How can equitable access to heritage help solve global challenges? That is the question we addressed during our Exploratory Dialogue, a major event we hosted on 29 April, 2026, at UNESCO House in Paris, France, to celebrate the Open Heritage Statement and explore its synergies with UNESCO’s priorities in tackling the most urgent problems facing the world today. 

In this blog post, we set the event in its wider context, look back at some of the highlights from the discussions, report on our key takeaways, and pave the way for what comes next. 

The Dialogue in Context

This Dialogue was the culmination of years of research and consultations, policy analysis, movement building, and community mobilization, as well as global advocacy efforts towards more equitable access to public domain heritage in the digital environment. You can read more about the journey that took us from shared vision to global action. A remarkable milestone, the Dialogue brought together over 100 participants, including UNESCO staff, Permanent Delegation representatives, National Commissions, cultural heritage practitioners, funders, and open heritage advocates and enthusiasts from around the world.

Our aim by convening this Dialogue was twofold. It was an opportune moment to recognize the joint efforts of the Open Heritage Coalition and its global network of ambassadors in elaborating the Open Heritage Statement, a declaration of principles anchored in our shared belief in the positive potential of equitable access to heritage. This event was dedicated to the hard work, energy, and collaborative spirit that turned shared ideals into a tangible plea to fill an enormous international policy gap. Indeed, despite open heritage’s clear potential for achieving UNESCO’s key policy objectives, there are still multiple undue, unfair barriers to access to heritage in the public domain, and the Coalition was convinced that greater awareness, mobilization, and political will were needed among UNESCO Member States. 

Hence the Dialogue was also a favorable occasion to explore how access to heritage in all its forms can make a significant contribution to achieving UNESCO’s mandate of addressing global challenges. Specifically, it was a critical opportunity to sensitize UNESCO stakeholders to the relevance of the Open Heritage Statement as a foundation for further discussions across diverse areas of UNESCO’s mandate and in a cross-sectoral, transversal approach, spanning areas of heritage protection, preservation, and sharing, of course, but also access to education, to the fight against climate change, all the way to artistic creativity and cultural diversity, social inclusion, ethical artificial intelligence, and more. 

Key Takeaways

The discussion brought together diverse experts from across the world and showcased various real-life examples in which equitable access to public domain heritage can make a positive impact in many of UNESCO’s priorities, in line with its mandate and in support of the fundamental right to participate in cultural life. Their perspectives helped us understand how access to heritage is vital in the digital environment as well as how unfair barriers keep impeding such access.

For more information, you can see the full program, read the detailed summary of each session, and watch the recordings in English and French.

A resounding message united these interventions into a coherent narrative: there is an urgent need to lower the barriers that unfairly hamper access and prevent us from sustaining resilient and connected societies. Open heritage is a means to advance cultural policy goals aiming to remove unfair socio-economic barriers to access to heritage in the digital environment, in accordance, notably, with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Global collective action is now more important than ever, because without global policy alignment, the full potential of open heritage remains largely unrealized.

Future Outlook: From Dialogue to Recommendation 

Sign the Open Heritage Statement

We are very proud of what the Open Heritage Coalition has accomplished. Well before its deadline, it reached its objectives of developing the Open Heritage Statement alongside a comprehensive advocacy strategy and campaign. As our movement evolves into its next phase, the Coalition is no longer accepting new members. As the new anchor point in this dynamic initiative, we encourage organizations and institutions to sign the Open Heritage Statement and join the momentum built by close to 100 signatories to date in order to show broad alignment and global support. To add your voice to the call, visit openheritagestatement.org and sign the Statement today. 

Explore the Feasibility of an Open Heritage Recommendation

We call on UNESCO Member States to join the dialogue towards additional action by UNESCO to ensure equitable access to public domain heritage in the digital environment, possibly even by co-creating a new normative instrument, in accordance with UNESCO’s existing normative framework. Recently, UNESCO has demonstrated a strong commitment to open through the 2019 Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) and the 2021 Recommendation on Open Science. These recommendations were game changers. A UNESCO Recommendation on Open Heritage would be the next logical step.

To achieve this, UNESCO Member States should explore the feasibility of elaborating a standard-setting instrument (a Recommendation) that would proactively promote and encourage open solutions to removing barriers to accessing heritage in the public domain, being mindful of the various governance frameworks that determine the ways in which heritage is shared and used. 

We believe this Dialogue, and new initiatives to be taken in its wake, will further strengthen cooperation between UNESCO and Creative Commons, harnessing the obvious synergies and setting the stage for international discussions aiming to consolidate best practices and enshrine our common aspiration: ensuring equitable access to heritage.

