cultureshare

Cultureshare is a digital platform and community network designed to document, share, and celebrate cultural practices, languages, arts, and knowledge across communities. It aims to foster intercultural understanding, support preservation of intangible heritage, and enable creators to contribute and learn from others.

The project emerged in the late 2010s as a coalition of cultural institutions, universities, and non-profit organizations seeking to create open access resources for educators, researchers, and the public. It operates on open licensing and collaborative governance, with content contributed by museums, language communities, storytellers, and researchers.

Core features include multimedia submissions (text, audio, video, imagery), user-curated collections and exhibits, multilingual search and translation tools, and support for community-led projects such as oral history drives, traditional music archives, and craft documentation. Metadata standards align with recognized heritage frameworks and best practices for cultural preservation.

Governance emphasizes representation and consent. A diverse board guides policy; moderation and ethics policies address misrepresentation, cultural sensitivity, and data privacy. Rights and ownership are described in contributor agreements, with the option for communities to retain control over their materials or designate shared licenses.

Reception has highlighted support from educational and heritage sectors for widening access and enabling documentation, while critics warn of risks including tokenism, unequal benefit-sharing, and digital access gaps. Examples of collaborations include regional language archives and intercultural curricula developed through the platform.