About

Creative Commons (CC), the non-profit behind CC licenses and public domain tools powering open sharing on Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, and Medium, has been central to the open movement for nearly 25 years, bringing more than ten billion works into the commons. Today, with support from the Arcadia Fund, Creative Commons helps cultural heritage institutions make their heritage collections openly accessible.

In 2024, CC launched the Open Heritage Coalition (previously known as TAROCH - Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage) to advance open access to heritage worldwide, building on foundations first laid in 2021. After publishing An Agenda for Copyright Reform (2022) and a Call to Action to Policymakers, CC convened the open culture community for a Roundtable in Lisbon (2023) to assess global challenges and explore the need for a new UNESCO instrument for open culture. The 2024 Open Culture Strategic Workshop refined the scope  to “open heritage” and built an action plan, culminating in the Coalition's launch in November 2024.

Today, the Open Heritage Coalition unites 70+ organizations across 25 countries that believe in the transformative power of open solutions and share a vision of fair and equitable access to cultural heritage. 

The Coalition explores and supports the development of an international standard-setting instrument that promotes equitable access to heritage. TAROCH’s mission is to encourage UNESCO Member States to elaborate and adopt an international standard-setting instrument (a Recommendation or other non-binding instrument) that would proactively promote and encourage open solutions to removing barriers to accessing cultural heritage in the public domain, being mindful of the various governance frameworks that determine the ways in which cultural heritage is shared and used. This could be a means to deliver on UNESCO’s mandate and ambitions in relation to cultural and information policy, particularly intercultural dialogue and cultural exchanges, in order to contribute to building more connected, resilient, and sustainable societies.

The Open Heritage Coalition’s efforts build on international milestones and decades of efforts to facilitate access to culture: from UNESCO’s cultural conventions, including Mondiacult 2022, and UN human rights instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to 21st-century open heritage digital practices.

The Open Heritage Statement celebrates open culture advocates, cultural heritage institutions, and community members worldwide who have championed openness, reflecting years of learning from local innovation to digital transformation, and demonstrating that the call for open heritage is truly global.