Title: Building an Initiative for UNESCO Recommendation on Open Culture
Speaker: Creative Commons' Brigitte Vézina, Jocelyn Miyara, Connor Benedict, Connor Benedict
Abstract: Creative Commons is leading a program on open culture. Part of that program is to build a global UNESCO recommendation for Open Culture.

We held a meeting in Lisbon in May 2023 with a group of experts and we are reporting back from this first expert meeting on building a UNESCO open culture recommendation, and would like to share with a broader and more diverse global audience within the open movement.

This will be a brief presentation to provide context followed by a brief Q^A and an invitation to contribute in the future.

For 20 years Creative Commons (CC) has been active in the cultural sphere, promoting open sharing of information, ideas, and artifacts to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world. CC’s legacy imbues our Open Culture Program and offers a solid scaffolding to our efforts to promote better sharing of cultural heritage. In September 2022, at MONDIACULT 2022, UNESCO Member States affirmed for the first time that culture is a global public good. At CC, we know that preservation, access, sharing, use, and reuse of such a public good are essential ingredients of thriving and resilient societies and are demonstrated contributors to sustainable development. But inadequate, nonexistent, or unclear public policies—particularly copyright laws—often raise unnecessary barriers around access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage. If we want to build a sustainable future for all, we need to unlock the possibilities of equitable and respectful sharing of cultural heritage in the digital age and drive the necessary policy change to support the entire sharing ecosystem.

With the aim to open initial discussions on the need to realize open culture as a global public good, we brought together experts to: exchange perspectives, explore potential common grounds on key principles, and devise strategies to drive policy action towards better sharing of cultural heritage. Through a series of facilitated exercises the group elaborated the historical and current context of open culture, explored the needs of this work to be taken forward, and described the vision that this is working towards.

The Wiki-community shares values with Creative Commons and has a history of mutual support and collaboration. This session is an effort to involve the wider open culture and GLAM community members in this important work.
Presented at: Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2023-08-18 06:55 to 7:15 UTC