Over the last several months, Creative Commons has collaborated with the American Library Association (ALA) on the first-ever print complement to the CC Certificate program—and we are thrilled to announce that the book will be available in November!  

The CC Certificate program is Creative Commons’ official training in open licensing. It targets copyright law, CC legal tools, and the recommended practices of working in our global, shared commons. The CC Certificate is currently offered as a 10-week online course, or as a 1-week in-person training (bootcamp) to educators and academic librarians.

After training hundreds of academics, technologists, lawyers, instructional designers, and non-government organizations, we’ve received many requests to make the Certificate accessible to more people. Addressing that demand, we:

• Implemented a training program for facilitators, so we can host more classes at once;
• Launched a scholarship program to make the Certificate program more affordable to colleagues in the Global South; 
• Collaborated with colleagues around the world on translations in multiple languages as well as Certificates for different audiences (ex: GLAM); 
• Posted all of our course content freely accessible in downloadable file formats online; 

And now, we’ve collaborated with the American Library Association to create the print companion to our online course! Titled Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians, this publication is licensed CC BY, and offers an additional way to access the open-licensed Certificate content. Pre-order this book in print at the ALA bookstore, ahead of its official release in November 2019. 

Learn more about the CC Certificate course here.

The post Book Preview: “Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians” appeared first on Creative Commons.

Today the Fabricatorz Foundation announced an open call for applicants for the Bassel Khartabil Fellowship. 

The Fellowship supports outstanding individuals developing free culture projects in their communities under adverse circumstances, honoring the legacy of beloved artist, open source technology innovator, free culture advocate Bassel Khartabil.

Bassel was Creative Commons’ Syrian project lead, the cofounder of Syria’s first hackerspace, and a prolific open source contributor to projects like Firefox and Wikipedia. Bassel’s final project, relaunched as #NEWPALMYRA, entailed building free and open 3D models of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. In his work as a computer engineer, educator, artist, musician, cultural heritage researcher, and thought leader, Bassel modeled a more open world, impacting lives globally.

Bassel was taken from the streets in March of 2012 in a military arrest and interrogated and tortured in secret in a facility controlled by Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate. Despite international outrage at his treatment and calls for his release, in October of 2015 he was moved to an undisclosed location and executed shortly thereafter.

“Bassel was not only a dear friend, but also a fearless advocate for free culture who showed us all what a true commitment to the betterment of humanity looked like,” said Barry Threw, Executive Director of Fabricatorz Foundation. “His work could not have succeeded without the friendship of a global community. With supporters like Mozilla Foundation and Creative Commons, we can make sure the next generation can advance the values core to Bassel’s life.”

Fellows are expected to lead projects or initiatives that will catalyze free culture, particularly in societies vulnerable to attacks on freedom of expression and free access to knowledge.

Special consideration will be given to applicants operating within closed societies and in developing economies where other forms of support are scarce, but all interested applicants are encouraged to apply.

The Fellowship is organized by Fabricatorz Foundation with support from Creative Commons and Mozilla Foundation, along with partnership from Khartabil’s final projects: Nophotozone and #NEWPALMYRA.

How to apply: 

Fellowship applications will be accepted on BasselKhartabil.org, or by email at fellowship@basselkhartabil.org, through September 28th. 

The Fellow will be selected by a jury of free culture community luminaries, and presented at the 10th anniversary Mozilla Festival, from October 21-27 in London. Throughout their one-year term, the chosen Fellow will receive a stipend of $50,000 USD, mentorship from affiliate organizations, skill development, project promotion, and fundraising support from the partner network, as well as other benefits.

Find more details about the Fellowship at BasselKhartabil.org

The post Announcing an Open Call for Proposals: The Bassel Khartabil Fellowship appeared first on Creative Commons.

We’re excited to release our latest Teespring campaign that features the artwork created by João Pombeiro for the 2019 CC Global Summit!

When we asked Portuguese artist and filmmaker, João Pombeiro to design a logo for the 2019 CC Global Summit, we were confident he would create something that would capture the global movement for the commons. He didn’t disappoint.

By using only the CC search tool, the public domain and CC0 licensed images, João crafted a unique piece of art (licensed under CC BY) that resonated with our community.

