This October, Helmsdale hosted leading researchers, artists, and cultural organisations from across Europe as part of HERITALISE, a major Horizon Europe project exploring the future of digital heritage and rethinking the role of heritage in today’s digital challenges. Through collaborative research, pilots, and cross-sector dialogue, HERITALISE aims to co-create new pathways that bridge the past with the future, making heritage more relevant, accessible, and impactful.

While the consortium gathers in Helmsdale for three days of working sessions, on the 8th and 9th of October Timespan hosted a free public programme of talks, a field visit to the Flow Country UNESCO World Heritage Site, and an evening of food and music. These events invited local communities and visitors to join the conversation and experience how heritage can be mobilised for truth-telling, climate justice, and collective imagination.

The General Assembly
Timespan was honoured to host leading researchers and cultural organisations from across Europe in Helmsdale for the HERITALISE General Assembly — a major milestone in this Horizon Europe project exploring the future of digital heritage. “Digital tools are transforming how museums engage with the climate crisis, enabling communities to preserve and share their stories through new, inclusive technologies,” said Jacquie Aitken, Digital & Heritage Curator at Timespan.

Over three days of working sessions, the consortium gathered to share progress and align strategies for developing advanced tools to digitise, visualise, and share cultural heritage through the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage.

By hosting HERITALISE in Helmsdale, Timespan brought international digital research into dialogue with local histories, landscapes, and communities, demonstrating how a small rural museum can play a leading role in shaping European conversations around decolonisation, climate justice, and heritage preservation. “Hosting the HERITALISE partners in Helmsdale was an opportunity to share our vision of heritage as a living, collective resource,” said Giulia Gregnanin Director and Curator of Timespan.

For over a decade, Timespan has been a leader in digital innovation, collaborating with the University of St Andrews Open Virtual Worlds team on projects such as CINE and PHIVE, which pioneered sustainable and immersive heritage exhibits across the Highlands.

The HERITALISE project and the General Assembly are funded by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s flagship research and innovation programme — one of the world’s most competitive funding schemes, supporting international excellence and impact.

🎥 Watch the official HERITALISE video here: https://lnkd.in/d2H9UBte

Public Programme

Decolonising the Heritage with Dr. Cat Dunn
A huge thank you to Dr Cat Dunn for her powerful and generous talk, “Empty Glens, Crowded Plantations: Decolonising Heritage through Curatorial Practice, Material Memory, and Embodied Knowledge.” Dr Dunn illuminated the deep entanglements between Scottish wealth, slavery, and displacement, tracing how profits from Caribbean plantations funded acts of dispossession at home, such as the Highland Clearances.

Through her research and curatorial lens, her talk invited us to consider how these histories remain embedded in our landscapes and institutions today, and how curatorial practice can become a tool for repair, resistance, and reimagining belonging.

Friends of Timespan Barbeque and Live Music
Our wonderful Friends of Timespan – our dedicated group of volunteers who fundraise tirelessly to support Timespan – organised such a delicious barbecue and joyful music night to welcome the HERITALISE Conference delegates.

The evening was filled with laughter, dancing, and community spirit, brought to life by April Sutherland and Ruairidh Gollan. Their ceilidh tunes and traditional songs carried everyone onto the dance floor, from first-timers to seasoned dancers alike.

Forsinard Flow Country visit
Partners had the opportunity to visit the Flow Country — the largest expanse of blanket bog in Europe and one of the planet’s most effective carbon stores.

Stretching across Caithness and Sutherland, this vast and seemingly empty landscape is in fact a living archive of ecological memory — layer upon layer of mosses, water, and peat that have quietly sequestered carbon for over 10,000 years.

The visit offered an extraordinary opportunity to experience the fragile ecosystems of the Flow Country and to reflect on how heritage practice can support environmental care and climate justice. As a project, HERITALISE is exploring how digital technologies can help document, interpret, and share this unique habitat — connecting cultural and ecological heritage through collaborative innovation.

Arts & Heritage Towards Climate Justice with Sue Jane Taylor
A heartfelt thank you to Sue Jane Taylor for her generous and moving talk,
“Metal Islands Out at Sea.” Sue Jane drew on over forty years of artistic research within the North Sea oil industry and its transition to renewable energy — sharing a deeply personal and incisive reflection on the intersections between art, labour, environment, and industry.

Her talk offered a rare and intimate insight into the lived experiences of offshore workers and the shifting material and emotional landscapes of energy extraction. Through her work, Sue Jane invites us to consider how art can document and humanise these vast industrial transformations.

Grounded in drawing and field research, Sue Jane’s practice traces the human stories and infrastructures that shape our shared environment. Her sustained engagement with the North Sea reminds us how art and heritage can hold space for complex conversations about energy, responsibility, and climate justice — and how creative practice can help us imagine more sustainable futures.

HERITALISE at Timespan

HERITALISE is a multi-year European collaboration developing advanced tools for digitising, visualising, and sharing cultural heritage through the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage. Timespan, as one of the project’s pilot partners, is at the centre of this international collaboration to develop new tools for digitising, preserving, and sharing cultural heritage. By hosting the consortium in Helmsdale, Timespan brings international digital research into dialogue with local histories, landscapes, objects and communities, and shares its holistic approach to art, heritage, ecology, and civic action. 

Museums are experiencing an exciting transformation as digital tools become increasingly accessible. The digital reconstruction of vulnerable heritage landscapes and objects provides communities and visitors with unique opportunities to engage with the climate crisis through a multiplicity of voices and stories. This approach offers a meaningful way to understand and preserve intangible cultural heritage, including oral histories, situated community knowledge, and global perspectives.

Jacquie Aitken, Digital & Heritage Curator, Timespan

For over ten years, Timespan has been a leader in digital innovation in collaboration with the University of St Andrews Open Virtual Worlds team. Together, they have created sustainable and immersive museum exhibits as part of the Northern Periphery projects, which include Connected Culture and Natural Heritage in a Northern Environment (CINE) and Promoting Heritage in a Digital Environment (PHIVE). This successful partnership is at the forefront of heritage digitisation in the Highlands and across Scotland, and HERITLAISE creates new opportunities to involve communities and the museum sector in the latest digital tools and experiences.

Hosting the HERITALISE partners in Helmsdale is an opportunity to share our vision of heritage as a living, collective resource. By opening the doors of this meeting to our communities, we show how a rural museum can play a central role in shaping European debates on decolonisation, climate justice, and heritage preservation through digital technologies.

Giulia Gregnanin, Director and Curator, Timespan

The event and HERITALISE are funded by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s flagship research and one of the largest and most competitive funding schemes in the world. Their support of the consortium attests to the project’s international significance, innovation, and excellence.

The programme is developed in collaboration with