After introducing the CC Italy Chapter to you in July, the CC Netherlands Chapter in August, CC Bangladesh Chapter in September, CC Tanzania Chapter in October, and the CC India Chapter in November, the CC Mexico Chapter in December, and CC Argentina Chapter in January, we are now travelling to Africa to introduce the CC South Africa Chapter! 

The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) consists of 48 CC Country Chapters spread across the globe. They’re the home for a community of advocates, activists, educators, artists, lawyers, and users who share CC’s vision and values. They implement and strengthen open access policies, copyright reform, open education, and open culture in the communities in which they live.

To help showcase their work, we’re excited to continue our blog series and social media initiative: CC Network Fridays. At least one Friday a month, we’re traveling around the world through our blog and on Twitter (using #CCNetworkFridays) to a different CC Chapter, introducing their teams, discussing their work, and celebrating their commitment to open! 

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Say hello to CC South Africa!

The CC South Africa Chapter was formed in 2019. Its Chapter Lead is Paul West and its representative to the CC Global Network Council is Derek Moore. CC South Africa is a loose, value network of South African people and organizations who support the ideals and practices of the open movement. Members of the Chapter are committed to promoting and enabling the legal sharing of creative works, education, and other works with others. For this post, we spoke to Paul and Derek who told us a bit more about the Chapter’s work. 

CC: What open movement work is your Chapter actively involved in? What would you like to achieve with your work? 

CC South Africa: We supported the approval of the copyright amendment bill and objected to ongoing delays by SA Presidency in signing it into law. The Bill is being held up for issues, including resistance by international lobbies that are opposed to developing countries including FAIR USE in their copyright legislation. You can find more information by following @DeniseNicholson and in this article.  

We also work with Open Content Finder, a collaboratively-sourced directory of #OER for teaching and learning materials. @OpenUCT content carries CC licenses. Find out more here and by following @GlenCox. 

We were involved with the #feesmustfall resources for online and blended learning that were developed by four South African universities (UP, UJ. UCT & UFS) and were shared as open educational resources (CC BY SA NC) with other higher education institutions in South Africa. 

CC: What exciting project has your Chapter engaged in recently?

CC South Africa: We work with the @UNESCOICT4D which resulted in the report “Education for the most marginalised post‑COVID-19” and guidance note “Sharing open educational resources (OER) with Creative Commons (CC) open licenses“. For more information follow @PGWest. 

CC: What do you find inspiring and rewarding about your work in the open movement?

CC South Africa: Working in the open movement helps us create OPEN learning systems in 2021 that will provide free access to download, retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute to others. These require CC #OER licenses. See the guidance note and follow @CCSA and @PGWest for more information.

The “Open Umbrella” is a self-evaluation tool & field-guide, intended for online education. This OER offers manageable steps to course improvement. Future plans include 8 self-study modules, webinars & workshops over 3 years. For more information follow @weblearning.

CC: What are your plans for the future? 

CC South Africa: Especially for the rest of the pandemic, we will continue to meet and conduct encouraging messages using video conferences and newsy emails. Members are being encouraged to develop their own projects and share information on projects that include CC licenses through the Chapter. 

CC: What projects in your country are using CC licenses that you’d like to highlight? 

CC South Africa: 

Early reading projects (Bookdash and African Storybook) are making a significant impact and their work is being enabled with Creative Commons

• Beautifully told and illustrated early reading materials, packaged professionally and shared. Check this out via their website or follow @BookDash  
• Open Textbook projects (@dot4d) are being written and released    

CC: Anything else you want to share?

CC South Africa: Our Chapter membership has reached 50 people and there is even some interest from individuals in neighboring countries where Chapters have not yet been established. Everyone with a common interest to promote open education with CC licenses and to collaborate constructively with others is invited.

Thank you to the CC South Africa team, especially Paul and Derek for contributing to the CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this conversation 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).

The post Meet CC South Africa, Our Next Feature for CC Network Fridays! appeared first on Creative Commons.

There is a quiet, familiar beauty found in still life, a type of art that depicts primarily inanimate objects, like animals, food, or flowers. These comforting images offer a sense of certainty and simplicity in uncertain and complex times. This could explain why over six million Instagram users have fallen in love with still life during the latest round of global lockdowns due to COVID-19.

For many, our lives have become more still—the patterns of daily existence are bounded more than ever by the interior walls of our homes. Therefore, finding comfort in the everyday can bring about some internal peace. At its essence, the still life form has meaning far beyond the physical objects it depicts: it deals with the human condition and life itself. For most of human history, the comfort found in still lifes during precarious times would have been exclusive to those who owned these paintings, hanging them on their walls or keeping them locked away in safes. Today, however, due to the internet and the public domain, millions more have access to these comforting images.

As champions of the public domain and open access to culture, we wanted to share some of our favourite still lifes. Thanks to efforts by Open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) advocates and cultural heritage institutions, these images are accessible to anyone, anywhere to share, reuse, remix, and enjoy.

Created your own still life? Openly share it with the world by using CC0 during our #OpenSharingIsCaring challenge running until Sunday, February 14! Details here.

The post Still Life: Art That Brings Comfort in Uncertain Times appeared first on Creative Commons.

February is the time to share virtual hugs, chocolates, and witty cards with family and friends for Valentine’s Day (or “Friend’s Day” in Finland!) 

This Valentine’s Day, we want you to share something a little different: your creative work. 

In our Open Sharing is Caring challenge, we’re asking you to openly share an image, song, artwork, research paper, poem, GIF…whatever it may be with the world by gifting it to the public domain. (You can use CC0!) 

Let us know what you’re sharing using #OpenSharingIsCaring and tagging us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also share your work directly with us by emailing victoria@creativecommons.org! At the end of the challenge, we’ll publish a blog post with some of our favorite shared content! 

Let’s celebrate Valentine’s Day by generously giving to the public domain!

The post Open Sharing Is Caring: A Valentine’s Day Challenge appeared first on Creative Commons.

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.  

The post The Postal Worker, a Sea Shanty and the Public Domain appeared first on Creative Commons.