With new publications, events, and the launch of a new coalition, the CC Open Culture Program accomplished a lot! Here are some highlights:

1. At the Open Culture Strategic Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, we gathered nearly 50 experts from every continent to co-create a strategic roadmap for future action, charting a course for UNESCO Member States to draft an agreement (otherwise referred to as a legal instrument). This would promote open solutions to enable equitable access to cultural heritage worldwide. Read our blog post and full report for more: CC strategic workshop reveals big opportunities for open access to cultural heritage.  
2. In the wake of the Lisbon workshop, we launched the Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage( TAROCH) Coalition, a collaborative effort to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. Read our blog post Creative Commons Launches TAROCH Coalition for Open Access to Cultural Heritage and TAROCH information brief and apply to join the Coalition now! 
3. We published Don’t be a Dinosaur; or, The Benefits of Open Culture, which distills the views expressed in our Open Culture Voices (OCV) series about the ways in which so many people can benefit from open culture. Read more in this blog post: What are the Benefits of Open Culture? A new CC Publication.
4. We released guidelines for open culture that offer a fresh and innovative approach to prompting users to reference the institution when using public domain materials: Nudging Users to Reference Institutions when Using Public Domain Materials. Read more on our blog: Where in the world is… this public domain material? Helping users refer to host institutions.
5. We published Open Culture Capsules, a video series that addresses some of the most frequently asked questions about our work in the Open Culture Program. Our blog has more details and links to all the episodes: Top Questions about Open Culture Answered in Five Short Videos.  

In addition, we published even more blog posts on a wide range of topics (check out this one for example: Moving Institutions Toward Open—Building on 6 Years of the Open GLAM Survey). We also organized training activities (watch this webinar we organized with Connecticut Humanities: Open Access Made Easy: How to Open Your Collections for Greater and Better Sharing) and offered the CC Certificate on Open Culture. We collaborated with Europeana to review their Public Domain Charter. 

We took the stage at several events to promote open culture, such as:

• WIPO SCCR meeting in Geneva, to promote exceptions and limitations for cultural heritage institutions worldwide
• AI Sauna in Helsinki
• Communia Salon: The hollowing of the Public Domain 
• Wikimania in Katowice (watch the full recording of our TAROCH presentation and panel)
• Living Heritage workshop in Brussels
• Communia’s Digital Knowledge Act event in Brussels
• UNESCO International Conference on the Memory of the World in Paris
• Towards a National Collection Conference in Manchester
• EUScreen Symposium in Barcelona
• and much more!

We also supported our community through the OC platform and its working groups and community-led activities. 

The Open Culture team is thrilled that we will once again be offering the CC Certificate on Open Culture in 2025. Learn more and register! We look forward to building on those achievements and continuing to ensure we can all access heritage to connect to our past and imagine our futures. Contact us at info@creativecommons.org for more information.

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We are excited to share a new video series titled Open Culture Capsules. In this multi-series video collection, we address some of the most frequently asked questions about our work in Creative Commons’ (CC) Open Culture Program. You can preview the series below and find each episode in full on the the CC YouTube channel.

The series features insights from CC staff and facilitators from the CC Certificate Course on Open Culture. Thank you for your participation in making this series a success! 

Keep reading to find previews and overview of all five episodes: 

Episode 1 (parts 1 and 2) —  What does Creative Commons do for Open Culture? Brigitte Vézina, CC’s Director of Policy and Open Culture, talks about how the Open Culture Program is driving policy change for fair and equitable open access to cultural heritage. In this episode, Brigitte shares how capacity building and the Open Culture Platform are empowering a global network of people passionate about open culture.

Episode 2 (parts 1 and 2) —  What is open culture? Shanna Hollich, CC’s Learning and Training Manager, explains that Open Culture at CCencompasses open access to both contemporary creativity and cultural heritage, promoting sharing under permissive terms with CC licenses and tools as well as other labels and statements. 

Episode 3 (parts 1 and 2) — What are the main benefits of open culture? Revekka Kefalea, CC Certificate facilitator, shows how, by embracing open access, cultural heritage institutions (like museums, libraries and archives) can boost their digital relevance, how researchers and educators can gain new opportunities for collaboration, and how creators have increased access to resources that drive creativity.

Episode 4 (parts 1 and 2) — How do you open up a collection? Sionan Guenther, CC Certificate facilitator, walks through the first steps of opening up cultural heritage and highlights what is important to consider from the get-go. 

