Illustration from the book "Songs, naval and national" by Thomas Dibdin, published in London, England in 1841.

Until recently, I had never heard of the sea shanty “The Wellerman”. My sea shanty repertoire consisted of “What can you do with a drunken sailor” to sea-songs on the soundtrack of Master and Commander. However, Nathan Evans, a fellow Scot who hails, like me, from North Lanarkshire, has changed all of this. His rendition…

Brunch_final by Alexander King (CC BY-SA) derivative of Jan Rombauer's Cheers 2

Generally speaking, 2020 hasn’t been a great year. That’s obvious. But we’re not here to focus on the awful things that have happened (and are still happening) this year. Instead, we’re here to tell you a good news story about 2020: a story about collaboration, innovation, and creativity. A story about the present and the…

Fashion Plate (1886) published by Abel Goubad et Fils, French via the Smithsonian Design Museum (CC0)

On November 2 and 3, 2020, Creative Commons (CC), the European Fashion Heritage Association (EFHA) and the Onassis Foundation held the online symposium: Is Sharing Always Caring? Bringing together 250 participants from 38 countries on four continents— from museum professionals to fashion design students all the way to big fashion brands—the event was an opportunity…

In March we hosted the second Institute for Open Leadership, and in our summary of the event we mentioned that the Institute fellows would be taking turns to write about their open policy projects. I had the privilege of participating in the second Institute for Open Leadership (IOL), held in Cape Town and hosted by…

Girl in white kimono, George Hendrik Breitner, 1894; CC0 Yesterday Europeana published a great case study documenting the experiences of the Dutch Rijksmuseum in opening up access to their collection of digital public domain images. The case study was written by Joris Pekel, community coordinator for cultural heritage at the Europeana Foundation. Over the last…