Watch A Special Episode of the Open Culture Voices Series, Part 1

In this Special Episode of the Open Culture Voices series, CC hosts a conversation among five open culture experts from around the world:

• Dr. Andrea Wallace, Professor, University of Exeter Law School, United Kingdom
• Dr. Nkem Osuigwe, Director, African Library and Information Associations and Institutions, Ghana
• Medhavi Gandhi, Founder, The Heritage Lab, India
• Evelin Heidel (Scann), Program Lead at Wikimedistas de Uruguay, Uruguay
• Michael Peter Edson, Founding Director, Museum of Solutions, USA/India

This second part of the conversation revolves around several topics related to open culture, such as digital interactions, the climate crisis, and the challenges faced by the open culture movement. Our guests discuss the potential of open knowledge and culture in addressing environmental concerns, promoting diversity and access, and influencing policy changes.

Some of the other key points discussed include:

• The material impact of digital technologies on the climate crisis and the need for more sustainable approaches to other societal challenges and the position that cultural institutions — like galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, or GLAMs — should not shy away from digital for fear of the digital footprint.
• The pivotal role of cultural institutions as actors of change to promote open culture — as well as the huge cultural participation culture outside institutions. The universal fundamental right to participate in cultural life can be very hard to enjoy — openness can be a tool to help people engage with culture.
• The importance of collaboration and organization across institutions to achieve common goals — sharing and comparing experiences can lead to institutional standards that can in turn influence policy in meaningful ways to advance open culture.
• The challenges and ethical considerations surrounding the participation of individual creators and artisans in open culture — it is also important to reflect on who open culture might be pushing away and whose livelihoods it might threaten.
• The importance of funding for institutions and the need to support open culture initiatives financially.
• The potential for working with platforms to incorporate licensing options and improve copyright awareness.
• The potential impact of open culture in shaping and influencing society during times of change, such as the climate crisis.

These points reflect our guests’ perspectives on the challenges and opportunities within the open culture movement and their suggestions for realizing its potential.

Here’s what our guests believe needs to change if we want to realize open culture:

“I think that cultural heritage institutions need to move away from a risk-based approach into a transformational one…They have a lot of leverage on changing the conversation around copyright and I think that they need to use it.” — Evelin Heidel (Scann)

“Making sure that we elect people who fund the public sector, fund institutions, set up funding schemes for artists, for creatives, for people to do research and really cool projects around some of these things.” — Andrea Wallace

“One could take the point of view that the toolkits are there, that there doesn’t need to be some massive intervention. It can be used, reapplied, remixed, to solve local problems, policy problems, execution problems at any scale… I still see this as a point of inflection. We’ve built two thirds of a bridge, and we’re curious why people haven’t crossed that bridge.” — Michael Peter Edson

“Support in funding, especially for institutions which do grapple with whether to open, whether it will take away from their monetization practices…It’s nice to have web monetization going and maybe support that” — Medhavi Gandhi

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Want to hear more insights from Open Culture experts from around the world? Watch more episodes of Open Culture VOICES here >>

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