ECHOES Cascading Grants Programme

This call encourages stakeholders in the Cultural Heritage Community to contribute datasets for use in the Cultural Heritage Cloud. Proposals should define the dataset’s intended user community, its purpose (e.g., research, education, virtual exhibitions), expected outcomes, and broader benefits. Additionally, proposers are asked to provide a scenario of how the project would like to make use of the Cultural Heritage Cloud. This should include a list of the possible steps needed to analyse and process the Cultural Heritage dataset. Finally, a detailed dataset description is required, covering content, technical specifications, ethical considerations, availability, and licensing. 

The ECHOES Cascading Grants Programme provides funding for consortia led by Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHIs) to engage with the Cultural Heritage Cloud. The programme supports up to 50 projects across three calls to enhance digital engagement, data sharing, and collaboration. Who can apply for funding:

• Any Cultural Heritage Institution (CHI) located in an eligible country under Horizon Europe (EU Member States and associated countries) can act as coordinator. Either alone or as lead partner of a consortium.
• Submissions by consortia and especially by interdisciplinary consortia (that include CHIs, researcher, small and medium-sized enterprises, civil society actors, etc.) are encouraged. All partners in the consortium receiving funding should be located in an eligible country under Horizon Europe.
• Smaller and medium-sized or lesser resourced CHIs are especially encouraged to apply.

Key focus areas of the three calls:

• Call 1: Data – Projects that contribute heritage data to the Cultural Heritage Cloud and would like to make use of its tools and infrastructure.
• Call 2: Engagement and Collaboration – Initiatives that promote digital skills, awareness, and collaboration with CHIs. Projects that strategically enlist professional umbrella organisations to promote the benefits of the cloud at the sector level to the different CH communities would be particularly welcomed.
• Call 3: Data and Vertical Applications – Projects that contribute new datasets to the Cultural Heritage Cloud or develop applications that integrate with enhance its functionalities.

Objectives of Call 1: Data

This call aims to stimulate various stakeholders within the broader Cultural Heritage Community to contribute data to be used for different aspects of the Cultural Heritage Cloud. The proposal should outline the use scenario for the dataset: which community (or communities) will use this dataset? What will they use it for? (e.g. to facilitate academic research, enhance educational materials, enable virtual exhibitions etc.) What is the expected outcome at the end of the project? How will the results of the project benefit the wider Cultural Heritage community? To this end, various steps may need to be required to contribute this data to the Cultural Heritage Cloud, however making the data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) for a concrete use case, is the most important principle. Secondly, proposers are asked to provide a scenario of how the project would like to make use of the Cultural Heritage Cloud. This should include a list of the possible steps needed to analyse and process the Cultural Heritage dataset. These steps will be guided by the interoperability guidelines and integration strategy of ECHOES, as published online. Finally, proposers should describe the cultural heritage dataset in detail. In principle, any type of digital cultural heritage data can be submitted. However, it is crucial to make clear what is the data used as input for the project and what is delivered as output of the project. This may be new derived data, or the same data available with improved metadata through a more accessible repository. Various dimensions need to be considered when describing the dataset including:

• Content (e.g. archaeological finds, archival documents, manuscripts, newspapers, monuments, music, web archives, analytical data, social media data etc.) including details about time period, geographical coverage and subject matter etc. Any ethical considerations related to the dataset (see, e.g. CARE Principles) should be described.
• Technical details including but not necessarily limited to:
  • data type (e.g. digitised, born-digital heritage, intangible heritage),
  • size (e.g. estimated number of files / objects per dataset),
  • volume (e.g. in MB or GB), file formats (e.g. jpeg, tiff, xml, warc, svg, text etc.)
  • metadata formats to describe the data, including availability and quality of metadata,
  • vocabulary(-ies), ontology(-ies) or schemas used in producing the data descriptions,
  • possibility of the dataset to be used for training AI models, e.g., availability of labels.
• Availability and licensing: availability of the data (in a repository, through an API, metadata via OAI-PMH, etc.) and licensing and IPR issues, the licence (e.g. https:// rightsstatements.org/) under which data is made available, etc.

STAGE 1: Eligibility and relevance to the call

Applicants are required to submit:

• A concept note explaining the project’s objectives, proposed dataset and methodology, anticipated impact, and alignment with Cultural Heritage Cloud, team composition and expertise.
• Administrative details to assess the eligibility of each participant.
• The budget overview.

During this stage, applications will be reviewed for eligibility and relevance to the call. Proposals will be assessed based on their alignment with the respective funding call, sustainability considerations, and potential long-term impact. In the first call, twenty-four successful applicants from Stage 1 will be invited to submit a full proposal in Stage 2.

STAGE 2: Full Proposal Submission

Applicants advancing to Stage 2 will need to submit a comprehensive proposal (maximum 5,000 words).

The submission platform will be available starting from April 2025.

External evaluation of Stage 1 proposals: July 2025

Stage 2 deadline for full proposals: September 2025

Communication of results to applicants: Until mid-October 2025

Indicative project starting date: December 2025 / January 2026