A shyrdaq on the floor of a Kyrgyz home in Kyzyl-Jar, Aqsy, Jalalabat”, Kyrgyzstan by Firespeaker, here cropped, is licensed via CC BY-SA 3.0.

CC celebrates the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. CC’s community initiative “Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture” (TAROC) is designed to support the international community in developing a positive, affirmative, and influential recommendation enshrining the values, objectives, and mechanisms for open culture to flourish and, in particular, for open culture to serve as a means to safeguard intangible cultural heritage.

As part of our Open Culture Program, we at Creative Commons (CC) are exploring avenues to build momentum towards a UNESCO Recommendation on Open Culture. On 11 May, 2023, we hosted our first in-person Open Culture event, in Lisbon, Portugal. In this blog post, we look back at the day’s highlights and map out next…

The Creative Commons Open Education Team is pleased to provide a snapshot of progress made toward opening access and equity in education, through a look at our collective efforts in 2022.1 We laud the CC open education community for its important work throughout 2022. CC and community members’ open education efforts in 2022 included, but…

This week, the international community celebrates 30 years of the UNESCO Memory of the World Program. At Creative Commons (CC), we applaud the program’s achievements in enhancing preservation and access to documentary heritage from galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) around the globe. We laud the multitude of efforts enlisting documentary heritage to promote inclusive,…

This week, policymakers from around the world gather in Mexico for MONDIACULT2022, the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, a critical event that is bound to shape the future of international cultural policies worldwide. In the lead-up to MONDIACULT2022, Creative Commons’ (CC) Brigitte Vézina delivered a keynote to the international forum “Digitalizar…

  In 2020, we entered the last Decade of Action to implement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the target date for achieving the SDGs draws closer, UNESCO is engaging its Member States and the international community in a renewed reflection on cultural policies to address global challenges and set immediate and future…

Join us on Wednesday, 23 February for an online panel discussion, as we explore how open access to cultural heritage materials encourages artists to discover, share, and remix such materials.  In advance of the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development — Mondiacult 2022, Creative Commons is pleased to participate in the ResiliArt…

Graphic on page 11. UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. CC BY IGO 3.0 Creative Commons (CC) applauds the unanimous ratification of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science at UNESCO’s 41st General Conference. This landmark document is a major step forward towards creating a world in which better sharing of science is open and inclusive by…

The coronavirus outbreak not only sparked a health pandemic; it triggered an “infodemic” of misleading and fabricated news. As the virus spread, trolls and conspiracy theorists began pushing misinformation, and their deplorable tactics continue to this day. Nonsense has been shared about links to 5G phone masts or that a secret cure already exists, and…

New UNESCO House in Paris. United Nations. 1958-September-01 / CC BY-NC-ND

The UNESCO Open Educational Resources (OER) Recommendation was unanimously adopted on November 25 by 193 UNESCO member states at the 40th UNESCO General Conference. This milestone offers a unique opportunity to advance open education around the world. Why does it matter? This Recommendation is an official UNESCO instrument that gives national governments a specific list…