What is Build with Bits?
Build with Bits is a capacity-building and co-creation programme that empowers participants to create a virtual environment - any digital interface where people can remotely collaborate to produce, design, edit, publish and/or communicate a creation made by themselves from scratch or from existing digitised assets. A virtual environment can be created through the combination of technologies and tools. These virtual environments—whether 360° spaces, immersive worlds, digital exhibitions, or interactive storytelling experiences—become resources for learning, civic participation, and cultural engagement.
Participants in the Build with Bits programme receive free training and mentorship to build virtual environments, working directly with the digital collections made available by Europeana.eu, cultural heritage institutions or their own digitised content. Through design and experimentation, they explore new ways to reuse digital culture while responding to today’s educational, social, environmental, or community challenges.
Building for the future: from Built with Bits to Build with Bits
As the programme has developed over the years, participants have increasingly employed a wide range of technologies and tools, demonstrating their creativity and great capacity to adapt to technological shifts. As the programme evolves, we have therefore evolved its name from Built with Bits to Build with Bits, a change that better reflects its dynamic, action-oriented and forward-looking spirit.
In this year’s edition, we are giving a special focus to projects related to sustainable tourism. This topic highlights how digital cultural heritage in virtual environments can support sustainable tourism and foster cultural appreciation, heritage preservation and global citizenship, while developing the skills and mindsets needed for sustainable practices in education and society.
Build with Bits 2026 will harness our collective imagination and encourage participants to create place-based storytelling, linked to community identity, sustainability, and future thinking. After our open call last October, we selected three main projects that will anchor this year’s programme. Collaborators will be assigned to one of them to contribute to both ideation and technical delivery.
The selected projects include:
A growing, virtual, globally co-created environment called Futures Forest, where participants will contribute imaginative digital expressions of what a community, a landscape, or a shared world could become in the future.
An interactive escape-style virtual game designed around Lesbos’ cultural landscapes and their links to Greek literature. Educators and collaborators will work with Greek literary narratives, heritage and local knowledge to create an educational experience that bridges place and tourism.
An interactive 360° virtual tour created in collaboration with students, educators and global collaborators of Cyprus’ best-known resort destinations. The project highlights natural, cultural and historical features of Agia Napa, building a fuller understanding of the area beyond its familiar tourist identity.
Open call for collaborators
If you are either an educator, a creative, an organisation or an independent professional, this call could be a perfect fit for you. We are looking for collaborators who are open to joining one of the three selected projects, and have flexibility and commitment to follow the entire programme.
As a collaborator, you’ll receive free training and mentorship, work with Europeana’s digital collections, develop new digital skills, connect with international peers, and contribute to projects that explore sustainable tourism, cultural heritage, and community-driven storytelling. The program will run from early February until Mid-May. Don’t miss the opportunity to apply as a collaborator. Applications close on 25 January!
To learn more about the programme, read the full programme details.
Build with Bits is an original project of Europeana Foundation funded by the European Commission with the goal of empowering the cultural heritage sector in its digital transformation, along with the AIDI community.