Read our previous interview with the Howlround organizers

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HowlRound is a non-profit knowledge commons by and for the theatre community based at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. We are a free and open platform that amplifies progressive, disruptive ideas about the art form and facilitates connection between diverse practitioners. One way we aim to connect the global theatre community is through a new free and open tool called the World Theatre Map. We created the World Theatre Map to try and solve a consistent and persistent problem in the theatre field— the isolation between theatre-makers and practice, especially across national borders.

Theatre knowledge is often limited to how “connected” one is within the field, or else it’s information diffuse or behind a paywall. We wanted to make something that could connect theatre-makers to each other absent of hierarchy or resource, and that could share information openly about what theatre is happening where and when, as well as information about the creative teams behind the work. The result is the first version of The World Theatre Map, which launched in January and is currently in a public beta period.

Why does it matter?
What if we could find ways to more efficiently share resources in the theatre field? What if theatre-makers could self-organize around areas of interest or identity, no matter their geography? What impact would that have on the art that is made? Could the theatre become more relevant to our cultural and political discourse? Could we build more empathy in our world? Could we build a better world?

What is it?

The World Theatre Map is a user-generated directory and real time map of the global theatre community. It’s a digital commons, free and open to all.

Who is it for?

It’s for all types of theatre-makers, theatre companies, and theatre institutions around the world, and anyone interested in theatre as an art form.

What can I use it for?

Anyone can create a user account to contribute (or edit) information on the World Theatre Map. You can create a profiles for individual theatre-makers and/or organizations. These profiles will immediately become a part of the searchable directory. You can add information about specific theatre events and the show profile will link together these events to display the production history of that piece. You can search the ever-growing directory to discover and connect to organizations, people, shows, and events. You can see what theatre is happening today around the world. You can read and watch HowlRound content related to a person or organization on the World Theatre Map.

For folks who feel compelled to participate more deeply in this global endeavor, we’ve recently issued a call for World Theatre Map Ambassadors to help enhance our outreach efforts and more importantly, to begin shaping the future of this map and its functionality.

What’s Next

We are using this public beta period to solicit feedback from the field about what is working, what should be improved, as well as future features that could be useful. This feedback will shape Version 2 World Theatre Map. This version is in English and Spanish and we hope to expand to more languages in the future.

 

 

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This week, we’re featuring stories from this year’s State of the Commons report, which highlights the impact of our global community by exploring the wide array of creativity and knowledge that is freely available to the world under under CC licenses. Read more about why this report marks our biggest year yet. 

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Supported by the Wiki Education Foundation, Azzam created a course for the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program that encourages and supports medical students in their efforts to edit Wikipedia articles on health-related topics. The impact of these students’ work is described in a research article entitled, “Why Medical Schools Should Embrace Wikipedia: Final-Year Medical Student Contributions to Wikipedia Articles for Academic Credit at One School,” which was published in Academic Medicine, a top academic medical journal.

Medical and health-related articles on Wikipedia are among the top articles viewed by the general public. The articles edited and improved by the medical students in Dr. Azzam’s course were viewed 1.1 million times during the two months that the students were actively editing the articles. The 42 articles have been collectively viewed over 22 million times over the past year.

Azzam’s work established a course based solely on open educational practice, which resulted in new works being added to the commons and existing works being adapted via Wikipedia.

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This week, we’ll be featuring stories from this year’s State of the Commons report, which highlights the impact of our global community by exploring the wide array of creativity and knowledge that is freely available to the world under under CC licenses. Read more about why this report marks our biggest year yet. 

In November 2016, we interviewed the Lebanese artist Maya Zankoul about her impact as a CC creator. We were thrilled to feature her work in this year’s State of the Commons.

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Zankoul’s first book, Amalgam, was published in 2009 under a CC BY-NC license. The book sprung from her popular web comic exploring life, work, and art in Beirut and beyond.

Zankoul’s work touches on the connections between cultures with illustrations shaped by her rich, artistic world. Her newest book, Beirut – New York, was published this autumn.

“I find that my illustrations allow people to see things differently. It allows them to step outside the status quo.” – Maya Zankoul

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We are so pleased to announce that the official translation of CC 4.0 Licenses into Turkish are now available so Turkish speaking communities can use them in their own language.

Public consultation for the translation took place in March 2017 and was coordinated by the Creative Commons Turkey team. Before and after the consultation, intense work has been put into the process including discussions, meetings, cross checking terminologies, proofreading, fine-tuning. Linguists, lawyers, librarians, IT experts and researchers have been involved in the work.

A few people should be named here to thank for special efforts to make this happen. CC Turkey Public Lead Ilkay Holt, Technical Lead Orcun Madran, Legal Partner Serhat Koc (LL.M IT), Legal Partner Selva Kaynak (LL.M IP) lead this work. We would also like to thank to Sirin Tekinay who initiated CC Turkey movement in Turkey and Gultekin Gurdal, Director of IZTECH Library for their great contribution in finalizing the review process.

Creative Commons 4.0 licenses in Turkish is an entry point to a shared, free, and open society in Turkish. Around the world, people are encouraged to produce, share what they produce, reuse, adopt standards and encourage reuse, and open up innovation.

But even more important than using the tools of Creative Commons, adopting open licenses requires a philosophy. “Openness” must be contained every step of the way, from the concept of openness to how we create works, where we keep them, how we allow them to be used, and how we should use the works created by others. In all of these steps, openness, transparency, and openness to sharing and an attitude that supports the re-use of our work is important.

With Creative Commons, we embrace the “some rights reserved” approach to copyright instead of “all rights reserved,” This approach requires copyright reform, in which the conventional-traditional-stereotyped copyright laws leave its place in a structure that will strengthen the creativity of society.

This is an integral part of the cultural, literary, scientific and artistic field we are trying to define through Creative Commons and open license movements and is why the legal texts of Creative Commons licenses are now crucial in Turkish.

This is a milestone achievement for Turkey in the adoption of open licenses, which is an invaluable component of an open society. This will help significantly to improve open policies and share legally. We now invite Turkish commoners to use the CC licenses in Turkish and start sharing.

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Diego Gómez, the Colombian student who for the last three years has been prosecuted for sharing an academic paper online, has been cleared of criminal charges. The decision was delivered today by a judge in the Bogotá Circuit Criminal Court.

In 2014 Diego was a student in conservation and wildlife management, with poor access to many of the resources and databases that would help him conduct his research. In conducting his research, Diego found and shared a academic paper online so that others could read and learn from it, just as he did. Gómez was prosecuted for copyright infringement, and faced up to eight years in prison.

The decision to clear Diego of criminal charges is an important move in the interest of the public good. Instead of prosecuting students for sharing knowledge, our societies should be encouraging the free exchange of scientific information by reinforcing positive norms around scholarship and collaboration, promoting open access to research, and toning down out of control copyright remedies that serve no reasonable public interest purpose.

Even with today’s verdict, Diego’s situation is not over. The prosecutor has appealed the ruling, so the case will continue. Gomez’s defense team plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign to support the cost of defending the appeal. Those who wish to help Diego can sign the following petition and will be notified when the crowdfunding campaign launches: http://www.sharingisnotacrime.org

Diego has been supported by individuals and organisations from around the world, with leadership from the Colombian digital rights group Fundación Karisma.

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