In 2017, the structure of the Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) was finalized. After two years of implementing structural changes flowing from this, it felt timely to have a conversation with CCGN members. We wanted to gather feedback and carry out research on the perspectives of network members, at a specific point in time. What was working? What wasn’t working? Why are people here?

We drafted a research brief in April 2019 which set out what aspects we wanted to learn about and how to collect the information. Open community member Isla Haddow-Flood from South Africa conducted a survey and interviews between December 2019 and February 2020. Many of our CCGN members were involved in this and we are grateful! In this blog, we’ve outlined some of the findings. For the full report, please follow this link. For the executive summary, follow this link. 

A sense of belonging

A key motivation for people joining and actively engaging in the CCGN ties to belonging. People are driven to be part of a group working together towards a common goal. Our members value each other and value the ability to exchange ideas and expertise. Most important is the feeling of being part of something bigger.

“The main element is people. To meet the right people. To convince them that CC is important and can be an alternative for institutions. I always believe that people are at the core of everything.” 

Common threads for belonging were:

• Doing important work together
• Working for the greater good of society 
• Trust
• Friendship and community
• Finding one’s ‘tribe’
• Impact and recognition, both locally and globally

Involvement in the movement

“I am doing this work as an implementer, creator, trainer, and license user because I believe in the power of sharing and the content. I do it because it is good for society.”

Reasons why people are involved, not only with the Creative Commons community but with the CCGN specifically, are plentiful. Some of the main drivers include building and maintaining a global community for the good of society, as well as advocating for change on a local and global level. People are engaged and involved in the work of the CCGN to make the world a better place. Our community is one of advocates, implementers, project creators, community builders, and many others. We come together around the idea of open sharing.

Common threads for involvement were:

• Advocacy and policy
• Furthering the good of society
• Building local community and being part of a global community
• Peer to peer learning
• Meeting one’s ‘heroes’

Opportunities to improve

Several needs were identified that need to be addressed so that the CCGN can be as valuable as possible to its members, allowing them to reach their full potential as participants in the open movement.

Implementation plans to address these needs will be incorporated into the overall work plans for the CCGN in 2021 and 2022. Major needs identified by the research include:

• Pathways and processes to guide people and institutions into and through the Network
• Coordination and discoverability of existing resources for Network members to access and reuse, ranging from documentation to individual expertise
• Detailing of recommended official positions within each Chapter, to allow for better internal Chapter structures and cross-Chapter collaboration
• Formalizing peer-to-peer connections to enable pathways to Network entrance, opportunities for knowledge sharing, and mentorship
• Exploring opportunities for regional coordination
• Having communications and resources more broadly available in languages other than English

For more information, please visit the CCGN website. Finally, we encourage anyone who may be interested to download and read the full report. Not a CC Global Network member? Get involved today as an individual member or by joining a CC Chapter!

The post A Snapshot in Time: A Look at the Creative Commons Global Network appeared first on Creative Commons.

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 of “The Wellerman” went viral, with people building on the song through duets and remixes. (Even Kermit the Frog made a version!)  

Sea shanties have caught the public imagination. Perhaps it is because the thought of an adventure at sea is a magical escape during a global pandemic. When we can’t sing together, play music, or go to a live performance in person, our experiences in the physical world are restricted. Our experiences in the virtual world, however, are expanding. This burst of creativity is enriching the public domain. Globally, people are inspired to remix, rework, and re-use cultural content with life-changing effects. After his sea shanty rendition went viral on TikTok, Nathan was signed by Polydor Records, with his debut single reaching number three in the UK charts.

The public domain is a shining light in today’s darkness, but it is not guaranteed.

It is important to note that this flourishing creative scene is only possible because sea shanties are in the public domain—not under restrictive copyright rules. Therefore, they can be played, reused, dueted, remixed, and transformed. This, combined with the internet, means a postal worker in Airdrie can reach a global audience within seconds. Thanks to emerging technologies and social platforms, the public domain can both enable creativity and benefit from it with the invention of new works that are also free of copyright restrictions. (The hope is that these new works are put back into the public domain!) This expressiveness in new works and collaborations is bringing joy and uplifting our spirits as we continue to face daunting challenges.

