CULTURAL HERITAGE ADVANCED RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES: SYNERGY FOR A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO CONSERVATION (CHARISMA)
CHARISMA is an integrating activity project carried out in the FP7 Capacities Specific Programme Research Infrastructures.
The project offers an access free of costs to most advanced EU scientific instrumentations and knowledge, allowing scientists, conservators-restorers and curators to enhance their research.
In a program that covers joint research, transnational access and networking, the planned challenging activities require a combined effort and commitment of a high-level partnership of twenty-one organizations to provide access to advanced facilities, with development of research and applications on artwork materials finalised to the conservation of cultural heritage and favoring the opening of larger perspective to the heritage conservation activities in Europe.
The CHARISMA transnational access (TA) programs offer European scientists the possibility to carry out their experiments utilizing 3 different and complementary groups of facilities (ARCHLAB, MOLAB and FIXLAB) through a service embedded in a multidisciplinary environment involving material science and artwork conservation/restoration.
FIXLAB provides access to large and medium scale European installations, including the beamlines of one synchrotron radiation, one neutron source and two ion-beam analytical facilities;
MOLAB offers access to a portable set of advanced analytical equipment, for in-situ non-invasive measurements on artworks, without any movement of the artefacts from their location and any contact with the surface;
ARCHLAB permits the access to the structured scientific information and analytical data, stored in the archives of the most prestigious European museums and conservation institutions.
The access activities are supported by 3 outreach programs as networking (NA) cooperation activities, with the intent to achieve a permanent interoperability among the European institutions of the CHARISMA consortium and those external to it. The activity fosters the culture of international cooperation, providing harmonisation of methodologies, sharing knowledge and best practices on conservation projects, adopting progressive standard compatibility, and providing education, training, users' awareness events, technology transfer and dissemination of project results.
3 Joint Research activities (JRA), intend to exploit advanced technologies & techniques as well as most promising applications and integrated solutions, to complement the project scheme providing innovative instrumentations and methodologies tailored to the user's needs.