MetaMind Innovations (MINDS) is pleased to announce its participation in MNEME – A Collaborative Memory Platform for Cultural Heritage, a new Horizon Europe Innovation Action that officially launched during its Kick-Off Meeting, held on 23-24 June 2026 at the Divani Palace Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
The two-day meeting brought together all consortium partners to initiate the project’s activities, align on the technical roadmap, discuss pilot requirements and establish the foundations for the collaboration over the next 30 months. As a consortium partner, MINDS actively participated in these first discussions, contributing to the official launch of the project.
Cultural heritage extends far beyond museum collections and archaeological sites. It also includes stories, memories, records and the connections that allow people to better understand Europe’s shared history. As cultural collections continue to become increasingly digital, institutions face important challenges regarding how this information can be documented, connected, preserved and made accessible to professionals, researchers and the wider public. These challenges are at the core of the MNEME project.
MNEME officially started on 1 June 2026 and will run until 30 November 2028. Funded by the European Union under Horizon Europe with an EU contribution of approximately €4 million, the project is coordinated by UBITECH and brings together 18 partners from Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Slovenia, Italy and France.
Within MNEME, MetaMind Innovations (MINDS) serves as the project’s Technical Coordinator, overseeing the technical coordination of the consortium and supporting the alignment of the project’s technical activities. In addition, MINDS leads the Stakeholder Engagement & Co-Design work package (WP2), ensuring that stakeholder needs are captured early and reflected throughout the development and validation of the MNEME platform.
The project is designed as a large-scale, user-driven validation of the Cultural Heritage Cloud being developed by ECHOES. Through real-world cultural heritage pilots, MNEME will test, extend and contribute to the wider European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH), providing interoperable workflows, tools and recommendations that support the future development of the ecosystem.
Over the course of the project, five pilot activities across Greece, Spain, Slovenia, Italy and France will demonstrate how digital technologies can help cultural heritage institutions improve documentation, enrich collections, support preservation activities and create new ways for people to discover and experience cultural heritage.
MNEME will combine a range of advanced digital technologies, including semantic interoperability, knowledge graphs, AI-assisted enrichment, 3D digitisation, augmented and virtual reality experiences, as well as FAIR data practices that promote digital information which is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. The project will also adopt an open-source approach for its software developments.
During the Kick-Off Meeting, partners discussed the project’s architecture, stakeholder engagement strategy, pilot planning, technical coordination, dissemination activities and long-term sustainability. Particular emphasis was placed on ensuring that the project’s future tools respond to the real needs of curators, researchers, cultural professionals, educators, local communities and visitors through co-design activities and pilot workshops.
Looking ahead, the consortium will begin its first phase of work, focusing on stakeholder engagement, requirements gathering and co-design activities that will support the development of the MNEME platform, its semantic framework and the validation of its pilot activities.
MINDS looks forward to contributing to this collaborative European initiative and working alongside the consortium to support innovative digital solutions that enhance the preservation, accessibility and long-term value of Europe’s cultural heritage.
MNEME has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under Grant Agreement No. 101285462.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
