Folk Painting "Portrait of a girl" by unknown - Online Museum of the traditional art of Ukraine - KROVETS, Ukraine - CC BY-NC-ND. https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/1413/KYD1791

Human-in-the-Loop Annotation of Ukrainian Folk Art

Crowdsourcing campaign

About

The activity is part of a small-scale pilot in Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage Informatics, within implemented within the framework of the AISTER project, exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) tools and human participation can improve the description of cultural heritage collections online, enhancing their accessibility and discoverability.

The pilot includes a crowdsourcing campaign, set up on Europeana’s CrowdHeritage platform. Participants are invited to browse images from the ethnographic collection of the Krovets Online Museum of Traditional Art of Ukraine on Europeana, which includes more than 300 folk art paintings depicting scenes from everyday rural life and religious themes. By reviewing keywords automatically generated with computational methods (natural language processing and computer vision), participants will correct terms, reject inaccurate ones, and add additional keywords by recognising scenes, objects and figures.

The campaign aims to enhance the accessibility and discoverability of Ukrainian ethnographic heritage by improving the quality of descriptive metadata, while contributing to a better understanding in human-in-the-loop approaches to AI-assisted metadata creation in cultural heritage.

The activity will be conducted in English and can be completed online at an individual pace, and in onsite workshops. 

Crowdsourcing campaign duration: mid-March to April 2026.

Registration

Scan the QR code, or click the button to register for the crowdsourcing campaign and contribute to cultural heritage preservation.

Register

Crowdsourcing Campaign

Enter the CrowdHeritage platform, log in, and start browsing folk paintings with scenes from everyday life and religious topics, accepting or rejecting the tags.

https://crowdheritage.eu/en/ukrainian-folkart
Further reading: AISTER data analysis and visualisations

Online and onsite crowdsourcing sessions

Lviv Polytechnic National University

💡 From Idea to Action: Preparing for the Art-Based Hackathon

📌Engaging young Ukrainians across Europe in crowd innovation for a social purpose, by working in teams and contributing to the crowdsourcing campaign for safeguarding Ukrainian heritage.

 

📅 Date: 19/03/26

⚙️ Organiser: Web2Learn

👥Facilitator(s): Anna Shilinh (LPNU), Lyudmila Kruhlenko (Pryazovskyi State Technical University), Olha Hapii (Charity Foundation “Stand With Ukraine”), Alina Tsurkalenko (LUkraine).

🏛️Participating institutions: LUkraine, Charity Foundation “Stand With Ukraine”, Liberitutti, Lviv Polytechnic National University, Pryazovskyi State Technical University)

 

See post on Facebook

University of Latvia, Library

💡 Human-in-the-Loop Annotation of Ukrainian Folk Art -Action 1

📌The Faculty of Humanities of the University of Latvia invited Ukrainians living in Latvia and interested participants to take part in a Ukrainian cultural heritage data workshop about crowd innovation and contributing hands-on to the crowdsourcing campaign, taking place at the Library of the University of Latvia.

 

📅 Date: 27/03/26

⚙️ Organiser: Web2Learn

👥Facilitator(s): Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska, Sanita Reinsone, Uldis Zariņš

🏛️Participating institutions: University of Latvia, Web2Learn

 

Registration form: https://ej.uz/ukrainas-datu-darbnica

 

Photo by Toms Grīnbergs - http://foto.lu.lv/arhiivs/2004/15.ned._05.04.-11.04.2004/slides/IMG_1711.html, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8742820

Pryazovskyi State Technical University

💡 Human-in-the-Loop Annotation of Ukrainian Folk Art -Action 2

📌Ukrainian students from three different universities were introduced to the concept of crowd innovation by engaging first-hand in the crowdsourcing campaign, annotating artworks of a Ukrainian folk art collection.

📅 Date: 27/03/26

⚙️ Organiser: Web2Learn

👥Facilitator(s): Lyudmila Kruhlenko,  Mariana Ziku, Stefania Oikonomou, Andreas Kouzelis

🏛️Participating institutions: Pryazovskyi State Technical University, Nizhyn Mykola Gogol State University, Hryhorii Skovoroda University in Pereiaslav.

Timeline Story

💡 Human-in-the-Loop Annotation of Ukrainian Folk Art -Action 3

📌Young Ukrainians living in Latvia are introduced to the concept of crowd innovation by engaging first-hand in the crowdsourcing campaign. They explore the Krovets collection and worked on the annotations, motivated by their willingness to safeguard Ukraine’s heritage and cultural identity.

📅 Date: 02/04/26

⚙️ Organiser: Young Folks, University of Latvia

👥Facilitator(s): Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska, Konstantine Gagnidze, Sanita Reinsone

🏛️Participating institutions: University of Latvia, Young Folks, Web2Learn

Team

Mariana Ziku

Mariana Ziku

Team lead, Researcher
Andrea Kuzelis

Andrea Kuzelis

Information Systems Εngineer
Katerina Zourou

Katerina Zourou

Director
Andreas Darsaklis

Andreas Darsaklis

IT trainee

Expert

Yevgen Dmytruk

Yevgen Dmytruk

Director
Krovets Online-museum of Traditional Art of Ukraine

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all AISTER partners and particularly the team at the University of Latvia (Uldis Zariņš, Sanita Reinsone), and Eirini Kaldeli at CrowdHeritage. 

Krovets Online-museum of Traditional Art of Ukraine

CrowdHeritage

AISTER Consortium

University of Luxemburg

Web2Learn

University of Latvia

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

Europeana