The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (MKiDN) just announced a range of grant programs for the year 2010, including the program “Cultural Education”. Thanks to the efforts of the Coalition for Open Education (KOED) and the cooperation of Ministry officials, the program includes for the first time incentives to release educational content under free licenses. Grant proposals will receive up to 10% of all possible points for making project results publicly available, with additional points given to projects “publishing works online with a right to re-use, for instance through one of the free licenses.”

The Ministry’s Cultural Education program is the first of its kind in Poland to encourage grant recipients to freely and publicly share educational content. The program, with a budget of 11,5 million Polish zloty (about 4 million Euro), will fund educational projects that promote creativity and self-expression, as well as provide children and youth with extra-curricular artistic education.

KOED is coalition formed by one of CC Poland’s affiliate institutions, the Interdisciplinary Center for Modelling at University of Warsaw, and colleagues Wikimedia Polska Association, Foundation Modern Poland, and the Polish Librarians Association. We blogged about its inception in January 2009.