Language: Finnish (English)
Facebook event
Meeting link
Meeting memo
Project page

4 March 2021 at 15:00–16:30 EET/EEST

Wiki museum for Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo

Risto Suvanto, chaiman of the board at Elpo ry
Anne Pelin, Gallen-Kallela Museum
Max Fritze, the Finnish Museum of Photography
Anni Saisto, intendent at Pori Art Museum
Susanna Eklund, Finna services at the National Library of Finland
Minna Joenniemi, culture journalist at Yle

Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo (1900–1997) was an exceptional and significant Finnish visual artist, designer, educational scientist and humanist, whose life’s work has remained largely unknown.

One of the most interesting stages in Ahola-Valo’s life was his period in the Soviet Union. He participated extensively in the cultural life of the 1920s in the fields of visual arts, architecture, design and pedagogy, and knew personally both Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich.

The association Elpo ry, founded by Ahola-Valo in 1983, plans to digitize and publish his production and archives as a wiki museum on open platforms in cooperation with open culture actors. All material will be openly licensed by the virtual museum. Alexander Ahola-Valo himself believed in the free flow of information, like one of his role models, Leo Tolstoy, whose works are freely printable by anyone.

Elpo ry and AvoinGLAM invite museum professionals, open culture activists and art lovers to collaboratively put together a knowledge bank that allows actors outside the institutions to store cultural heritage in high quality and share it for open use.

The event is held in Finnish and English.

Event details
Language: English
Facebook event
Meeting link
Registration link

25 February 2021 at 13:50–19:00 EET/EEST

Crowdsourcing platforms for historic images

Organized by Ajapaik

Crowdsourcing platform Ajapaik will be 10 years old on February 27. To mark this anniversary Ajapaik is organizing an online webinar about platforms that deal with enriching the metadata of historic images – geotagging pictures, identifying persons, rephotography of historic images and so on.

Each presentation is moderated by a guest moderator.

Language: Finnish
Facebook event
Registration link
Meeting memo
Presentation

18 February 2021 at 15:00–18:00 EET/EEST

Archival treasures of the Helsinki Metropolitan area

With HRI Loves Developers

In this event the city archives from the Metropolitan area and the National Archives present their open collections, such as maps, plans, documents or registers. AvoinGLAM will present initiatives taking advantage of Wikimedia projects, and explain the necessity of suitable licensing for data and images. The event is held in Finnish.

Note: The event duration is 3 hours, 15–18. It is hosted in a Teams meeting. Please register to the event by 1 pm 16 February to get the invitation.

Event page at HRI

HRI Loves Developers: Arkistojen aarteet – Avoimen datan palvelu (In Finnish).

Language: English
Facebook event
Meeting link
Meeting memo
Wikiproject page

4 February 2021 at 15:00–16:30 EET/EEST

Cultural restitution in Benin

Andrea Wallace, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter
Mahuton Possoupe and Fawaz Tairou, Wikimedia Bénin
Heikki Kastemaa, Wikimedia Finland
Brigitte Vézina, Director of Policy, Creative Commons

In December 2020 the French Parliament passed a bill to return 26 looted cultural heritage objects to Benin from French museums. Returning objects raises questions about their digital reproductions, who gets to decide what is digitized, and how the digital reproductions can be shared online?

In this discussion Andrea Wallace, Mahuton Possoupe, Fawaz Tairou, Heikki Kastemaa, and Brigitte Vézina discuss how volunteer activities can be initiated to preserve and share open cultural heritage in the best interest of the originating culture. In 2021, Heikki Kastemaa will work in Benin on the history of Grand-Popo and continue his collaboration with Wikimédiens du Bénin. Andrea Wallace has written about the challenges of Open Access in regard to restitution in sub-Saharan Africa as a response to the French government’s report on restitution. Brigitte Vézina investigates questions of Traditional Knowledge in Creative Commons. The event is in English.

Readings

Pavis, Wallace: Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access Relevant to the Digitization and Restitution of African Cultural Heritage and Associated Materials, 2019.

Vézina, Muscat: Sharing Indigenous Cultural Heritage Online: An Overview of GLAM Policies, 2020.