Open Culture

Our vision and values

The Open culture program’s mission is to give support to cultural institutions in building relationships with their audience with the use of technology. That’s why we started the Open Culture Studio – a technology lab where we base our activities on our own research in order to make sure we meet the needs of culture users and institution employees.

Openness is our key value. We define it in a wide sense – as openness to recipients and people with special needs; as technological and legal openness of products and resources, which enables the free sharing of knowledge; as openness to change and readiness to adapt to new circumstances; as promoting free open source software. This way of understanding openness translates to the inclusivity of our solutions, the transparency of the process for everyone engaged, cooperation and equal access to knowledge, as well as attentiveness to the needs of users.

Because we support cultural institutions, working on environmental consciousness of institutional practices is an important aspect of our work model. This includes caring about the rational use of public resources, a preference towards long-term solutions, adapting and updating previously established solutions and building compatibility between new projects and the mission, characteristics and social role of public cultural institutions.

Our key concepts and guidelines

In recent years the resources of Polish cultural institutions have undergone a wide-ranged process of digitization. Various collections have been made available online, some of them in an open model, which allows users to process and use those resources not only for educational purposes, but also creative, research and commercial ones. However, providing access – and displaying technological and legal openness – is just the first step. In order for cultural resources to circulate online and reach their potential users, it’s necessary to have solutions that are based in an understanding of the needs, habits and motivations of users, and that build their engagement, which is in line with the mission and goals of public cultural institutions.

Activities

For years Centrum Cyfrowe has been conducting research analyzing the circulation of resources online, means of digital participation in culture, the process of digitizing and making culture resources available, as well as digital competence. As a team of experts we also provide support to institutions when it comes to openly sharing resources. The knowledge and experience we’ve gathered serve as a context and basis of the functioning of our Open Culture Studio, which uses this knowledge and data to better support institutions, in the spirit of user-centered design, keeping in mind the mission and character of public cultural institutions.

We specialize in all aspects of the heritage digitization process: the digitization itself, putting the legal status in order, making it openly available, building technological tools and solutions, drawing up digital strategies and building engagement in various user groups, as well as processing the resources.