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. The N-RICH Prototype will deliver targeted early-stage activities to reduce future investment risks. It will test the key elements and examine the scope, costs, risks, impacts and benefits of a future digital research infrastructure for cultural heritage in the UK. Core activities will include a digitisation capability pilot, a prototype infrastructure, and three cross-cutting research frameworks on environmental impact, ethics, and cybersecurity. 

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. 

What will the N-RICH prototype project deliver?

A digitisation capability pilot that 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. 

A digital research infrastructure prototype that will explore computational research tools/software and technologies required for a unified national cultural heritage dataset. This will include the design, development and testing of:

  • An aggregator to combine and make cross-searchable and interoperable a variety of digital collections and datasets, as well as new use cases that present specific and/or significant technical challenges.
  • A selection of research environments for that data, including visualisation, collaboration tools, and software services along with technical design to show how a full digital research infrastructure might evolve to an ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ model.
  • Secure and flexible administrative and management tools, including open-standards data and software licensing for broad adoption and reuse.
  • Analysis of prototype utility to different users to ensure the subsequent infrastructure addresses their needs and best enables game-changing research and innovation.

A series of research frameworks focusing on data security, the environmental impacts of digital collections, and ethics within the context of AI use in digitisation practices.

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.