The Thinking Through Places (TTP) consortium preapres the TTP-A project, which develops and implements AI innovations for archival work practice, systematically connecting Human Artistic Intelligence (HAI) with artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the competitiveness, capacity, and future-readiness of European archives.
Archives are among Europe’s most valuable yet underexplored cultural institutions. Their collections, practices, and knowledge are inseparable from the specific places, communities, and histories that gave rise to them — a dimension that existing AI approaches consistently overlook. The TTP-A project makes place explicit, unlocking its potential to connect archives, their staff, their users, and the wider public in new and meaningful ways.
We are an interdisciplinary consortium of academics, archival professionals, AI researchers, and creative practitioners from six European countries. Together we work with four pilot archives — each representing a distinct archival context, from national state collections to specialist feminist archives and colonial heritage holdings — to develop, test, and validate AI innovations that are grounded in real archival work practice.
At the heart of the TTP-A project is the HAI-AI Tool: an open, ethical self-assessment instrument that helps archival professionals evaluate where AI can meaningfully augment their work, where human judgement must remain decisive, and what creative, cultural, and socio-technical capacities are needed for safe and effective AI integration. Alongside the tool, the TTP consortium produces training materials, a micro-credential course, policy recommendations, and scenarios that connect archival AI innovation to EU regulatory frameworks including the AI Act and DigComp.
The TTP-A project’s innovations extend well beyond the four pilot archives through the TTP-Coop — a self-sustaining European community of practice connecting archives, creative SMEs, researchers, and policymakers — and through a Challenger/Solver competition that mobilises broader European engagement with place-based AI in the cultural and creative sectors.
By demonstrating that the future of AI in archives is not a technical question alone, but a human, cultural, and place-bound one, the TTP-A project contributes to a more competitive, resilient, and ethically grounded European cultural heritage sector — and to ongoing EU policy discussions on trustworthy, human-centred AI.