Horizon Europe · Proposal under evaluation
AI tools for ethical, living-heritage, inclusive and economically viable creative work practice — under human control, and affordable enough to keep running.
ATELIER helps smaller cultural and creative organisations use artificial intelligence in their everyday professional work, without losing control of their sources, their rights or their professional judgement. Each recurring task is described and its steps recorded; authorised sources and permissions are registered; and a named professional approves every result before it is used or published. That person may correct it, reject it, or fall back on the manual method.
The project is carried out by a European consortium of ten organisations from seven countries, coordinated by INOVA+ (Portugal), bringing together cultural operators, research centres and innovation intermediaries. It tests these methods in four real pilots, then opens its tools to twenty organisations outside the consortium, selected through open calls in two waves.
Traceable self-guided visitor experiences on olive heritage, then on the mastic heritage of Chios.
Cultural offers, workshops and stays prepared from approved evidence, at Saint-Pierre Abbey.
Documenting gesture and process in four workshops across at least three countries.
Vocal transmission, manuscript to performance, multilingual surtitling, recordings and editions.
ATELIER was submitted to Horizon Europe (Cluster 2, Culture, creativity and inclusive society) in September 2026 and is under evaluation. What follows describes the commitments foreseen should the project be selected.
Saint-Pierre Abbey is one of the project’s four testing grounds: the one for cultural services in a rural setting. The Conservatoire tests, in real operating conditions, the preparation of programmes, workshops and cultural stays from approved sources, and measures the effort saved, the professional quality obtained and the cost of running the service.
For its own pilot, the Conservatoire sets the authorised sources, the rights attached to them, the people entitled to approve, and the manual fallback. No content produced with the help of a tool is published without a professional’s approval, and no model may approve its own output. This is Mabillon’s rule applied to digital work.
The Conservatoire is the partner that contracts with the organisations selected through the project’s open calls, pays their grants in instalments and keeps the financial record. Selection is the business of other partners and of independent external evaluators.
The Conservatoire tests whether a small cultural operator in a rural setting can, with AI-supported workflows kept under professional control, prepare the offers that sustain it with less effort and without loss of quality or accuracy. The pilot brings together what makes the life of the house: heritage, workshops, hospitality and a regular cultural programme.
Turning approved documentation — history, plans, the knowledge of the workshops, photographs — into cultural offers and the material that presents them, in several languages, each approved before publication.
Configuring stays, workshops and programmes that account for availability, spaces, staff, capacity and price.
Preparation time, corrections and rework, time to an approved and published offer, delivery feasibility, enquiries and bookings, and total cost of ownership.
Transferring the method to another comparable rural cultural operator, and deciding on the evidence whether to continue, adapt or stop.
Should the project be selected, two successive open calls will allow European cultural and creative organisations from outside the consortium to test ATELIER’s workflows in their own operations, with a grant and with support.
| Step | Who is responsible |
|---|---|
| Publication of the calls, open for at least two months, on the European Commission’s Funding & Tenders Portal, the project website and the partners’ websites | Project coordinator and partners |
| Eligibility check | Project coordinator |
| Assessment of every admissible proposal by at least two independent external evaluators, against published criteria | Independent evaluators |
| Award decision, applying the published portfolio rules | Selection committee free of conflicts of interest |
| Grant agreements, payment in instalments, monitoring and, where required, recovery | Conservatoire du Patrimoine des Abbayes |
| Publication of the results: recipients, countries, subject and amount | Consortium |
The Conservatoire takes no part in scoring or ranking applications. Staff who help applicants are kept away from every decision, and each recusal is recorded.
Seven organisations. Publication foreseen during the project’s first year, should it be selected.
Thirteen organisations, working with the tools as revised after the first wave.
Legal entities established in the European Union or a country associated to Horizon Europe, which themselves run the process being tested with their own professional staff: museums, archives, crafts, audiovisual, video games, design, publishing, music, performing arts, architecture and more.
The calls, their criteria and their results will be published on this page.
Every payment is authorised by two separate people: the finance officer and a second, separately authorised approver.
Financial control is the responsibility of a chartered accountant and statutory auditor.
Funds intended for third parties are tracked in separate accounts, with an audit file for each recipient.
Each grant is paid in three instalments, and only once the agreed steps have been accepted; amounts not justified are withheld or recovered.
No grant agreement is signed before the corresponding funds are available and set aside.
The Conservatoire and the recipients accept checks and audits by the European Commission, OLAF, the European Court of Auditors and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
These arrangements sit within the Conservatoire’s general management framework, set out on the Governance and transparency page.
Innovation management, adoption, market validation, governance of the open calls and exploitation.
inova.businessProcess and knowledge modelling, semantics, and interoperability with European cultural heritage data.
forth.gr · Institute of Computer ScienceA network of nine museums, with archives and library; the museum pilot.
piop.grA European crafts network in more than twenty countries; the crafts pilot, mobilisation and training.
europeancraftsalliance.orgApplied artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, accessibility; the comparative evaluation method.
hslu.chThe rural cultural-services pilot; administration of the financial support to third parties.
This websiteEarly music: manuscripts, editions, touring, training and recordings; the performing-arts pilot.
organumcirma.comEngineering, deployment, security and operation of the project’s software environment.
supercomputers.skCreative-industry ecosystem, EIT Culture & Creativity; outreach beyond heritage.
cike.sk
