresses key challenges in digitisation, accessibility, and reuse of cultural heritage across Europe. It aims to create inclusive and sustainable strategies using immersive technologies like XR, VR, and MUVE, focusing on educational, artistic, and creative applications. By integrating cross-disciplinary approaches, IMPULSE promotes immersive storytelling, engaging underrepresented communities and fostering co-created hybrid experiences. A Community of Practice, hackathons, and mentoring hubs support collaboration between academia, cultural institutions, artists, and the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI), forming a human-centred ecosystem for immersive digitisation.
The project adopts an iterative, user-driven design process, with successive prototyping cycles rooted in agile and design-based methods. Work Package 1 lays the empirical and methodological foundation for creating impactful and accessible narratives.
Key objectives include expanding access to digitised heritage through XR, enabling diverse audiences to engage with cultural assets. Technological solutions are developed to improve interoperability, allowing seamless reuse of content across education, art, and industry. IMPULSE also works on standardising digitisation and metadata to ensure compatibility with emerging immersive platforms.
Legal and organisational challenges are addressed through assessments and prototype-based collaboration models, offering solutions for rights, licensing, and ownership in immersive environments. The project fosters community-building through engagement activities like the IMPULSE Hackathon, Mentoring Hub, and Community of Practice. By promoting innovative heritage use in virtual contexts, IMPULSE contributes to the goals of the European Green Deal and the 2030 Agenda, showcasing how digital technologies can transform education, art, and creative industries.
