Creating an open access digital collection for contemporary art and local traditions
The project “ECHO II: Traditions in Transition”
A few words about the project and its open access digital collection
ECHO II: Traditions in Transition is a Creative Europe project led by Inter Alia, a civic, non-profit organization based in Athens, Greece. Within its context, we invited artists to participate in five art residencies, and create original artworks inspired by selected local traditions from the island of Spetses (Greece), the city of Sofia and Smolyan town (Bulgaria), the Prespa Lake (North Macedonia), and the life and community of Győr distillery’s workers (Hungary).
After each art residency, we digitized the artworks, and published the digital copies on the project website under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. We also created an individual web page for each artwork with descriptive and technical information (in an effort to make the artistic research and digitization processes visible), and licensing and attribution information (in an effort to encourage the reuse and remix of the digital copies). Lastly, we included a section on the website (“Locations | Traditions” webpages) with information about the selected traditions, and illustrations from open access repositories and cultural heritage aggregation platforms.
Designing a project website as an open access digital collection: Opportunities and challenges
The idea of designing the ECHO II website as an open access digital collection popped-up while we were writing the project application for funding, when the first ECHO: European Cultural Heritage Onstage project was ending. ECHO had neither a website nor dedicated social media pages for the communication of its activities and outputs — which was a conscious choice, since, from our involvement in EU-funded projects, we have come to realize that after their ending, it is very difficult for a non-profit, civil society organization to sustain any dedicated communication channels financially and keep their content updated (challenge 1: resources: money, people, time). However, at the end of the project, we also realized that everything that took place during its course was “lost”, since it was only known to the project partners, the participant artists and the visitors of the local art exhibitions (challenge 2: unknown if not digitized and communicated to wider communities).
So, while writing the funding application, we decided to include the creation of a website in our foreseen activities. But instead of another project website that would showcase only its progress and outcomes, we thought of creating an open access website that would function as a knowledge base for the selected local traditions, and a digital collection of the artworks that would be produced. We wanted the content to be useful for and used by wider communities for any purpose. After all, if the project would be approved, it would be funded, through taxation, by all EU citizens, and hence, they should equally get benefited by the outcomes of the project.
As far as the digital collection is concerned, we went through all the legal formalities to be able to digitize the artworks and publish them under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Given the complexities of copyright laws and the (mis)understandings around CC licenses (challenge 3: lack of / limited knowledge and expertise about copyright and CC licenses), that was a very demanding task for us. We read a lot about copyrights and CC licenses, and asked for advice and help from legal experts and GLAM professionals (opportunity 1: the mentality of the open GLAM community — we can help each other). But we managed to go through this, because opening access to the project outcomes was our clear goal from the very beginning, and we were transparent about it along the way — we even included a specific section about it in all our open calls for artists.
As far as the knowledge base is concerned, we asked our partners to do a desk research and write a short report on the selected local traditions. Then, we reviewed and enriched these texts. And additionally, we explored GLAM websites and cultural heritage platforms to find public domain and CC-licensed digital images for their illustration.
If you go through the ECHO II website and explore the pages dedicated to the selected traditions, you will find out that they are unequally developed and illustrated. Due to language barriers -and also due to the restrictions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic (force majeure)- we had to rely heavily on open access digital platforms (benefit for open GLAMs: increased website traffic, visibility and reuse of materials enhancing their mission), and especially on resources and content with rich metadata in English (challenge 4: messy metadata).
Of course, we consider the unequal representation of the selected traditions on the ECHO II website a problem, and an indicator of the unequal development of mass digitisation and open access to cultural heritage in European countries. But it is also something that highlights, on one hand, the importance of existence and enrichment of multilingual metadata, and on the other, the importance of open GLAM, not only for research and education, but also for the creative and civic sectors.
Lessons learnt and next steps
Think big, start small: Nowadays, we don’t have to own expensive, professional, technological equipment and studios to enter the digital cultural heritage realm (we don’t even have to own a physical collection of artworks, as is our case in ECHO II). High-quality images are preferred by reusers, but they are not a prerequisite to start exploring the field and our potential. Digitization is just the technical process of creating a digital copy, and we can do it even with the use of smartphones cameras -many of which are of very good quality-, scanner apps and image processing software and tools -many of which can be found online for free (opportunity 2: the democratization of technology).
Knowledge and transparency are power: Knowledge and expertise around copyright and CC licenses are essential to balance the rights of the creators with our institutions’ missions and visions. But all the necessary, basic information about these topics can be easily found online (opportunity 3: the democratization of knowledge due to the democratization of technology). Also, the members of the open community are experts in a wide variety of topics, and they are willing to share their knowledge and expertise (opportunity 1: mentality). As soon as we find the appropriate balance, we can communicate simply and clearly all the what’s, why’s and how’s. We have a wide variety of free communication channels, tools and networks at our disposal. And usually, people happily get on board when we are transparent. It’s the obscurities and the ambiguities that make us all skeptical and defensive (in all matters of life).
Distribution + Reuse = Enrichment + Sustainability: The cost of sustaining a website / digital collection is a matter of concern (challenge 1: money). But once the digital copies are CC-licensed, they can be easily uploaded to other repositories and image-sharing platforms (e.g. Wikimedia Commons, Flickr Commons), ensuring their distribution, reuse, enrichment and sustainability. This is something that can be done by either the institution’s staff members or the open community members (challenge 1: people, but opportunity 4: digital activism). It can even be done without creating a website in the first place (think big, start small). Uploading the artwork images of ECHO II on Flickr is something we are currently considering. And we are also exploring if and how ECHO II can be a starting point and source of inspiration for contributing and enriching content and metadata on Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons in relation to the selected traditions, for example, via participating in existing contests and efforts, such as the Wiki Loves Folklore international photographic contest (opportunity 4: digital activism). Crowdsourcing such content and metadata will also help us enrich the “Locations | Traditions” pages on the ECHO II website, and hence, equally highlight local traditions and communities that, at the moment, are underrepresented.
