SHIFT project uses tech to create accessible, inclusive and appealing cultural heritage

SHIFT (MetamorphoSis of cultural Heritage Into augmented hypermedia assets. For enhanced accessibiliTy and inclusion) is a three-year project funded by Horizon Europe which began in October 2022. It aims to provide European heritage institutions and businesses with a series of toolkits that use advances in technologies such as AI and Machine Learning to make cultural heritage more inclusive, accessible and appealing for all. Museums, libraries, universities and research centres, tech-centred business and educational non-profits make up the consortium working on SHIFT.

The project hopes to safeguard and preserve Europe’s heritage by applying its results in cultural heritage institutions and settings and integrating them with major European initiatives in the sector such as the Cultural Heritage Cloud. Find out more in the video below!

AI Powered Toolkits

SHIFT will enrich the public experience of interacting with cultural heritage using a series of tools grouped within themed toolkits. These include a visual toolkit that will transcribe cultural heritage content automatically using AI and an auditory toolkit that will deliver an emotional response to the audience.

What does this mean in practice? A few months ago, the auditory toolkit team (headed by AUDEERING) provided an example of this work using a Text-to-Speech tool (TTS). The TTS transcribed heritage videos provided by partners in Romanian and Serbian and then automatically revoiced them in English with emotional affect, moving away from the stilted automatic voices of the past. Improvements are constantly being made to this tool but you can watch a taster of the pilot version on the SHIFT YouTube channel.

A haptics toolkit developed by FORTH, Greece’s largest research centre, will allow users to interact using also their sense of touch to explore 3D and 2D objects in museums and other cultural settings. A haptic glove will enable sensory feedback in this novel approach. In this video you can check out an early version of the haptics tool.

The project outputs will also include an Intellectual Property Rights toolkit designed to protect native content by adopting international copyright and digital protection of derivative copyrights. This will be shared in the coming months.

Coming up next

To ensure we deliver the right tools, team SHIFT has launched an extensive set of workshops, focus groups and use cases to assess user requirements and test solutions across partner sites in the museums and libraries of Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Serbia. The project is now focused on integrating this feedback to develop more inclusive and accessible technology solutions for all users of museums and libraries. Soon the first results of this work will be trialled in a number of exhibitions hosted across the partner sites.

Meanwhile, a policy brief produced by SHIFT and the other five projects (MuseIT, PERCEIVE, MEMORISE, PREMIERE, and MEMENTOES) that make up the EU-funded cluster for advanced technologies in cultural heritage is currently being finalised and will be published in the coming weeks.

Get involved

Visit the SHIFT project website to find out more, sign up to our newsletter and discover opportunities to contribute to the development of our tools and toolkits by subscribing. We welcome your views and feedback on SHIFT as results appear on our website!