Episode 5 (parts 1, 2 and 3) — How to mark open heritage? Evelin (scann) Heidel, CC Certificate facilitator, explains the basics of marking heritage materials with CC licenses and public domain tools,  where to place the license or tool, and how these help ensure cultural heritage is accessible, with clear conditions for use, allowing everyone to freely engage, remix, and keep cultural heritage alive.

If you would like to watch more video content from CC’s Open Culture Program, check out Open Culture Voices and the Open Culture Live webinar series.

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Creative Commons (CC) is proud to launch the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage), a collaborative effort to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. We are grateful to the Arcadia Fund for supporting this initiative. Below we share an overview of TAROCH and invite mission-aligned organizations and institutions to apply to join. 

TAROCH At A Glance

• TAROCH stands for Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage.
• TAROCH is a community initiative led by Creative Commons.
• The mission is to encourage UNESCO Member States to draft and adopt a Recommendation (or other standard-setting instrument) promoting open solutions to enhance access to cultural heritage in the public domain.
• The ultimate goal of the TAROCH Coalition is that cultural heritage is equitably accessible to all, in line with UNESCO’s broader mission and cultural and information policy, in particular intercultural dialog and cultural exchanges, thereby contributing to building more connected, resilient, and sustainable societies.

Who Drives TAROCH?

CC is the organization steering and funding TAROCH. The Coalition is led by representatives of a global, diverse community of organizations and institutions involved in cultural heritage and with an interest in open cultural heritage. While our individual missions differ, we all believe in the transformative power of open solutions and share a vision of fair and equitable access to cultural heritage. Meet the initial members of the TAROCH Coalition!

For a complete and up-to-date list of coalition members, please refer to the Statement of Commitment.

Why Is Promoting Open Access to Cultural Heritage Important?

We believe that culture, including cultural heritage, is the foundation of humanity and that open access can contribute to helping people around the world to:

• Exercise their fundamental rights to participate in cultural life and enjoy the arts, as enshrined in Article 27(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and Article 15 of the United Nations (UN) International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).
• Preserve and access documentary heritage including in digital form, as enshrined in the 2015 UNESCO Recommendation.
• Benefit from a more prosperous, inclusive, and resilient world by advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and leaving no one behind, including the recognition of culture as a Sustainable Development Goal in and of itself.Honor, promote, and preserve cultural and linguistic diversity and cultural heritage as per the 2024 UN Pact for the Future.
• Activate the 2022 Mondiacult Declaration and enjoy culture, including cultural heritage, as well as the digital commons (in keeping with the Global Digital Compact) as global public goods.

What are TAROCH’s Key Deliverables?

We aim to achieve the following by May 2026:

• Develop and adopt a Statement on Open Access to Cultural Heritage for signature by civil society organizations and institutions.
• Widely implement an advocacy strategy and disseminate advocacy tools and materials to promote the wider recognition of open access to cultural heritage.

The delivery of these two milestones will set the stage for on-the-ground advocacy efforts by a network of local ambassadors encouraging UNESCO member states to develop and adopt a UNESCO standard-setting instrument by 2029.

For More Information about TAROCH and to Read About Our Work To Date:

• Read our 2024 report CC Strategic Workshop Reveals Big Opportunities for Open Access to Cultural Heritage.
• Read our Open Culture webpage
• Read our Resources page

Join the TAROCH Coalition

Any organization or institution supporting the mission statement of the Coalition can apply for membership in the Coalition.

• Read the Statement of Commitment.
• Submit your application through the membership application form.

For more information, contact us at info@creativecommons.org.

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Last May, a diverse group of nearly 50 experts from every continent took part in Creative Commons’ Open Culture Strategic Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, to advance our TAROCH initiative — Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage. Over the course of two days, participants collaborated to co-create a strategic roadmap for future action, charting a course towards the elaboration by UNESCO Member States of an international legal instrument that would promote open solutions to enable equitable access to cultural heritage worldwide, in line with UNESCO’s broader mission on openness and heritage-related policy goals.

Today, we’re excited to share the workshop’s report, capturing the event’s highlights. Here are two of the main outcomes:

• A narrower focus from “open culture” to “open cultural heritage in the public domain” — moving from TAROC to TAROCH.
• Flexibility regarding the nature of the legal instrument: recommendation, declaration, or other type of UNESCO instrument.

The report also outlines anticipated developments, highlighting key milestones on the horizon. It concludes with a set of recommended actions to build on the momentum gained in Lisbon.