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Goal of the Event

The goal of the event was to bring together key actors from the Dutch heritage sector to celebrate the Netherlands’ pioneering efforts in opening up access to heritage collections. For over two decades, Dutch cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) have set the standard for equitable access to heritage that fosters imagination, creativity and innovation while deftly navigating the pitfalls that threaten access. With open heritage gaining momentum as a way to help address global challenges, the event was an opportunity to elevate Dutch good practices to the international level. 

Opening Remarks

Brigitte Vézina, CC’s Director of Policy and Open Culture, kicked off the event by setting the scene. She presented CC’s work and CHIs’ use of CC licenses in relation to heritage and offered some background on the Open Heritage Coalition and Open Heritage Statement. 

Panel I: Successes and Challenges of Open Heritage in the Netherlands

The first expert panel, moderated by Beverley Francis (CC), highlighted various experiences with open heritage in the Dutch context.

Amanda van Rij (Coordinating Legal Policy Advisor, Heritage and Arts Directorate, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science) presented the National Strategy on Digital Heritage (in Dutch) whose aim is to make digital heritage more easily accessible to everyone. She also introduced the Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed (Digital Heritage Network or NDE) Manifesto, a document developed with funding from the Ministry, which had already been signed by over 200 institutions across the country. She also emphasized that digitization influences how our heritage is being created, disseminated, and experienced, and pointed out that a careful balance is needed between respecting intellectual property on the one hand and the public interest of access to our collective memory on the other. 

Saskia Scheltjens (Head Research Services Department and Chief Librarian Rijksmuseum Research Library, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) gave an account of the museum’s open heritage journey, which started during a “perfect storm,” as she put it, starting with the first digitized collection in 2011 and the creation of Rijkstudio in 2012. Her key takeaway was that, defying expectations, opening access to the digital collection did not drive visitors away (the Rijks, with 2.3 million visitors a year, is the 23rd most visited museum in the world). Quite the opposite, in fact, for with free and unfettered online access (1.8 million people visit the website every year), people could build a relationship with the collection, which then became better known. 2023 saw the completion of the digitization of its entire collection of one million objects, while the last few years underlined the need for a more nuanced approach to access. For example, dealing with restitutions made her realize a collection has more cultural and societal stakeholders than was understood a decade or so ago. She concluded by noting that making information and data available online aligned with the institution’s mission, in accordance with FAIR principles, and that this requires investing in quality, structure, and coherence to ensure a successful digital transformation and to uphold the public values of a fair knowledge ecosystem. She parted on inspiring words: “Innovation requires infrastructure.”

Edwin van Huis (Member of the Supervisory Board of SURF and of the Internet Archive Europe Advisory Board) spoke about his experience working with digital heritage at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and Naturalis Biodiversity Center (today, the latter two are Open Heritage Statement signatories). He said that the Netherlands had always been at the forefront of digital openness, especially open science and gave the example of DiSSCo, a Dutch-led initiative bringing 1.5 billion specimens, 5,000 scientists, 400+ institutions and 23 countries into 1 European collection. As the first Chair of the Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed, he called for bringing the concept to the European level for greater impact. 

Marike van Roon (Member of the Wikimedia Nederland Board) talked about Wikimedia projects and the fundamental values of openness, community and collaboration that underpin the widely successful free knowledge movement. She mentioned the many partners from the heritage sector that help make heritage more accessible on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia projects, being grassroots initiatives, tend to work from the bottom up, leveraging the experience and expertise of volunteers who are willing to contribute to open heritage.

Panel II: International Perspectives on Open Heritage

The second expert panel, moderated by Maarten Zeinstra (Chair, Open Nederland), zoomed out from the national context to explore existing international initiatives and future opportunities. 

Beatrice Murch (Program Manager at Internet Archive Europe) presented the Our Future Memory campaign, supported by the Internet Archive Europe and which aims to ensure the basic rights of memory institutions are respected in the digital world. She highlighted the alignment and complementarity between the campaign and the Open Heritage Statement, mapping how the rights outlined in the campaign are reflected in the language of the Statement. With more than 80 institutions worldwide already signatories, she called on more institutions across Europe to add their voice. 

Claire McGuire (Policy and Advocacy Manager, International Federation of Library Associations & Institutions (IFLA)) shared insights from her experience as a member of the Open Heritage Coalition’s Statement Workspace (the Statement’s drafting committee). She explained that the Statement addressed issues well beyond copyright to tackle barriers to equitable and meaningful access to heritage, within the wider context of access to information. She recalled that having a global shared framework could be very useful and said that the Statement had a home at UNESCO, since international policy routinely influenced national and institutional policies. Given the very fragmented landscape of open heritage and patterns of regression and backsliding due to the uncertainties brought about by artificial intelligence, the need for global harmonization and cross-border collaboration is all the greater in order to establish a supportive environment for openness. She was convinced that the Open Heritage Statement would make a difference.

Jan Bos (Chair, UNESCO Memory of the World International Advisory Committee) provided a useful overview of the Memory of the World Program, initiated at UNESCO in 1992 to focus on the protection of documentary heritage, as well as of the 2015 Recommendation concerning the Preservation of, and Access to, Documentary Heritage Including in Digital Form. He drew several parallels between the Recommendation and the Open Heritage Statement, starting with the basic principles that form the bedrock of both instruments, including public domain access and open licensing. But while the 2015 Recommendation only deals with documentary heritage, the Statement includes all forms of heritage, and constitutes, therefore, a very valuable complement.

Douglas McCarthy (Senior Open Content Specialist, Open Future Foundation), the architect, together with Dr. Andrea Wallace, of the influential OpenGLAM survey, said that the Open Heritage Statement very clearly expressed the “why” behind the need to ensure access to heritage. He said that online heritage collections are the currency of relevance, engagement and education with global audiences, with a very large majority of people never visiting physical institutions. He acknowledged the positive growth curve in access to heritage online, thanks in part to the greater legal clarity brought about by Article 14 of the 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market in Europe, but reminded the audience that policies and practices were extremely fragmented and confusing because of weak or nonexistent compliance regimes. He shared that about 1700 CHIs around the world had released some data openly,corresponding to roughly 100 million objects, but gave examples of prominent Dutch institutions still erecting barriers to public domain heritage by perpetuating outdated business models. In his view, driving change comes down to individuals with the leadership and vision to experiment.

Closing remarks

Brigitte Vézina and Brewster Kahle (Digital Librarian, Internet Archive) offered concluding remarks to a rich conversation. Together, they reiterated how the Netherlands is poised to help set global standards for access and use of heritage and has a unique opportunity to leave a mark on the international law stage to enable access to heritage for education, to fight climate change, promote access for people with disabilities, and encourage creativity in all its forms.

More about the Open Heritage Statement

The Open Heritage Statement is a global call to action led by Creative Commons and the Open Heritage Coalition advocating for equitable access to public domain heritage in the digital environment and calling on stakeholders to remove unfair, unnecessary barriers to enable everyone to enjoy their fundamental right to participate in cultural life and solve the world’s biggest problems. It aims to stimulate a global conversation about the need to establish international standards for open heritage under the aegis of UNESCO. 

What this means for CC

This event marked an important milestone in the advocacy and movement-building efforts of the Open Heritage Coalition, building on years of community work supported by CC, including the development of UNESCO’s 2019 Recommendation on Open Educational Resources and 2021 Recommendation on Open Science. Both rely on CC licenses and public domain tools to make knowledge open.

As an official NGO partner to UNESCO (consultative status), CC works towards UNESCO’s vision where education, culture, and science are equitably shared, based on the shared belief that openness can benefit everyone, everywhere.

Creative Commons provides critical infrastructure for open sharing, but the values behind our work matter more than the legal and technical details. The Open Heritage Statement is rooted in those values, eloquently describing why equitable access to heritage matters, and then laying out a set of principles and policy actions that put those values into practice. The Statement provides us with a compass in this effort; one shared across countries and communities. 

CC event at UNESCO in April

This event was a prelude to an event Creative Commons is organizing in Paris in April. Entitled “How Can Equitable Access to Heritage Help Solve Global Challenges? An Exploratory Dialogue,” it will take place on Wednesday, 29 April, 2026, from 14:00 to 17:00, followed by a networking reception, at UNESCO House, in Paris, France. To secure your seat, register today: https://openheritagestatement.org/dialogue.

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Jamie Seaboch / EyeQ Innovations, digital collage CC-BY-SA 4.0. Based on Niels Hansen Jacobsen, Motif from “The Story of a Mother”, 1892, KMS5387; August Strindberg, “Storm in the Skerries, ‘The Flying Dutchman’”,1892, KMS3432; Vilhelm Hammershøi, “Interior in Strandgade, Sunlight on the Floor”, 1901, KMS 3693. Statens Museum for Kunst, open.smk.dk, Public Domain.

GIF by Francesco Trentadue (Valenzano, Italy). Based on “Wasserfall“ by Franz Rechberger. Public Domain. Albertina Museum, via Europeana.

