Shared Heritage has officially launched its historical research and content curation phase, marking the first major step in building the project’s immersive and educational content base.
This phase explores the hidden and visible traces of Arab-European cultural interaction in everyday life, urban environments, and collective memory. From architecture and scientific exchange to artistic expression, music, and food traditions, the project team is documenting examples that show how shared heritage continues to shape contemporary Europe.
Project partners are currently working through public archives, museum references, and open cultural collections to identify practical, visually rich, and educationally meaningful cases. The work emphasizes clarity and accessibility, selecting narratives that can connect with young audiences while maintaining cultural depth and historical relevance.
Research and curation are structured across six thematic areas: architecture, science and knowledge, food and daily traditions, art and visual culture, music, and cultural life. This thematic map will support a balanced content ecosystem that reflects both historical complexity and present-day social relevance.
The curated material will become the foundation for the next public outputs of Shared Heritage. These include immersive VR/AR experiences, digital storytelling formats, interactive exhibition components, and youth-centered learning and engagement activities. In other words, the material developed in this phase will move directly into creative and educational production, rather than remaining in research-only form.
At its core, this work is about narrative choice: highlighting stories that promote inclusion, challenge reductive stereotypes, and make intercultural understanding tangible. As the process advances, the consortium will continue to share updates and insights from the field, showing how research is being translated into practical tools for cultural participation across communities.
