N-RICH Prototype

The National Research Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage (N-RICH) Prototype is a two-year investment in the UK’s world-renowned cultural heritage collections, funded through a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure Fund Preliminary Activity grant awarded to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and delivered by the Towards a National Collection (TaNC) programme in collaboration with AHRC. 

 

Its core aim is to reduce investment risk and build the evidence base for a full National Research Infrastructure by testing whether UK cultural heritage data can be created, connected, accessed, analysed and reused at scale.

 

The N-RICH project prototypes digital infrastructure components, digitisation methods and shared research environments. It tests scalable approaches to digitisation, metadata creation, AI-enabled data augmentation, interoperability, governance and service design. It examines the costs, risks, ethical frameworks, impacts and benefits of a future infrastructure, while exploring technical development and institutional practice across the cultural heritage sector.

The vision for a National Research Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage

Towards a National Collection, in collaboration with AHRC, are working with a range of partners and stakeholders to shape the future of a UK-wide digital collections research infrastructure. The shared vision for a National Research Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage (N-RICH) is to unlock and realise the untapped research, innovation, and economic potential of UK cultural heritage collections. By creating the necessary facilities, digital infrastructure, and digitisation capability, N-RICH will create an inclusive, unified, accessible, interoperable, and sustainable UK digital collection, benefiting researchers, stakeholders and communities of interest. If the full infrastructure is funded, it will reposition cultural heritage data as a critical asset for fostering innovation and developing skills in AI, while also mitigating data vulnerability to security and preservation threats. 

Our objectives are to:

  • Build a sustainable, ethical, and secure digital infrastructure for cultural heritage collections
  • Enable cross-disciplinary research through interoperable, connected collections
  • Embed cultural heritage within the UK’s wider digital research ecosystems
  • Manage copyright, IP and licencing of data in partnership with cultural heritage collections
  • Provide inclusive access and engagement across diverse audiences and regions
  • Harness new technologies to support the use of cultural heritage collections for innovation and growth

N-RICH is being developed to be part of a dynamic portfolio of high-impact infrastructures delivered by the AHRC, alongside DiSSCo, RICHeS and CoSTAR, all offering exciting opportunities for research innovation and economic growth. N-RICH will collaborate with the Museum Data Service and the Creative Content Exchange, the latter recently announced in the Creative Industries Sector Plan.

Building on the success of Towards a National Collection 

Towards a National Collection started with a UK-wide research and development programme, funded through UKRI’s Strategic Priorities Fund and delivered by the AHRC. This five-year initiative concluded in March 2025 and has laid the essential groundwork for the N-RICH Prototype. TaNC investigated the technical, process and content barriers and opportunities of the use of the UK’s digital cultural heritage assets for research and innovation. 

In 2024, TaNC published policy recommendations Unlocking the Potential of Digital Collections. A call to action, which were followed by a set of related open-access training materials. These recommendations were produced collaboratively with and supported by 50 cultural heritage, research and technology organisations and describe a ten-part approach to digitisation under best-practice technical conditions for creating a unified UK digital collection, ready for future digital innovations. 

Why it matters and who it connects 

N-RICH matters because the UK’s cultural heritage collections hold major untapped research, social and economic value, but much of this potential remains difficult to access or use computationally. The prototype responds urgently to the need for sustainable, ethical and secure digital infrastructure that can support research, innovation, AI readiness and long-term sector resilience.


N-RICH connects cultural heritage organisations, researchers, technical specialists, policy and funding bodies, digital innovation communities, commercial and R&D sectors, and wider public and community users. It is designed to support collaboration across institutions, disciplines and regions.

Key focus areas 

Key focus areas include the two core technical work packages: the Digitisation Capability Pilot, which addresses supply-side constraints in creating computation-ready collections data, and the Infrastructure Prototype Reference Stack, which addresses demand-side challenges around access, combination, analysis and reuse at scale. These are supported by evidence-based frameworks and linked projects on environmental sustainability, cyber resilience, ethics, economic impact of collection loss, international benchmarking, digitisation prioritisation, social and cultural value of collections, and open knowledge practice. Together, these areas support N-RICH’s core aim of building a sustainable, ethical, secure and effective national infrastructure for cultural heritage research and innovation.

A Digitisation Capability Pilot will design, test, cost and establish the priorities of a scalable methodology for digitisation across diverse cultural heritage collection types. This will include data capture and metadata creation and augmentation with a focus on the use of machine learning and Generative AI to accelerate data production. 
Supplier: Oxford University Innovation 
Delivery: May – December 2026
Purpose: To address the supply-side constraints that currently limit the use of cultural heritage collections in computational and data-driven research

A Infrastructure Prototype Reference Stack will explore computational research tools/software and technologies required for a unified national cultural heritage dataset. 
Supplier: Answer Digital
Delivery: August 2026 - March 2027
Purpose: To address the demand-side challenge: whether researchers can realistically access, combine, analyse and re-use cultural heritage data at scale through shared computational services, interoperable interfaces and governed research environments 

A series of research frameworks will focus on: 

International Benchmarking
Delivery: January – October 2026
Purpose: To provide a comparative understanding of the diverse pathways through which digital cultural heritage infrastructures develop globally

Environmental & Sustainability Project
Supplier: InformU & Preserve Together 
Delivery: February 2026 – April 2027
Purpose: To ensure that the digital-collections infrastructure developed through N-RICH can scale responsibly within environmental and financial limits

Cyber Resilience Project
Delivery: March 2026 – April 2027
Purpose: To define how cultural heritage data and systems participating in the N-RICH Prototype can be protected, monitored, and recovered in the event of a breach

Digitisation Prioritisation Project
Delivery: May - December 2026
Purpose: To determine whether implementing a unified approach and clear criteria for selecting digitisation priorities within the GLAM sector could significantly increase the effectiveness and value of N-RICH as a research infrastructure 

Ethics Project
Delivery: September 2026 – January 2027
Purpose: To ensure that the digital collections infrastructure developed through N-RICH has an ethical framework to recognise, assess, operationalise, and act upon values-led approaches to data, people, processes, and technology

Economic Impact of Collection Loss
Delivery: September 2026 - April 2027
Purpose: To develop an initial evidence base and practical framework for understanding the economic consequences of collections loss, degradation and inaccessibility across the UK cultural heritage sector

Wikimedia Project
Delivery: September 2026 – March 2027
Purpose: To explore the strategic role of Wikidata and Linked Open Data within the N-RICH ecosystem and wider cultural heritage infrastructure landscape

Social & Cultural Value Case Studies
Delivery: November 2026 - March 2027
Purpose: To develop case studies that communicate the benefits of investment in cultural heritage digitisation, drawn from across a range of GLAM institutions, reflecting diversity in location, governance, scale and collection type

How will the project inform future decision making? 

The N-RICH Prototype’s demonstration of a joined-up approach between standards, services and process-based frameworks, real-world digital infrastructure development and digitisation capability will provide a critical evidence base for the business case for full investment in a National Research Infrastructure for UK Cultural Heritage.

Briefing note and project updates 

To view and download the N-RICH Briefing Note, click here. 

For tender opportunities and project news: