Getting ready for OpenCulture
In June 2011, the Collections Trust will be holding an international conference to explore and progress the themes of OpenCulture. Our aim is to work with the International Council of Museums to bring together some of the world’s leading thinkers about the arts and culture and to explore the shape of cultural services in the years ahead.
The OpenCulture initiative has been running for around two years now, and has already delivered a number of programmes with the common aim of promoting a more open, democractic approach to cultural services. These include:
- A revised version of the SPECTRUM standard incorporating the Revisiting Collections methodology which helps cultural organisations to capture user-generated knowledge alongside their own Collections information.
- The Culture Grid, which connects digital content from libraries, archives and museums with the mainstream of online service provision.
- Incorporating the principles of OpenCulture into Museum Studies, Library and Information and other HE/FE course curricula
The OpenCulture event in 2011 will capture the key threads of this conversation across the International community, addressing:
- Whether Culture is a human right, and what this might mean for cultural services
- How cultural institutions can collect, preserve and curate the modern world
- The role of Culture in promoting tolerance and understanding in a time of conflict
- Whether all Cultures have an equal right to representation
- What is the duty of the international Cultural community to repatriate artefacts
- What is the real Digital Opportunity for Culture on and through the web
Through these high-level discussions, we hope to engage with strategic agencies, policymakers and active practitioners to have an open and honest conversation about the role of Culture in a stable, harmonious, integrated and econmically productive society.
I’ll keep this blog updated with further information about the event as it progresses. In the meantime, I would welcome comments from any of you about these themes, or themes we might have missed which would be worth including.
