In case you missed it, we recently published our 2025-2028 Strategy which sets the stage for our goals and activities over the next few years. This updated strategy reaffirms our three goals at CC:
- Strengthen the open infrastructure of sharing
- Defend and advocate for a thriving creative commons
- Center community
As CC’s Community and Licensing Program Manager, I’m particularly excited to share more details about Goal 3: Center community. For those of you who attended our strategy consultations in August 2024, you’ll know that reaffirming CC’s commitment to community was a top priority for community members, and we completely agree! In our strategy, community is listed as a goal in and of itself, but it is also recognized that all three of our goals are interconnected and each goal is required to fulfill the other goals. With that in mind, community is also central to strengthening the open infrastructure of sharing and defending and advocating for a thriving creative commons.
We are excited to find new ways to support a CC community of anyone who uses, advocates for, or supports the infrastructure that enables open licensing or who supports and believes in the power of the commons.
When we think about centering community now and in the future, it may first be useful for a quick history of the Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) and past community efforts. If you are well aware of the history of the CCGN, feel free to skip ahead to the next section!
A Quick History of the CCGN
The Creative Commons Affiliate Network was founded in 2001 alongside the founding of Creative Commons in order to support the global adoption of CC Licenses, and to port (or legally and linguistically adapt) the licenses to different legal jurisdictions. In November 2013, the 4.0 licenses, which no longer required porting, were launched. This presented an opportunity to shift the role of the Network to regional policy work, general awareness raising, and other local priorities. As a result, there was a need to rethink the Network structure to support this shift. A steering committee was launched in 2015 to create a new network strategy starting in 2015. The outcome of this work was the publication of Faces of the Commons, which included the ultimate recommendation for a revised Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) to be created by the global network itself. With the goal of meeting this challenge, in 2017, the Global Network Strategy was published. Alongside the 2017 strategy, Network Platforms were introduced (and then reintroduced in 2020) as a means to collaborate across jurisdictions on specific themes. The network strategy states these platforms as the intended primary locale for network collaboration, and today they are the most active spaces of the CC community.
Adjustments to the CCGN continued. In 2019, a set of recommendations was published (though not adopted formally), in 2020, a report on the state of the network was produced, and in 2022, some major needs were identified. Much of this occurred while the CC team itself was facing a tough budgetary reality and was unable to adequately resource community management of the CCGN and support recommended changes.
Today, the CCGN is in need of renewed support from CC (the organization) to make sure the wonderful work of the global community can continue to be sustained. Many of the stated goals of the Network Strategy are out of alignment with how the network currently functions. As it stands, the Network Council—the body that governs the CCGN—has not met in over a year, and approved changes to the membership process have not been implemented because of the technical limitations of the current network website.
We have an engaged and vibrant community of almost 1,000 CCGN members, many of whom participate in local, self-governed CC Chapters, and some of whom do not (or may wish to but don’t know how to get more involved). Many folks have inquired about the ways in which they could join the CCGN but as a result of past governance shifts and untied loose ends, the CCGN is stuck in a bit of governance limbo. That brings us to today and why Goal 3: Centering Community is so important to the success of CC’s vision and mission.
Creating A Shared Vision of the Next Generation of the CCGN
Over the last year as we consulted on CC’s strategy, we have also been chatting with community members, some who are formally CCGN members and others who are CC advocates within their communities without formal affiliation with the CCGN. We conducted an internal assessment of the CCGN using historical data, community surveys, and interviews with chapter leads. In thinking about the future of our community, the shared sentiment is that the CC community is much more expansive than the formal structures of the CCGN; the CC community is anyone who uses, advocates for, or supports the infrastructure that enables open licensing or who supports and believes in the power of the commons.
Today, nothing feels more important than both supporting and belonging to a community of values-aligned CC and open advocates who champion access to knowledge, and freedom of information as the foundations of a democratic society. We are excited to adapt the CC global community to the contexts and realities of 2025 so that together we can protect and strengthen the thriving creative commons as a means to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
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Posted 13 March 2025