The post The Benefits of Open Heritage in the Digital Environment appeared first on Creative Commons.

We’re kicking off a three-part series leading up to the launch of the Open Heritage Statement in October.

The Statement, developed by the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage), under the leadership of Creative Commons, is a collaborative, community-fueled initiative calling for equitable access to heritage in the public domain. It represents the shared values, principles, and challenges of more than 60 individual organizations and institutions across 25 countries and 13 global networks that represent multiple organizations, and sets out priorities for advancing openness at a global scale.

Over this series, we’ll explore:

1. The obstacles that stand in the way of equitable access to heritage in the digital environment;
2. The meaning of open in the heritage context and the benefits of equitable access, from sparking creativity to advancing human rights, and;
3. The Open Heritage Statement itself, and how it aims to shape an international framework under UNESCO’s auspices.

Join our global call for equitable access to public domain heritage in the digital environment. Mark your calendars for the Open Heritage Statement Launch on 14 October, 14:00 UTC. Register in advance for this meeting.

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In 2022, the United Kingdom’s Natural History Museum reported that scientists had applied computer vision to over 125,000 of the museum’s collection of digitized images of butterfly specimens dating back hundreds of years and found that insects are changing due to climate change—hotter years produce bigger insects. The Museum explained: “…open access digitized collections … allow scientists from all over the globe to be able to more easily use collections, can accelerate research in a more collaborative way than ever before.” 

For anyone promoting open access to heritage collections in the digital environment, the fact that digital images of butterflies made openly accessible thanks to CC0 could help us understand and address climate change—one of the greatest challenges of our times—was incredibly exciting.

This example is representative of the transformative potential of open access to heritage. It shows how making the heritage collections of cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) (such as museums, archives, and libraries) equitably and openly accessible and reusable online, by anyone for any purpose, can bring immense benefits to society. It is telling of how open access epitomizes the dual mission of CHIs of both preserving heritage in the public domain and enabling their users to harness it for the public good. 

Unfortunately, not all experiences are as positive as this butterfly story. Douglas McCarthy and Andrea Wallace humorously reported at the Icepops 2022 conference on the £179 fee a museum charged to download a reproduction of a public domain painting by 18th-century artist William Hogarth, turning open heritage into gated access. The same year, German puzzle manufacturer Ravensburger was sued in court by a museum in Italy for the unauthorized use of the images of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (a famous drawing dated c.1490) on a series of puzzles.

As these contrasting examples show, the possibility of accessing and reusing heritage is vital to a creative and innovative society. Open access to heritage enables human progress well beyond the confines of art and culture. Unfortunately, this is all too often compromised by a slew of unnecessary barriers—from incorrect copyright claims over digital reproductions, to technological locks, all the way to prohibitive access fees (and more). As a result, people still face obstacles that prevent them from meaningfully connecting with their heritage. Critical pieces of our shared memory remain out of reach for the communities they represent and for the people eager to build bridges across them. 

To help remove these barriers and contribute to equitable sharing of heritage worldwide, a small number of trailblazing institutions, like the UK’s Natural History Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Rijksmuseum, and other pioneering institutions have adopted open access policies, practices, and tools that harness Creative Commons licenses and public domain tools to release digital heritage objects for broad access and fresh reuse, demonstrating the real-world benefits of open sharing.

But despite growing digital capacity, motivation, and best intentions, for the near totality of the world’s CHIs, providing open, equitable access remains a challenge—only about 1% of institutions share heritage as open access. Without an international framework providing clear guidance on how to implement open policies and practices, many institutions are left unsure of what is possible or even where to begin. This is the gap the TAROCH Coalition aims to close by harnessing collective effort for global change. 

The Problem: Unnecessary Fences around Public Domain Heritage 

Heritage in the public domain should be available for anyone to access and reuse for any purpose, without copyright permission. Yet in reality, the public domain is often fenced off from the public by a swath of barriers preventing both stewards and users from fully and equitably enjoying heritage in the public domain. These barriers are of a legal, technological, financial, and geographical nature, among others. Below we outline some of the most prevalent barriers we see when it comes to CHIs and enabling open access to public domain heritage. 

Wrongful Copyright Claims

CHIs sometimes restrict access to public domain heritage by erecting legal barriers around it. They do so by claiming an overlay of copyright over faithful digital reproductions of the heritage in their collections. This includes asserting copyright over digitized reproductions and applying (restrictive or open) copyright licenses to limit reuse. For example, as we reported in 2019, the Neues Museum in Berlin released a 3D scan of the 3,000-year-old Nefertiti bust from ancient Egypt under a CC BY-NC-SA license (wrongfully implying an underlying copyright in this digital reproduction). 

