Cultural Heritage in Virtual Worlds
Working Group
Exploring how cultural heritage can be represented, preserved and experienced in Virtual Worlds.
For VWA members who want to contribute.
About the group
This Working Group brings together heritage institutions, research organisations, universities and technology providers to advance authentic, accessible and context-rich digital heritage.
Its work connects cultural heritage with interoperability, data spaces, immersive technologies, AI, authoring and experience design, while supporting European priorities on data sovereignty, sustainability and digital transformation.
What we're working towards
Heritage with contex
- Heritage with context
Promote accessible, knowledge-driven representations of tangible and intangible heritage, with the documentation, context and provenance they need. - Standards for lasting access
Advance open standards and interoperability for 3D assets, metadata and paradata, supporting preservation, portability and reuse across platforms, and provenance-tracked capture and processing from sensor to dataset. - Responsible digital heritage
Address intellectual property, ethics, ownership, authenticity, trust and data sovereignty to support responsible reuse. - Cross-sector collaboration
Connect heritage institutions, technology providers, universities, research organisations and creative actors to explore meaningful authoring and experience design. - A voice in European priorities
Provide input to VWA's Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), policy dialogue, standardisation and relevant EU consultations. - Trustworthy AI in heritage
Promote transparent and accountable AI in heritage, ensuring that AI-generated content and AI-assisted reconstructions clearly distinguish documented evidence from inference and communicate uncertainty, drawing on the London Charter and Seville Principles. Address biases affecting underrepresented heritage and communities, and ensure human oversight and accountability for AI outputs.
Leadership
Chair
Anthony Cassar
Heritage Malta
Co-Chair
Georgios Toubekis
Fraunhofer FIT
Board liaison
Spiros Nikolopoulos
VWA Board of Directors
Member organisations
Expected outputs
Results & publications
Contributed to the revision of the SRIA’s Culture & Arts section, bringing cultural heritage priorities into the development of the revised Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.
Outputs and publications will be added here as the Working Group progresses.