RDE has initiated a new product development effort with our partner Plinth: HiddenMuse, a solution designed to unlock the untapped potential of Europe’s “hidden” cultural heritage—collections that sit in museum storage, largely undigitised and invisible to the public. Many museums hold the vast majority of their objects in storage, often cited at around 90%, which represents an enormous reservoir of knowledge, identity, and creative inspiration that remains underused.

HiddenMuse is being shaped to address the practical barriers that keep these collections out of reach: limited digitisation capacity, fragmented infrastructure, and institutional constraints that make discovery, reuse, and public engagement difficult. By focusing on scalable approaches that work for real museum environments, the initiative aims to help institutions surface more of what they already preserve—so collections can generate greater educational, cultural, and societal value without increasing administrative burden.