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

AI Pilot and Crowdsourcing Campaign

About

This activity is part of a pilot in Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage Informatics, implemented within the framework of the AISTER project by Web2Learn, 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 corrected terms, rejected inaccurate ones, and added additional keywords by recognising scenes, objects and figures.

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

The activity was conducted in English and was completed in 5 online and onsite workshops. The crowdsourcing campaign duration was from mid-March to April 2026.

Registration [closed]

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

Crowdsourcing Campaign

Enter the CrowdHeritage platform and view the Krovets ethnographic collection containing more than 300 folk paintings with scenes from everyday life and religious topics, along with the results of the crowdsourcing campaing: 70 contributors enriching the collection with approximately 55.000 annotation points, adding thousands of new descriptive tags.

Open Repository

Access the complete pilot workflow, including reproducible code in notebooks and all resulting output files.

Cite the open datasets and code as:

Ziku, M., Kouzelis, A., Darsaklis, A., Oikonomou, S., & Zourou, K. (2026). Human-in-the-Loop Crowdsourced Annotation Dataset for Ukrainian Folk Art with Reproducible Jupyter Notebooks [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19475310

Explore an international landscape analysis of 22 research projects that use artificial intelligence and citizen participation for cultural heritage preservation in emergency settings.

Online and onsite crowdsourcing workshops

19 Mar 2026

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).

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27 Mar 2026

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

Photo by Toms Grīnbergs – https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8742820, CC BY-SA 3.0.

27 Mar 2026

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.

02 Apr 2026

Young Volunteers and Students

💡 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.

02 Apr 2026

Niche Crowdsourcing

📌Invited experts in Ukrainian folk art contribute by generating insightful descriptive tags, enhancing artworks with domain-specific expertise.

📅 Date: 28.03-02.04.26
⚙️ Organiser: Web2Lear
👥Expert contributors: Yevgen Dmytruk
🏛️Participating institutions: Krovets Online-museum of Traditional Art of Ukraine.

Campaign Leaderboard - Winners

"Ukrainian art reflects the resilience and creativity of our people, and sharing it is more important than ever. Driven by this passion, I joined the campaign to make cultural heritage more accessible. I especially enjoyed the annotation process and the exploration of the ethnographic collection. It was an honour to contribute to a project that brings together art and technology."

Inna Kaika

Student in English Language and Foreign Literature, Mykola Gogol State University

"I joined the campaign to support the preservation and promotion of Ukrainian folk art, which represents identity, history, and continuity. Contributing to a project that helps keep traditions alive and visible felt truly meaningful, as it allowed me to express respect and deepen my understanding of my cultural roots. I will mostly remember the sense of connection – to culture, history, and like-minded people."

Daria Markova

Student in Translation, Pryazovskyi State Technical University

"Participating in the campaign motivated me to support initiatives focused on preserving cultural heritage, especially Ukrainian folk art, which is an essential part of history. I particularly valued the teamwork and the exchange of ideas, as it showed how differently people can approach the same topic. Overall, the campaign helped me gain new knowledge about Ukrainian traditions and offered practical insights into how such initiatives are implemented."

Marko Lakhmatov

Student in cybersecurity, Pryazovskyi State Technical University

Team

Mariana Ziku

Team lead, Researcher

Andrea Kuzelis

Information Systems Εngineer

Katerina Zourou

Director

Andreas Darsaklis

IT trainee

Expert

Yevgen Dmytruk