We are now in the process of building an architecture to organize future work and establish ladders of engagement. Watch this space!

Read the full report 

If you’d like to learn more, please reach out to us at info@creativecommons.org.

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With CC considering new ways to engage with generative AI, we are excited to share highlights from the conversation that demonstrate some of the complex considerations regarding open sharing, cultural heritage, and contemporary creativity.

Suzanne Duncan, Chief Operating Officer at Te Hiku Media, New Zealand, said that her organization was born out of the Māori rights movement. It is collecting an archive of Māori language samples on its own platform to maintain data sovereignty. Te Hiku Media is now working to use AI tools to teach the language to heritage language reclaimers. Suzanne recommended that the best way to ensure diverse representation in AI outputs is to have communities involved in the building and testing of AI models, ideally by communities, for communities.

Minne Atairu, interdisciplinary artist and doctoral student in the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA, shared examples of her works using the Benin Bronzes, artworks from Nigeria stolen by the British in the 19th century, and the changes that happened in the visual representation of art after the looting took place. Using images of the stolen items, she used models to explore visuals and materials and convert text to 3D models. Minne hopes that better ways of attribution and compensation can be re-envisioned, and that the wealth generated by AI and other technologies should be spread among creators, not just tech executives.

Bartolomeo Meletti, Head of Knowledge Exchange at CREATe, University of Glasgow, Scotland, spoke about copyright law and copyright exceptions in the UK, EU and US, focusing on what one can do with AI and copyrighted works without permission from the copyright owner, especially for purposes of research and education. He works to create guidance about how to navigate those permissions with generative AI in mind.

Michael Trizna, Data Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution, has explored how generative AI can help to speed up processes like providing “alt text” (text descriptions of visual materials) to images, without compromising the accuracy of the audio or visual description of works. He has also worked on an AI values statement, including labeling AI generated content as such and mechanisms for the audience to provide feedback. Mike raised concerns about the fact that only a few large cultural heritage institutions are resourced to engage with generative AI responsibly.

Overall, panelists conveyed a need for greater AI literacy to enable people to interrogate AI and ensure it can be used for good.

Watch the recording here.

CC is a non-profit that relies on contributions to sustain our work. Support CC in our efforts to promote better sharing at creativecommons.org/donate.

What is Open Culture Live?

In this series, we tackle some of the more complex challenges that face the open culture movement, bringing in speakers with personal and professional expertise on the topic.

• Back to Basics: Open Culture for Beginners 
• Respectful Terminologies & Changing the Subject 
• Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution
• Maximizing the Value(s) of Open Access in Cultural Heritage Institutions

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Today we in the Open Culture Program are releasing a new publication: Don’t be a Dinosaur; or, The Benefits of Open Culture.

Following in the footsteps of open culture pioneers, many institutions are taking the leap to open their collections online, partly as a way to celebrate a sense of (re)connection with cultural heritage collections in the digital space. While the road to OC is strewn with barriers, its benefits are well worth the journey. 

This report distills the many views expressed in our Open Culture Voices (OCV) series about the ways in which so many people can benefit from open culture. In short: 

• Openly shared cultural heritage: 
  • is easier to find
  • reaches broader and more diverse audiences
  • can be preserved, safeguarded and refined in digital form
  • can be (re)used with more legal certainty
• Open cultural heritage leads to: 
  • More resilient and relevant collection holders
  • More vibrant research and more participatory education
  • More dynamic cultural creativity
  • More just, democratic, diverse, free, and equitable societies

To find out more:

• Read the full report
• Take a look at the one-page summary
• Watch the OCV series’ introduction video
• Check out each expert’s individual blog posts with links to their videos

→ To stay informed about our open culture work:

• Sign up for our open culture mailing list
• Join the open culture platform
• Visit our website on open culture
• Sign up for our Open Culture Matters newsletter

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The J. Paul Getty Museum just released more than 88 thousand works under Creative Commons Zero (CCØ), putting the digital images of items from its impressive collection squarely and unequivocally into the public domain. 

This is in line with our advocacy efforts at Creative Commons (CC): digital reproductions of public domain material must remain in the public domain. In other words, no new copyright should arise over the creation of a digitized “twin.”

According to the museum’s press release, “users can download, edit, and repurpose high resolution images of their favorite Getty artworks without any legal restrictions.” The museum’s Open Content database is a wellspring of art that is bound to inspire myriad new creative reuses. It includes Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises and many more treasures waiting to be explored. Since opening up, Getty has seen “an uptick in image downloads on our site, averaging about 30,000 per month.”