The public domain is a shining light in today’s darkness, but it is not guaranteed. This year, for example, marked only the third year in a row in which published works entered the public domain due to copyright expiration in the United States following the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act. In many countries, similar acts have extended copyright protection, restricting the ability of the public to reuse, remix, and re-share creative works. Further, at Creative Commons, we believe that some works are too important to be protected by copyright, such as digitized cultural artefacts or scientific research. That’s one reason we created Creative Commons Zero, a public domain mark that anyone can use to “opt-out of copyright and database protection.” 

We all benefit when knowledge, culture, and history are made accessible and shareable, that’s why we must protect the public domain and continue to advocate for open access to knowledge and culture. Whether it is sea shanties today or Gaelic boat songs tomorrow, the public domain is ours and ours alone, no matter where you are in the world. For this, we should be truly grateful.  

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We are happy to introduce CC Belgium—the new CC Chapter in the heart of Europe.

We have been running as an informal chapter for more than 10 years with different people as Chapter Leads. For several years, a team led by Severine Dussolier from CRID at the University of Namur, stewarded the translations of the CC License Suite (adapting them to Belgian law). The Chapter was then led by Yannick H’Madoun (with KU Leuven at that time), followed by Gwen Franck who has been very active as an EIRE representative. As a former member of the international Creative Commons’ team, Gwen has provided many important connections. In 2020, she passed the lead to Nicolas Pettiaux. We are now a formal CC Chapter, organizing new activities and focusing on:

• Museums
• Poetry
• Arts
• GLAMs 
• Publishing works of known Belgian authors under CC-BY-SA 
• Getting actively involved in the CC Open Education initiative as we believe education is the key to securing a more peaceful future. (Plus, Nicolas is a teacher!) 

With Severine, then Yannick, Gwen and Nicolas, the Chapter has managed to have diverse leadership, both in gender and language (French and Dutch are the two main languages of Belgium). This is proof of a strong will to be inclusive and consensual (probably a characteristic of the Belgian people)! 

The Chapter has been quite active in promoting the CC licenses during events and has organized conferences; especially related to education, art, poetry and GLAMs. Close coordination has also taken place with the Belgian Wikimedia team and CC Belgium is also part of the Open Knowledge Foundation Belgium. 

CC Belgium counts just a small group of official members: Agnez Bewer, Jan Ainali, Gwen Franck, Maxim Lambrecht, and Nicolas Pettiaux. However, we are supported by other activists and promoters of free licenses and common goods that help to carry the idea across Belgium and keep the discussions going. We also have great connections with the French and Dutch CC Chapters, and will hopefully build connections with other European and international ones.

CC Belgium exclusively uses free software tools (as defined by the Free Software Foundation). For us, it’s very important to be truly inclusive and to maintain our integrity by using these open tools to fully control our information systems and to not force anyone to release private data or use the logins controlled by Google or Microsoft, for example. Our collaboration tools are hosted and kindly offered by DomainePublic, a libre hoster. We’re grateful for their support.

We would love to see the culture of sharing, including the CC License Suite, taught in schools in order to replace the default copyright that prevents sharing. Sharing is the key to knowledge dissemination without borders. Everyone is richer when our culture and knowledge are shared extensively and openly, especially when the exclusive reappropriation is forbidden (the SA clause). This creates a beneficial virtuous circle.

We are one of the newest CC Chapters and we are very pleased to join this extremely important network of official CC Chapters, where every member can change the world through collaboration. 

Join us! 

You’re welcome in Belgium! If you’re around, we’d love to show you our nice little country with friendly multilingual people who appreciate cycling and football, good chocolate, waffles, beers and surrealism. Fun fact: Our national mascot is a peeing child!

If you live in Belgium and care about CC licences, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us at cc-be@creativecommons.domainepublic.net. We’d love to know all the activists, promoters, and curious people interested in sharing, education, and related subjects.

Thank you, from the CC Belgium team! 

Thank you to the CC Belgium team for contributing to the CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this shared on Twitter, click here. To become a member of the CCGN, visit our website!

: Featured image has icons by Guilherme Furtado and Vectors Point via Noun Project (CC BY 3.0).

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Information access and sharing is the commitment of the new CC Morocco!

