Digital Culture Bridge – Bosnia and Herzegovina | A Digital Cultural Heritage Project for Young People

The Digital Culture Bridge – Bosnia and Herzegovina Project was designed as an integrated youth programme aiming to strengthen the bond young people have with cultural heritage and to redefine that bond through the productive practices of the digital age. The programme was built around a pilot run in the Çaykara district of Trabzon in Türkiye and then scaled to cover Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Balkans. The long-term vision of the model is a sustainable ecosystem of culture, education and digital production reaching from the Balkans to Central Asia.

In this project Yasin Yavuz took an active role as general coordinator in establishing the conceptual framework, shaping the project model and developing an education approach centred on digital production. The structure he led aimed to turn young people not merely into learners of cultural knowledge but into individuals who produce that knowledge through artificial intelligence and digital technologies. The core approach of the programme rests on discovering the traces of Ottoman heritage in the Balkans on site and carrying those experiences into the future through contemporary digital forms of narration.

A three-stage structure formed the backbone of the project. In the first stage participants visited historical and cultural sites in Istanbul and the Balkans and produced a comprehensive digital archive of photographs, video and text. In the second stage, training in history, culture, art, artificial intelligence and project development strengthened the participants’ analytical thinking, digital literacy and production skills. Throughout this process theoretical knowledge was integrated with data gathered in the field.

In the final stage participants worked in teams to create AI-assisted digital works, which were shared with the public in a virtual exhibition format on the Digital Culture Bridge platform. Yasin Yavuz’s coordination and mentoring approach helped the young participants gain the confidence and competence to take an active role in national and international projects. Beyond raising awareness of cultural heritage, the project is positioned as an exemplary model that makes a concrete contribution to young people’s long-term development by building digital production skills, awareness of artificial intelligence and a sense of career direction.