This announcement is a huge cause for celebration for CC’s Open Culture efforts, which strive to promote open access and better sharing of cultural heritage held in cultural heritage institutions, such as museums, libraries and archives. It is also a testament to the stewardship of our open, public-interest infrastructure of Creative Commons licenses and tools. These are free, easy-to-use, and standardized open legal tools that enable worldwide open access to creative content.

We salute the Getty for supporting a thriving public domain and encourage other institutions to engage more deeply in the open culture movement and make the world’s vast collections of public domain materials openly accessible to everyone. We recently released guidelines promoting CCØ and the Public Domain Mark alongside best-practice norms incentivizing users to refer back to institutions. 

Get Involved

For additional guidance on using CCØ to release cultural heritage materials and tailored support in developing or implementing open access policies or to get involved in promoting open culture around the world:

• Join the CC Open Culture Platform
• Sign up for our Open Culture Matters newsletter
• Support our policy initiative Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture (TAROC)
• Take our CC Certificate online training
• Contact us at info@creativecommons.org 

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Today, Creative Commons is releasing new guidelines for open culture: Nudging Users to Reference Institutions when Using Public Domain Materials.

These guidelines have been developed by CC’s Open Culture Team in collaboration with the Open Culture Platform Working Group to investigate use of CC BY to designate holders of public domain collections, led by Deborah De Angelis and Tomoaki Watanabe, and members of the Open Culture Platform.

Whether the institution is a neighborhood archive, a national library, or an art museum, the guidelines offer a fresh and innovative approach to prompting users to reference the institution when using public domain materials. Based on the Working Group’s proposal for a social intervention, they present various design ideas, rooted in the EAST Model for behavioral change.

What problem are these guidelines addressing?

Often, institutions wish to be acknowledged for the role they play preserving, restoring, digitizing, sharing, and overall providing context and meaning for the cultural heritage that they steward. To ensure users “credit” them, many institutions choose CC licenses (which require “attribution”) to release faithful reproductions of public domain material. This is bad practice. Digital reproductions of public domain materials should remain in the public domain and thus be shared under CC0 or PDM.

As a best practice, CC recommends a simple framework to create behavioral change and encourage positive outcomes through “nudges.” The guidelines offer a few design ideas for institutions to provide a comprehensive “reference statement,” if and where appropriate.

The guidelines address key questions, including:

• How can institutions nudge users to reference them?
• What information should be included in a reference statement?
• What would a nudge look like in practice?
• How to organize the data needed to implement these ideas?

The guidelines are available on the Open Culture Resources page. Download the complete guidelines.

Are you ready to implement one of these designs? Do you have comments on how to expand or improve these guidelines, especially on the technical aspects? Would you like to help make this resource available in other languages?

• Contact us at info@creativecommons.org
• Join the Open Culture Platform to engage with peers
• Sign up for our volunteer translation process

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As in previous sessions, our main objective was to drive copyright reform towards better sharing of copyright content in the public interest and in tune with the sharing possibilities of the digital environment. In this short session, we addressed the proposed broadcasting treaty and exceptions and limitations in our opening statement, as reported in the​​ “Statements” information document (SCCR/44/INF/STATEMENTS).

We also offered views on exceptions and limitations for cultural heritage institutions, i.e. libraries, archives and museums; you can watch our intervention on the WIPO webcast. These views are in line with our Open Culture Program’s recently launched initiative Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture (TAROC) which aims to develop policy to recognize the role of open culture to reach wider policy goals notably in relation to copyright and access and use of cultural heritage — see our TAROC Two-Pager in English, Shqip, français, Español, 日本語, Türkçe, italiano, عربي.

Overall, we are rather satisfied with the session’s outcomes. On broadcasting, we remain concerned that discussions on the draft broadcasting treaty are being maintained on the agenda despite evidence of a clear stalemate in the discussions; we are nonetheless heartened by the acknowledged need to work towards a balanced approach on exceptions and limitations in the draft treaty.

On exceptions and limitations, we are pleased that the SCCR Secretariat has undertaken to prepare a detailed implementation plan for the Work Program on Exceptions and Limitations; in CC’s views, this plan should provide for open and transparent engagement opportunities and wide participation from civil society of which CC is a leading voice. It should notably allow for real progress on substantive issues to support meaningful access and use of cultural heritage for preservation and other legitimate purposes.