The establishment of the CC Chapter Morocco is an outcome of many years of interest of its members in developing open access to scientific information and creating open repositories. The main objective of CC Morocco is to strengthen skills about open access, Creative Commons, and open educational resources in the country. The Chapter aims to also provide an open access library to disseminate scientific publications and contribute to the development of local research which meets the needs of Moroccan society.

We organized the first virtual CC Chapter meeting on 16 December 2020 to have an exchange around open access and to understand the opportunities offered by CC licenses to both share and protect creations. I, Hanae Lrhoul, was elected as the representative to the Global Network Council and Moroccan Chapter Lead to promote open access to information and usage of CC licenses locally, regionally, and internationally.

We want you to get involved!

Join us at CC Morocco:

• To participate in innovative projects for the development of Creative Commons licenses, open-access resources and open culture;
• To participate in our scientific events, training, and international conferences;
• To integrate a team of professionals from various backgrounds who share the same vision of knowledge creation and dissemination (librarians, educators, information professionals, researchers, creators, etc.);
• To enrich your professional network and integrate our international network of trainers.

If you are a researcher, an information professional, an artist, a creator or just interested in the open movement and if you share our values of openness, transparency, creativity, and equitable access to information, it’s time to join CC Morocco and realize exciting new opportunities!

We invite you to visit the CC Morocco chapter website for more information. You can also contact us directly at openaccessmorocco@gmail.com or on Facebook.

Thank you to the CC Morocco team, especially Hanae Lrhoul, for contributing to the CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this shared on Twitter, click here. To become a member of the CCGN, visit our website!

: Featured image has icons by Guilherme Furtado and Vectors Point via Noun Project (CC BY 3.0).

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“lightning” by duane.schoon is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In December, the CC Open Education Platform hosted a series of open education “lightning talks” (7 minutes + Q&A) in which open education practitioners discussed their work and answered questions with a global audience. We are grateful to all 24 speakers for sharing their open education work!

To maximize access, we recorded all of the talks with the permission of the speakers. Many of the speakers have also shared their slides and other resources. Enjoy!

8 December 2020

• Sue Jones: Cognitively Accessible Math OER (Video / Slides)
• David Wiley: Sustaining and Improving OER (Video / Slides)
• Chris Morrison & Jane Secker: How openness helped us address the challenge of copyright and online teaching at a time of crisis (Video / Resource)
• Nathan Smith: Starting a local consortium to increase collaboration around OER (Video / Slides / Resource)
• Yasin Dahi: Learnful: An open platform for OER authoring and collaboration in Canada (Video / Slides)
• Christer Gundersen: Crowdsourcing translation of early grade reading resources at scale (Video)
• TJ Bliss: Open Education in Idaho Higher Education (Video / Slides)
• Grif Peterson: Increasing equity with OER through learning circles (Video / Slides)

11 December 2020

• Judith Sebesta: Texas Learn OER (Video / Slides / Resource)
• André Rocha: Fabschools (Video)
• Suma Parahakaran: Educating for Human Values and Ethics in Schools (Video / Slides)
• Yogesh K S: Wikimedia and MediaWiki in Open Education (Video / Slides / Resource)
• Stephen Downes: A Personal Learning Platform (Video)
• Hugh McGuire: Where can I find Pressbooks books? Why, the Pressbooks Directory (Video / Slides / Resource)
• Omshivaprakash: Digital archiving to build OER for local languages (Video / Slides)
• Nate Angell: Open Learning Experience Bingo (Video / Slides / Blog)

17 December 2020

• Roxanne Russell: Part you, part text, part machine, all learning (Video / Slides / Resource)
• Fernando Daguanno: OER are not always textbooks (Video / Slides)
• Meri McCoy-Thompson: We Are Resilient (Video / Slides)
• Werner Westermann: Offline OER to mitigate learning loss (Video)
• Sarah Hutton: Open from the Start: Strategies for Integrating OER and Open Pedagogical Practice Into First-Year and General Programs at UMass Amherst (Video / Slides)
• Lance Eaton: The Public Dollar: Finding & Flipping the Value of the Commons (Video / Slides)
• Rajeeb Dutta: Hello Santali (Video / Slides)
• Dan McGuire: Geogebra + Illustrative Mathematics + your LMS = Great Teaching and Learning (Video / Slides / Resource)

If you like the video bumpers – you can download them here.

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