April 18 is celebrated globally as ‘World Heritage Day’ to spread awareness about humanity’s diverse cultural heritage. While you can celebrate by marking your presence at a monument (a real life experience is always better!) near you, you can also engage in an online visual celebration with us! (This is why we are starting our World Heritage Day challenge on 19th! – haha!)
At The Heritage Lab, we have always believed that cultural heritage belongs to everybody, and digital cultural heritage, even more so. Did you know, that a large number of museums, libraries and archives have published openly licensed, high quality images (art, photographs, prints, etc) online? Sadly, these are not always findable and many lack descriptions in English (or Indian languages for that matter!) making our access difficult and challenging.
We invite you to browse through these openly licensed photographs, prints, art featuring Indian monuments and sites & add them to Wikimedia Commons.
That’s right! You have to commit to “looking at art” – but also adding these images to the Commons. You can participate in our challenge which lasts all through 19-24 April 2022 (how many images can you upload?). You can devote as much time as you’d like during the week.
We can guarantee this to be an experience filled with a number of “whoa’s” and “wow’s”, as you’d be discovering a lot of places you didn’t know about. Or at least you’d get a glimpse of what your favourite places looked like 200 years ago!
To enter, register yourself by 15th April. Make sure you have read the rules, participation guidelines below.
These images will later form the basis for a series of 5 talks by experts who would decode Indian architecture for us, making us smarter about our heritage.