Support Creative Commons and order these unique t-shirts, sweatshirts and infant onesies today on Teespring.

The post You Loved the 2019 CC Global Summit Logo, So We Put it on a T-Shirt appeared first on Creative Commons.

Why mess with success?

We’re happy to announce that the 2020 CC Global Summit will once again be in Lisbon from May 14-16, 2020! Please save the date!

All of our workshops, talks, planning sessions and small group sessions will be hosted in the beautiful and vibrant Museu do Oriente, located on the Alcântara Waterfront. The event will again be co-hosted by Creative Commons and CC Portugal, who did such a tremendous job co-hosting the 2019 CC Summit.

We hope to build on the success of this year’s CC Summit, where nearly 400 Creative Commoners gathered from across the globe to attend over 130 sessions and listen to seven incredible keynotes. If you’re interested in the global movement for the commons as an activist, advocate, artist, librarian, educator, lawyer, technologist, etc., we want you to join us for discussion and debate, workshops and planning, talks and community building.

Are you interested in sponsoring the 2020 CC Global Summit?

Sponsorship levels | CC is pleased to invite sponsors to join us for the 2020 Global Summit in Lisbon at a range of levels from $2,000 to $50,000, including Exhibitor Sponsors, Lounge Sponsors, Lunch Sponsors, Keynote Sponsors, and more.

To learn more about sponsoring the 2020 Global Summit, contact Jami Vass, Director of Development, at jami@creativecommons.org.

Where the money goes | CC’s annual Global Summit draws together an international community of technologists, legal experts, academics, activists, and community members who work to promote the power of open worldwide. The powerful act of gathering these diverse networks in one place enables CC to advance open strategy, develop stronger teams, and cross-pollinate expertise to create an ever-stronger community of open advocates.

Global Summit Sponsors make this annual cross-cultural event possible, providing an essential opportunity to advance and maximize digital creativity, collaboration, and sharing. The Summit is a key gathering of individuals working in the open knowledge sphere — and it is only as impactful as the breadth of voices we are able to engage and include in the event. In addition to supporting the convening at large, sponsors help support our Summit Scholarship Fund, enabling Creative Commons to broaden the spectrum of voices that are able to participate in these conversations — which in turn impacts the broader open knowledge space year-round.

Information on programming and how you can get involved coming soon. For updates, subscribe to our mailing list or join us on Slack.

Finally, to learn more about the 2019 CC Summit, be sure to check out this blog wrap-up and watch all seven of the keynotes.

The post It’s Happening—The CC Global Summit Will Be in Lisbon, May 14-16! appeared first on Creative Commons.

Well this is exciting—all of the keynote talks from CC’s 2019 Global Summit are now online!

We wanted to make sure that the insights shared by the summit’s seven amazing keynote speakers are accessible to people who couldn’t make it to the event, so we’ve uploaded their talks to YouTube and made them available under a CC Attribution license.

So, while you’re sipping your morning coffee, riding the bus to work, or settling down for bed, we encourage you to watch (and share) each of these inspiring keynotes that cover a range of important topics—from decolonizing archives in Palestine to the barriers of copyright reform in Europe. 

Watch all of the keynotes through the links below. 

• Adele Vrana and Siko Bouterse: “Whose Knowledge?”
• Haggen So: “Open Business Models as an Integrated Part of the Creative Commons Movement”
• James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins: “A Tale of the Musical Commons: Theft! A History of Music” (Note: This talk is not published on YouTube under a CC license, due to its use of musical recordings)
• Kelsey Merkley: “Horizontal Hostility”
• Majd Al-shihabi: “Archives as Training Grounds for Democracy” 
• Natalia Mileszyk: “Overcoming the Sin of Silence: Let’s Start with Basic Questions”
• Sophie Bloeman: “A Shared Digital Europe”

Thank you to all of the keynote speakers for sharing their expertise and for being a crucial part of this year’s summit. To learn more about everything that happened at CC’s 2019 Global Summit, check out our wrap-up blog post.

The post Now You Can Watch the Keynotes from CC’s 2019 Global Summit appeared first on Creative Commons.