The project EMOTIVE (Emotive virtual cultural experiences through personalized storytelling) was an EU-funded Research and Innovation (RIA) action, addressing the topic CULT-COOP-08-2016: Virtual museums and social platform on European digital heritage, memory, identity and cultural interaction. EMOTIVE works from the premise that cultural sites are, in fact, highly emotional places. That regardless of age, location or state of preservation, they are seedbeds not just of knowledge, but of emotional resonance and human connection. From 2016-2019, the EMOTIVE consortium collaborated to research, design, develop and evaluate methods and tools that can support the cultural and creative industries in creating narratives and experiences which draw on the power of “emotive storytelling”. The project applied its technological solutions and methodologies on two UNESCO World heritage archaeological sites of great importance, the Çatalhöyük Neolithic site near Konya, Turkey, and the Roman Antonine Wall site in the UK and also the Hunterian Museum, one of the leading university museums in the world, as well as in several other sites, including the York Minster Cathedral in the UK and the Athens Ancient Agora.

The project produced prototype authoring tools for heritage professionals to produce interactive, personalized, emotionally resonant digital experiences for museums and cultural sites. These were used to create and evaluate several digital experiences, on-site and virtual, for users to experience individually or in groups.