Open licensing for legacy at LEEDS 2023
LEEDS 2023 was an independent year of culture that took place in Leeds, in the north of England. The city had hoped to be nominated as European Capital of Culture, however, in the aftermath of Brexit in 2016, all British cities were discounted from the scheme.
Core goals for LEEDS 2023 included ensuring that the programme included global majority artists, bringing new cultural experiences and perspectives to the city. Some of the artists LEEDS 2023 worked with were: Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, Keith Khan, Zion Art Studio from Mexico working with local artist Ellie Harrison, Jenni Laiti, Anushka Athique, Vandria Borari, Nwando Ebizie and Outi Pieski. In parallel, artists from the Leeds’ cultural scene were supported through the programme, including spoken word artist Testament and singer and rapper Ntantu, who worked on a new EP ‘2 Worlds, 1 Voice’ with Nigeria’s Browny Pondis.
As a local Wikimedian, I initially approached LEEDS 2023, hoping that they would be excited by the idea of unlocking global audiences through image uploads to Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences. I contributed primarily through Wikipedia, and I am always looking for images of cultural events to illustrate articles. Leeds itself is widely recognised as a city of sport and fashion, art and industry, with a diverse population, but this diversity is not necessarily represented on Commons. Collaboration with LEEDS 2023 had the potential to share highlights from the year of culture globally, but also to also make images on Commons more representative of the cultural life in the city.
With such a wealth and depth of cultural programming, a key question for LEEDS 2023 was how to ensure a strong digital legacy for their programming. Funded by Wikimedia UK, Leeds Culture Trust (who organised LEEDS 2023) worked with artists and photographers in early 2024 to update rights reserved licensing agreements to open ones, with a view to uploading these images to Wikimedia Commons. Sharing many of these to Flickr, with a CC BY SA 4.0 licence, over one hundred high resolution images have been uploaded to Commons, expanding the digital legacy of the year of culture and enabling people to encounter and re-use images of some of its most exciting artworks, notable artists and touching moments.
I think there’s a huge opportunity for cultural initiatives to share images openly as part of the legacy, especially when the cultural activities are unique temporary experiences. You can read more on Creative Commons new release on the benefits of open culture here. There’s even more potential for cultural programmes to adopt an “upload-as-you-go” policy, if initial contracts with photographers and other artists include open licensing agreements from the start. This avoids the additional work the LEEDS 2023 undertook to renegotiate them, and sets up an open ethos from the beginning. It would also enable images to be added as the programme progressed, adding another way that audiences can engage, whether they are able to visit cultural activities in person or not.
Openly-licenced Images uploaded as a result of this work are already being used across language Wikipedias, for example on artist Yinka Shonibare’s article on Igbo Wikipedia, or politician Abigail Marshall-Katung’s article on Tyap Wikipedia, or pundit Gabby Logan’s article on Arabic Wikipedia. Readers across these Wikipedias might not make it to Leeds, but a little bit of Leeds reaches them nonetheless. What better a legacy for a year of culture than that?
Take a look at the uploads on Wikimedia Commons here and let us know in the comments how you share and remix them.