Pseudo-Copyright Exclusivity

In certain countries, CHIs lean on their country’s cultural heritage laws to prevent copyright-compliant use. This raises another type of legal barrier: by invoking cultural heritage protection laws, institutions may claim a “pseudo-copyright” requiring permission and imposing a fee, thus preventing further use of public domain heritage. By looking at real-world examples, we notice that these laws can achieve the opposite of what they were intended for: to protect and enhance cultural heritage and promote the development of culture. These laws should not restrict prosocial creative reuses. 

Contractual Restrictions

Sometimes, CHIs enforce terms and conditions (or terms of use) on their website that restrict reuse of digital heritage. These terms and conditions will often prohibit commercial uses even though this is allowed under copyright law. These terms function as contracts and can mislead users into thinking copyright restrictions apply where they do not. This erodes the integrity of the public domain.  

Technical Blocks

Further to the above contractual barriers, some institutions use digital rights management (DRM) and technological protection measures (TPMs) or make available their heritage files with watermarks, as low-resolution files only, or in inaccessible formats. This limits how public domain heritage can be accessed and reused and ends up harming scholarly research and cultural participation. For example, a study in Pakistan “revealed that contents preserved with Sindh Archives & Antiquities on local heritage were shared with Sindh Archives & Antiquities watermarks only. […] From an Open GLAM perspective, the watermarks on digital collections prevent citizens from using and reusing heritage collections and therefore, limit collection outreach.” As Professor Melissa Terras put it back in 2014, “all I want is a clear, 300dpi image. It’s no use saying «this is in the public domain!» if you only provide 72dpi”.

Low Accessibility for People with Disabilities

Unfortunately, public domain heritage is often not available in digital files that allow for the creation of accessible formats for people with disabilities, including print disabilities. This digital exclusion disproportionately affects blind and visually impaired people, as well as those with cognitive and motor impairments. People are thus disempowered from creating versions of heritage materials in accessible formats that meet the needs of everyone.  

Economic Barriers

Finally, making heritage in the public domain available to the public requires significant resources, and many CHIs are under pressure to monetize their collections to offset funding shortfalls. Several CHIs charge the equivalent of hundreds of dollars per image for access to digitized public domain works. These fees create barriers for educators, researchers, and smaller cultural creators, particularly outside the Global North. While financial sustainability is important, unreasonable paywalls undermine the public benefit of digital access. As the Creative Commons-funded report “Open Licensing Models in the Cultural Heritage Sector” recommends, institutions should develop economic models for revenue generation that go hand in hand with the open ethos. 

The Impact of Barriers on Equitable Access to Heritage

As the above overview of diverse barriers confirms, when CHIs fail to enable equitable access, many important elements of our shared heritage remain locked away, out of reach. And heritage that is inaccessible is at risk of being forgotten, its meaning and context lost, and its transmission to future generations jeopardized. This has repercussions on entire communities of artists and creators, educators, students, scholars, and researchers, as well as members of the public, who lose opportunities to understand, learn, and create with heritage. This also reflects poorly on CHIs: it undermines their public-interest mission of providing universal access to their collections in the digital environment and opens the door to the erosion of cultural diversity, the widening of the digital divide, the weakening of intercultural dialogue, and the loss of shared narratives that connect us to our past and inspire our future. 

The barriers that fence off our shared heritage are real, but they are not insurmountable. We believe there is a unique window of opportunity to unlock its full value and place it at the heart of what matters now. 

In our next post in this series, we’ll look at these benefits in action, from advancing human rights and education to sparking creativity and scientific discovery, and why they make the case for global alignment even stronger. We will uncover how openness is key to building a future where everyone can connect with, use, and build upon our shared memory.

What’s to Come

Join us. This October, the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage) will publish the Open Heritage Statement, a collaborative declaration that sets out shared values, challenges, and priorities for closing the global gap in equitable access to heritage. The Statement will enshrine the principles that underpin equitable access and identify concrete actions to lower barriers, enabling open heritage to nurture creativity and shape sustainable futures for all.

The Statement is designed to support UNESCO’s ongoing work on cultural rights, digital transformation, and knowledge sharing for sustainable development, reinforcing its founding commitment to the free flow of ideas.

Once released, the Statement will be open for institutions and organizations to sign and promote, laying the groundwork for a future international framework on open heritage.

This blog post is an adaptation of this pre-print manuscript.

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