HEClab: Find opportunities for your artistic prototype
Do you have a working artistic prototype relevant for food system transitions, sustainable practices, or agri-innovation?
HEClab <Helping Experiments Connect > is a digital platform designed to match artist-led prototypes with real-world opportunities; funding calls, testing environments, and collaborators. Rather than disappearing after a project, your prototype stays actively visible and continuously matched with relevant opportunities through smart matching using AI and semantic analysis recommendations. The platform is designed to help you validate and improve your prototype.
In this article:
How HEClab Supports Your Prototype
HEClab helps bridge the gap between proof-of-concept and real-world application by connecting your innovations with industry partners, funding programmes, testing environments, and collaborative projects.
The platform is a beta version and is maintained by In4Art (a Netherlands-based independent art-driven innovation R&D organisation) and Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic) as a lasting outcome of the Horizon Europe Hungry EcoCities project.
Benefits for Artists
It has three core benefits for artists:
1. Smart Matching
Rather than spending hours searching fragmented funding databases and networking sites, our AI-driven system identifies calls, partners, and opportunities that align with your specific prototype. Your personal dashboard delivers tailored recommendations: opportunities worth your time.
2. Real-World Testing & Validation
Get connected with testing environments where your prototype can be demonstrated, refined, and validated in real-world contexts.
3. Ongoing Visibility
Your prototype is added to and actively visible in a curated database of innovations that reaches a network of food SMEs, research institutions, funders, and collaborators across Europe.
Sectors
Currently, HEClab prioritises prototypes addressing challenges within:
■ food systems,
■ circular food economies,
■ and agri-innovation.
With time, we will expand to cover additional sectors where artistic prototypes can drive sustainability, so even if your work sits slightly adjacent to food, it is worth adding it to HEClab.
Minimum Prototype Level: TRL 4+
We welcome prototypes as of TRL 4. Here’s what matters:
TRL 4
You have the core concept working: a proof of concept exists.
There’s something tangible: a physical prototype, a tested system, a demonstrated method. It shows your idea isn’t speculative.
TRL 5
Your prototype has been tested in a controlled or semi-realistic environment.
It’s showing promise and is ready for real-world validation.
Quick Overview
What we want
Prototypes at TRL 4 or higher (a working proof of concept, not an idea).
What you get
Visibility, smart matching, real-world testing partners in your personalized dashboard.
For whom?
We see artists, creative technologists, designer-makers as potential prototype users of the platform.
How to apply?
Register your profile as an artistic prototype owner.
Cost
Free for artists.
How to Submit Your Prototype
1. Create a Prototype Card
Visit Heclab.eu and register your account. Complete
your profile as an artistic prototype owner and start with making a “Prototype Card proposal” describing your artistic prototype.
Include:
■ What your prototype does and what problem it solves.
■ The TRL stage.
■ Visual documentation (photos, videos, or diagrams).
■ Links, publications, or collaborations that demonstrate your track record.
2. Admin Review
Our team reviews each submission to ensure it meets our criteria: genuine proof of concept, clear description, and tags to support the matchmaking in food, circular economy, or sustainable innovation.
This typically takes 1–2 weeks.
3. Go Live
Once approved, your card is added to HEClab’s public database and integrated into our matchmaking algorithm.
You’ll receive notifications about potential opportunities tailored to your work.
The Bigger Picture
HEClab was born from the Hungry EcoCities project, a European-funded initiative that paired artists with food industry SMEs. In that project, we matched artists with industry partners using exactly this smart platform. The result? Ten final partnerships came from algorithm-driven matches that might never have happened through traditional networking.
Now, HEClab continues its mission as a free, open platform for the creative innovation community. Your prototype could be the next one to find an unexpected partner, a testing ground, or the validation it needs to develop into art-driven innovation value.
The platform is in beta and being actively developed. If you have feedback after submitting: about the submission process, the dashboard, or anything else, we would love to hear from you. Your input helps shape how HEClab evolves.
The HungryEcoCities project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement 101069990.
