Reflecting on the launch of the TAROCH Coalition

Creative Commons has launched the TAROCH Coalition, collectively advocating for a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve access to cultural heritage in the Public Domain.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Overnight Creative Commons (CC) launched the TAROCH Coaltion, a collaborative push to encourage UNESCO Member States to draft and adopt a standard-setting instrument such as a Recommendation promoting equitable access to cultural heritage in the Public Domain. Similar UNESCO Recommendations exist for Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Science. In the arts and cultural heritage spaces UNESCO (which is the abbreviation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has a number of relevant Recommendations, including instruments related to the status of the artist, participation in cultural life, promoting and protecting museums, documentary heritage, safeguarding traditional cultura and folklore, protecting movable culture, preserving moving image content and many other worthwhile pursuits.

It is certainly not fair to say the Public Domain is ignored by UNESCO. To illustrate, the Recommendation concerning the preservation of, and access to, documentary heritage including in digital form encourages Member States promote public domain access and the Recommendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace highlights the importance of Member States adequately funding the preservation and digitisation of Public Domain materials. These are important steps, but, in my opinion, more needs to be done to protect the Public Domain. A named Recommendation that speaks specifically to the importance of the Public Domain and access to it will elevate the public profile of the Public Domain, provide much needed guidance for bodies engaged in the custodianship of it and rally advocates in defence of the Public Domain. Without defenders, we risk further erosion of the Public Domain or re-enclosure of Public Domain material that should be available to everyone locked down behind paywalls.

By May 2026 the Coalition seeks to develop and adopt a Statement on Open Access to Cultural Heritage for signature by civil society organisations and institutions and deploy a broad advocacy strategy and advocacy materials to support local efforts to achieve TAROCH’s goal to increase access to Public Domain cultural heritage.

“I encourage mission-aligned Australian cultural heritage institutions and organisations to join the Coalition.”

CC is the secretariat for the Coalition, which is led by representatives of a global, diverse community of organisations and institutions involved in cultural heritage and with an interest in open cultural heritage. Today, the Coalition already includes 23 organisations, , including a number of CC and Wikimedia Chapters. I hope we will soon see some Australian organisations on the list. I encourage mission-aligned Australian cultural heritage institutions and organisations to read the TAROCH Coaltion Statement of Commitment and pledge their commitment by applying to join the Coalition. Reach out to me if you have questions, need more information or need support to make an application.

It is great to see this next phase of the TAROCH process. These actions were part of the workplan that came out of a workshop on TAROCH (at that time called TAROC – Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture) that took place in May this year in Lisbon, Portugal. I was privileged to be one of the participants of that workshop, along with my Creative Commons Australia Co-lead, Robin Wright.

Here in Australia we are gearing up for 1 January 2026, which will mark 20 years from the commencement of the implementation legislation for the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. It saw the copyright term for most literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works was extended to life of the creator plus 70 years so Public Domain Day 2026 will be the first time in a long time that these works will pass into the Public Domain. Even during this quiet period, the Public Domain locally remains important. Defence of the Public Domain is so important – and I am an active proponent of it. As I said on Public Domain Day this year, the Public Domain faces challenges from increasing complexities in copyright law, lobbying to extend the duration of copyright and obscurity. Galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) are fundamental to the Public Domain; they collect, care for, preserve, provide access to and help us discover and reuse the treasures in the Public Domain.

Even as the coalition works towards a UNESCO Recommendation on open cultural heritage, there are important matters that will need to be considered and, to the extent possible, incorporated into the architecture of the Recommendation. For me, I see these as including:

• Recognition of and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ custodianship of their Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP), as well as the rights of other First Nations peoples over their traditional knowledge (TK) and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) and documentation of it (aligned with current of future legislative requirements – such as the stand alone ICIP legislation process taking place in Australia – Protocols and other ways of managing ICIP, Indigenous Data Sovereignty and the CARE Principles),
• Encouraging GLAMsA common term used to describe galleries, libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage organisations. Learn more  → to consider how to best facilitate reuse of the content they generate about Public Domain materials and other cultural heritage items, including metadata, descriptions, blog posts, resources and other materials, and releasing that content under Creative Commons licences, where it is possible to do so,
• Encouraging the application of metadata (like Creative Commons’ metadata recommendations for Public Domain material) that identifies material as being in the Public Domain and makes it discoverable through the host organisations’ website and other search tools (aligned with the FAIR Principles),
• Supporting GLAMsA common term used to describe galleries, libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage organisations. Learn more  → in the Global South/Majority World to fully realise the potential of their cultural heritage while also recognising the importance of the diversity of regional contexts, and
• Consideration of what, if any, scope there is to advanced a public interest solution to the problem of orphan works as part of or in tandem with the TAROCH work.

I look forward to working more on the TAROCH initiative and I hope I will be joined by some of my Australian and international colleagues on the journey.

---

Useful links

Here’s some links I recommend that give more information on TAROCH:

Creative Commons Launches TAROCH Coalition for Open Access to Cultural Heritage

CC’s blog post about the launch of the TAROCH Coalition.

Brigitte Vézina and Beverley Francis – Friday 1 November 2024

Blog, Creative Commons

TAROCH Coalition — Statement of Commitment

The wording of the Statement of Commitment for TAROCH Coalition members.

November 2024

Creative Commons

CC strategic workshop reveals big opportunities for open access to cultural heritage

A blog post on the CC Blog about the TAROCH workshop that took place in Lisbon, Portugal in May 2024.

Brigitte Vézina and Connor Benedict – Monday 19 August 2024

Blog, Creative Commons

Disclosure

Conflict of interest

I am the Co-lead of Creative Commons Australia (CC AU), I am an individual member of the Creative Commons Global Network and I have been involved with the TAROCH (Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture) project which is led by CC. The views expressed in this blog post are my own and do not express the views of CC AU or the Creative Commons Corporation.

I am the Copyright Officer (part-time) at the Australian Digital Alliance (ADA) and at the Australian Libraries and Archives Copyright Coalition (ALACC). The views expressed in this blog post are my own and do not express the views of the ADA or the ALACC.

I am the President of Wikimedia Australia (WMAU). The views expressed in this blog post are my own and do not express the views of WMAU.

AI use

This blog post was drafted using Google Docs. No part of the text of this blog post was generated using AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  →. The original text was not modified or improved using AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  →. No text suggested by AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → was incorporated. If spelling or grammar corrections were suggested by AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → they were accepted or rejected based on my discretion (however, sometimes spelling, grammar and corrections of typos may have occurred automatically in Google Docs).

---

Credits

---

Provenance

This blog post was produced by Elliott Bledsoe from Agentry, an arts marketing micro-consultancy. It was first published on 2 Nov 2024. It has not been updated. This is version 1.0. Questions, comments and corrections are welcome – get in touch any time.

---

Reuse

Good ideas shouldn’t be kept to yourself. I believe in the power of open access to information and creativity and a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture. That’s why this blog post is licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons licence.

Unless otherwise stated or indicated, this blog post – Reflecting on the TAROCH Coalition for access to cultural heritage in the Public Domain has launched – is licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Please attribute Elliott Bledsoe as the original creator. View the full copyright licensing information for clarification.

Under the licence, you are free to copy, share and adapt this blog post, or any modified version you create from it, even commercially, as long as you give credit to Elliott Bledsoe as the original creator of it. So please make use of this blog post as you see fit.

Please note: some content in this blog post is excluded from this licence. See Credits above for details of excluded content.