The UNICHE Project
UNICHE is a European initiative dedicated to transforming how cultural heritage is created, shared, and experienced. At its core, the project empowers museums, researchers, creatives, and cultural organisations to design immersive and interactive experiences—without technical barriers.
Built as a no-code, collaborative platform, UNICHE brings together powerful tools for authoring, deploying, and evaluating cultural experiences across physical, digital, and hybrid environments. From AR/VR storytelling to digital twins and virtual exhibitions, the platform makes advanced technologies accessible to institutions of all sizes, including those with limited resources.
UNICHE is fully aligned with the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH), enabling seamless access to high-quality cultural assets and supporting interoperability with Europe’s digital heritage ecosystem. By combining AI-assisted content creation, intuitive design tools, and integrated visitor analytics, UNICHE helps organisations produce richer, more engaging experiences while understanding their impact.
The project’s approach is validated through real-world pilot deployments in archaeological sites, museum spaces, and portable exhibitions—demonstrating UNICHE’s versatility and ability to enhance cultural storytelling across diverse contexts.
UNICHE ultimately aims to bridge the digital divide in culture, empower non-experts, and open new pathways for participation, learning, and creativity across Europe’s cultural heritage landscape.
Project Partners
Meet the UNICHE Consortium
The UNICHE project brings together a diverse and highly experienced consortium of cultural institutions, research organisations, technology innovators, and creative industry experts from across Europe. Each partner contributes unique strengths—from advanced AI and immersive technologies to curatorial expertise, heritage management, and user-centred design. Working collaboratively, this multidisciplinary team ensures that UNICHE is grounded in real cultural needs, powered by cutting-edge innovation, and capable of delivering meaningful impact across the entire cultural heritage ecosystem.
Project Coordinator
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Uni Systems will coordinate the project implementation by providing all managerial services and capacity required. Moreover, it will participate in tasks involving software integration, and will guide the exploitation efforts of the consortium by promoting project results to the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) market.
Consortium Members
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Athena Research and Innovation Center plays a pivotal role in the UNICHE project, leveraging its technical expertise and leadership capabilities to drive key activities, particularly in technical management and the coordination of scientific outputs. ARC’s competencies, through the Narralive team and the Culture and Creative Industries Department of the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP) of Xanthi, include extensive, robust technical expertise in the project's subject matter, and a proven ability to translate research outcomes into tangible prototypes and solutions. Their contributions extend beyond management to include active participation in the development and testing phases, particularly in WPs related to R&D, prototype development, and validation. By combining strategic oversight with hands-on involvement, ARC ensures that the project's outputs are both innovative and practically applicable, positioning the consortium for impactful dissemination and exploitation of results. -
Miastopracownia is a design and research architectural studio based in Poland, experienced in exhibition design and collaboration with cultural institutions. The studio specialises in participatory and universal design, including projects incorporating gender perspectives, and has worked on spatial installations and VR environment modeling. Miastopracownia is responsible for Portable Exhibitions Pilot Deployment & Evaluation, carried out in collaboration with the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław. -
FundingBox Accelerator, as part of the FundingBox Group, will manage the Open Call to select Third Parties as beta testers, as well as the legal and financial follow-up of subgrantees. Also, Affiliated Entity FundingBox Communities (part of the same group) will contribute to the Communication & Dissemination strategy of the project, both to properly communicate the open call and disseminate its results and success stories, as well as clustering with relevant initiatives across Europe. -
Mobics has experience in integrating different technologies (hardware/software) for interactive user applications in the culture and tourism sectors. Mobics will participate in the development of mobile and MR applications as well as the integration of them with the authoring environment. -
IN2 designs, builds, and operates AI-powered web-based and scalable solutions that simplify how businesses and people collect, organise, discover, and present digital content. IN2 will bring to the project the know-how in AI applied to the cultural content data value chain. Moreover, IN2 has a strong track record in collaborative R&D projects, especially in the cultural heritage domain where the company coordinated several projects related to Europeana and the data space for cultural heritage. Thus, IN2 will lead the communication and dissemination WP, focusing on the broad dissemination of the results to the cultural heritage community. Being a member of the AI/VR Industrial Coalition and NEM, IN2 will help disseminate the technological results of UNICHE among industry and researchers from other domains. As an active member of the Europeana Network Association, data space for cultural heritage, and 3D-4CH competence center, IN2 will disseminate the results to relevant cultural heritage professionals. -
