From 21 to 25 February 2022 University of Alicante hosted at its premises a Training seminar on "Digital skills applied to heritage", the second of a round of seminars organised within the CUDIMHA project.

The training week was attended by 12 professionals and experts from the European and Tunisian partners involved in the CUDIMHA project. The role that the host institution - University of Alicante - has played in the project has been strongly focused on the implementation and teaching of digital technologies for the survey, research and valorisation of cultural heritage. For this reason, the agenda of this training was mainly focused on topics related to some of the processes, strategies and digital tools commonly used in Cultural Heritage projects. The programme has been divided into 3 working sessions
aiming to combine theoretical sessions with practical workshops in which attendants could experience first-hand how some of these technologies work.

During the first day a theoretical session was dedicated to digital photogrammetry, including a general introduction and the workflow of a free and open source software, Meshroom. Participants were able to experiment and try with real case studies recently carried out by University of Alicante.
During the workshop, attendants were taken to Santa Pola and Elche (both towns in the province of Alicante) to test and experience a Virtual Reality environment (a recreation of a Roman fish factory) and an app for mobile devices to visualise the virtual recreation of the ancient Elche Turkish baths in 360 degrees.

During the second day a first theoretical session focused on the tools and techniques commonly used during the 3D design stage in projects involving Cultural Heritage virtual recreation and reconstruction. Blender, a powerful and versatile open source and free 3D design software, widely used in this type of projects, was therefore used for the practical session. In the morning, attendants visited the archaeological site of the Roman Villa of l'Albir (l'Alfàs del Pi, Alicante) to test an Augmented Reality application and a 360 degrees short film to be visualised with headset Virtual Reality devices (Oculus Quest).

The third and final working session was dedicated to those protocols and ethical aspects and principles that are essential in projects involving Cultural Heritage virtual recreations and reconstructions. Participants learned the Extended Matrix tool and its integration within Blender. Thanks to this useful plugin it is possible to keep track of the decision-making process in this type of project. One of the participants, Martin Košťál from University of Alicante, shared some of his impressive advances with the powerful procedural and parametric modelling tools that Blender provides.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, some topics initially planned on the agenda, i.e., 3D printing and motion capture, could not be addressed during the training week. Nevertheless, and overall, it was an intensive, productive and highly enriching 3 days of work, in which all the participants - teachers from the host institution and attendees - were able to exchange opinions and compare workflows.