We also welcome the organization of a virtual panel discussion on cross-border uses of copyright works in the educational and research sectors open to all member states as well as observers. As an accredited observer, CC places high value on broad and inclusive participation to ensure balanced and diverse perspectives can be brought to the table for a constructive debate. We recall that licensing falls short of addressing the problems that libraries, museums, archives, educational and research institutions, as well as persons with disabilities, face on a daily basis. Licensing is not a substitute for robust, flexible, mandatory exceptions and limitations to empower those who teach, learn and research, those who share in and build upon cultural heritage, and people with disabilities.

We note Group B’s Proposal Information Session on Generative AI and Copyright (SCCR/44/8) and look forward to the Secretariat organizing an open, inclusive, and balanced session at the next SCCR under the item of Copyright in the Digital Environment. As we have stated at the WIPO Conversation on Generative AI and Intellectual Property last September, generative AI raises important issues and is having an enormous impact on creativity, the commons, and better sharing, i.e., sharing that is inclusive, equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable. Our consultations on the matter have revealed a wide variety of views among creators, AI developers, and other stakeholders in the commons. They have also shed light on the fact that copyright is but one lens through which to consider generative AI; what is more, it is a rather blunt tool that often leads to black-and-white solutions that fall short of harnessing all the diverse possibilities that generative AI offers for human creativity. Our interventions on copyright and generative AI in the United States and the European Union contexts attest to those nuanced views. We thus call on the Secretariat to ensure the session will offer a balanced and representative set of perspectives.

We look forward to participating in the Committee’s next session, to take place from April 15 to 19, 2024, and to bring our expertise on copyright, better sharing of cultural heritage, and generative AI in order to help create a fairer and more balanced international copyright system in the public interest.

→ To stay informed about our policy and open culture work:

• Visit our blog for regular updates on our work on AI
• Sign up for our open culture mailing list
• Join the open culture platform
• Join the copyright platform
• Visit our website on open culture

Sign up for our Open Culture Matters newsletter >

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Today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. This convention was an important milestone in recognizing intangible cultural heritage or ICH — expressions of culture like performances, oral traditions, rituals and traditional knowledge — as an essential part of the world’s cultural heritage that deserves recognition and protection just like tangible heritage, such as sites and monuments. These cultural manifestations  keep heritage alive, and safeguarding them takes more than documentation — transmission from person to person and from generation to generation is key to their survival.

Over the last 20 years, hundreds of ICH elements have been officially recognized by UNESCO, offering them greater visibility and celebrating the diverse ways in which communities express, recreate and transmit their cultural heritage. In the Open Culture Program at Creative Commons, we believe that better sharing of ICH — i.e. making it available for broad access and reuse ethically, equitably, inclusively, respectfully, and responsibly — can be a catalyst for its safeguarding.

Through better sharing, ICH can be revitalized and expressed through new narratives with new voices, renewed, brought into modern contexts, and can be a part of today’s cultural landscape, sustaining dynamic evolution and transmission, in accordance with their bearers’ rights, wishes, needs, and aspirations. Better sharing helps to ensure that ICH manifestations can live beyond the database and continue to enrich the world’s diversity of cultural expressions. One example is the Wiki Loves Living Heritage project, supporting community work in documenting and sharing ICH around the world with the communities’ free, prior and informed consent. The initiative by Te Hiku Media to revitalize Te Reo Māori, the Māori language, as highlighted in Peter-Lucas Jones’s keynote at the CC Global Summit 2023, is a prime example of the importance of language as a vehicle for ICH transmission and safeguarding.

Better sharing to support safeguarding is one of the reasons why we are now leading a community initiative called “Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture” (TAROC), building upon the 2022 UNESCO Mondiacult Declaration’s recognition of culture as a global public good. This initiative aims to support the international community in developing a positive, affirmative, and influential international normative instrument (a “recommendation”) enshrining the values, objectives, and mechanisms for open culture to flourish. In the past few years, UNESCO adopted Recommendations for Open Educational Resources and Open Science, but there is currently no international instrument enshrining Open Culture. Such an instrument would recognize the importance of better sharing of culture as a means to activate and buttress wider cultural and information policy ambitions, including the safeguarding of ICH.

Learn more about the CC community’s TAROC initiative > Also in Shqiptare, Français, Español, 日本語.

Watch this space for more about TAROC and contact us at info@creativecommons.org to see how you can get involved in promoting open culture around the world.

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