Leopoly is one of the leading EU companies in the 3D and XR software development industry. Their technologies redefine AR/VR/3D education/visualisation and presentation/training solutions, combining versatility, ease of use, and expertise across various XR platforms from HMD headsets (Head Mounted Displays) to glasses-free XR-screens with 3D styluses. Leopoly will lead the XR-based collaborative exhibition design component and the Immersive Virtual Reality application development parts, and of course participate from the specification creation through the establishment of the software architectural principles to the dissemination and exploitation of the UNICHE project. -
German Archaeological Institute - as a leading organization in archaeological research and fieldwork, the DAI Athens will contribute primary scholarly content and archaeological expertise. It will provide specific case studies to test the application as part of the user requirements and piloting activities of the project for open-air archaeological sites. The focus will be on the sanctuary at Kalapodi, a site with a remarkable sequence of temple buildings from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman period with a rich assortment of finds assemblages and discoveries. This content will be combined with relevant finds on display in museums and special exhibitions, as well as additional content from secondary (including archival) sources and existing bibliography. In addition, we will test how other components, such as the history of archaeological work, relevant stories by contemporary local communities, aspects of the natural environment and the surrounding landscape can be meaningfully integrated and/or recreated in the interactive experience. This combination of multiple sources and examples of archaeological material is meant to provide a complex sounding board for testing the key features and functionality of the tool against the diverse and demanding expectations of end users. -
The Museum of Architecture is a local government cultural institution organised by the Municipality of Wroclaw, Poland. It is the only architecture museum in Poland. It is located in a 15th-century post-Bernardine set of buildings, including the St Bernardine of Sienna Church and a monastic quadrangle with a garden. The museum's collections illustrate the evolution of architecture, through permanent and periodic exhibitions and events. The Museum of Architecture is a founding member of the International Confederation of Architectural Museums (ICAM). The Museum of Architecture will collaborate with Miastopracownia on the UNICHE portable exhibition. -
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche will ensure the compliance and technical alignment of the platform that will be developed to the ECCCH of, in order to achieve full integration and compliance with the cloud architecture and standards. CNR will be active in shaping the user requirements of the platform by defining the scope of the use cases of the project. CNR will also contribute with its interdisciplinary expertise in heritage science for pilots deployment and evaluation with one use case based on Open-air archeological sites. In this use case, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) solutions for on-site archaeological visits will be developed through mobile devices in order to provide visitors with a deeper understanding of Messapian city walls in Ugento (Lecce, Italy). -
Museo Galileo - Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza is one of the leading international institutions in the History of Science, combining a well-known museum of scientific instruments and an institute dedicated to research, documentation, and dissemination of the history of science in the broadest senses. The Museum is equipped with a rich specialised library containing antique and modern books, a digital library, an iconographic archive, and a publishing house. Museo Galileo also hosts an advanced IT and multimedia department that uses innovative methodologies and standards to improve access to its digital resources. Museo Galileo will participate in the user requirements and piloting activities of the project.
Affiliated Partners
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Museotek, an affiliate company of UNISYSTEMS, specializes in the design and implementation of innovative digital and phygital solutions for cultural and educational institutions. The company develops interactive platforms, digital applications, and hybrid tools that enhance audience engagement in learning experiences. Within the framework of the UNICHE project, Museotek will deliver the MuseotekBox, a portable digital museum kit designed for game-based learning experiences, which connects wirelessly to the MuseotekBox platform. By enabling multimedia responses to physical interactions with tactile objects, the MuseotekBox promotes accessibility, inclusion, and active participation, addressing diverse learning needs.