Experts Workshop for the creation of Dive into Heritage digital platform

With the support of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a first online workshop on the future UNESCO’s Dive into Heritage platform entitled “Expert Workshop on the Dive into Heritage platform’s scientific content” was organised by UNESCO on the 12^th and 13^th of July 2022.

UNESCO is working on the creation of a new web tool “Dive into Heritage,” a comprehensive platform that will host digital data of World Heritage sites and their related intangible heritage for protection, monitoring and promotion purposes. The project will be focusing on the Arab region as a pilot phase and shall be extended to other regions at a later stage.

The experts workshop held online gathered about 50 experts from different institutions, organisations and UNESCO’s partners in the field of digital data.  All the participating experts involved in cultural and or natural digital heritage projects and initiatives around the world contributed substantially during this first workshop to launch the reflection on the future Dive into Heritage platform and provided UNESCO with important recommendations based on their expertise and previous experiences.

The workshop included presentations from leading institutions and professionals in the field of digital heritage data acquisition, management and presentation to the public. These interventions were followed by intense and constructive discussions on the added value of the future Dive into Heritage platform, its scientific content and format of data as well as targeted audiences.

The discussion sessions answered a number of questions that were identified as crucial for the project to undertake a participatory approach in defining the next steps and their implementation. The workshop addressed the issue of using digital heritage data of different types and formats, coming from several providers and sources as the platform will have to use existing material to not duplicate projects and efforts. In order to present harmonized final products and be visually appealing especially for the youth - Dive into Heritage will have to be adaptable to certain data types and interoperable to other existing projects and platforms.  The open accessibility of the platform was also highlighted as an important aspect of the future Dive into Heritage together with a simplified use for the general public and other more specialised audiences. The discussions also addressed the issue of data fragmentation and update as well as the need to build a mechanism for the platform that will ensure its sustainability and efficient management by UNESCO.

All participants pointed out the important need to schedule a capacity building programme within the framework of the Dive into Heritage platform’s project. It was highlighted that by many aspects, training youth on digital technologies will be closely linked to ensuring the sustainability of the new platform. 

This experts workshop was part of the reflection that is being conducted by UNESCO to enhance the implementation of the project Dive into Heritage. UNESCO will continue working on this reflection with its partners by implementing other activities as a follow-up to this first Experts Workshop.