Creative Commons and the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage) announce the launch of the Open Heritage Statement, now open for signature by governments, organizations, and institutions worldwide. Developed by more than 60 organizations across 25 countries within the Coalition, the Statement defines shared values, highlights key challenges, and sets action-oriented priorities for closing the global gap in equitable access to heritage in the public domain.

“A Turn in the Road” by Alfred Sisley (1873), CC0, Art Institute of Chicago, remixed with “TAROCH balloon” by Creative Commons/Dee Harris, 2025, CC0. The (Under-Realized) Potential of Open Heritage To understand our present, we need to know our past: our memories, our history, our heritage. Over the last two decades, pioneers of open heritage…

“Watering Place at Marley” by Alfred Sisley, 1875, CC0, Art Institute of Chicago, remixed with “TAROCH balloon” by Creative Commons/Dee Harris, 2025, CC0. Open Heritage and Contemporary Creativity Apollo or Venus in your living room? This is the proposition made by Denmark’s Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) upon openly sharing its vast collection of 3D…

“Landscape along the Seine with the Institut de France and the Pont des Arts” by Alfred Sisley, 1875, CC0, Art Institute of Chicago, remixed with “TAROCH balloon” by Creative Commons/Dee Harris, 2025, CC0. We’re kicking off a three-part series leading up to the launch of the Open Heritage Statement in October. The Statement, developed by…

UNESCO © 2023 by Brigitte Vézina is licensed under CC BY 4.0 We are proud to announce that we are now established as an official NGO partner to UNESCO (consultative status). UNESCO stands for “United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization” and is the UN’s specialized agency that aims to foster international cooperation in the…

Havsstrand by Maurice Denis. Public Domain. Swedish National Museum Many people can benefit from open access to cultural heritage in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes — from creators seeking inspiration to researchers discovering new interpretations, all the way to cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) connecting with more audiences, and the general…

Interesting Story by Laura Muntz Lyall. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. With new publications, events, and the launch of a new coalition, the CC Open Culture Program accomplished a lot! Here are some highlights: At the Open Culture Strategic Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, we gathered nearly 50 experts from every continent to co-create a strategic…

Autumn Landscape by Magnus Ecknell is marked with CC0 1.0. We are excited to share a new video series titled Open Culture Capsules. In this multi-series video collection, we address some of the most frequently asked questions about our work in Creative Commons’ (CC) Open Culture Program. You can preview the series below and find…

Creative Commons (CC) is proud to launch the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage), a collaborative effort to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. We are grateful to the Arcadia Fund for supporting this initiative. Below we share an overview of TAROCH and…

In May 2024, CC organized a strategic workshop in Lisbon to develop a roadmap for future action to advance our work towards a UNESCO instrument on open cultural heritage. In this blog post, we share the full report and some of its key highlights.