Press release: Open Future Foundation

Amsterdam/Warsaw – Today the Open Future Foundation, a new think tank for the open movement, has launched. Open Future’s goal is to strengthen the European advocacy efforts conducted by organisations advocating for open access to knowledge and culture and to ensure that the principles of this open movement are reflected in the European Union’s digital policy framework. Open Future has a long term vision that aspires to identify policy opportunities that exist beyond the work programme of the current European Commission.

“We believe in the digital commons and shared and public internet. We will advance these causes by building narratives, research and strategic advocacy work. We believe that Europe has a chance of building a fair, shared digital space that can have an impact globally. We want to be part of this effort” said Paul Keller, Director of Policy at Open Future

Open Future is supported by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing an Peter Baldwin, through a four year, €1 million grant. Arcadia’s open access programme supports work that “improves access to human knowledge and helps make information free for anyone, anywhere to access and use, now and in the future.”

Open Future seeks to advance this mission by developing policy perspectives, and a more coordinated strategy for organisations advocating for open access to knowledge and culture in the European Union.

“This new initiative comes at a crucial moment when the European Union is attempting to establish new rules that will shape the digital space for decades to come” said Alek Tarkowski, Director of Strategy at Open Future. “We are grateful to Arcadia for supporting this new initiative and giving us the opportunity to make ‘open’ an important voice in discussions about digital policies in the European Union.”

Open Future will work with and for a broad range of civil society and academic partners including the COMMUNIA Association for the Public Domain, Commons Network, Creative Commons, Wikimedia, Europeana, the Internet Archive, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the American University Washington College of Law and the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam.

About Open Future (www.openfuture.eu)

Open Future is a non-profit think tank founded by Paul Keller and Alek Tarkowski in 2020. Open Future is incorporated as a Stichting (Foundation) under Dutch law. Stichting Open Future is registered in the EU transparency register with number 936143941653-07.

About Arcadia (www.arcadiafund.org.uk)

Arcadia is a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. It supports charities and scholarly institutions that preserve cultural heritage and the environment. Arcadia also supports projects that promote open access and all of its awards are granted on the condition that any materials produced are made available for free online. Since 2002, Arcadia has awarded more than $777 million to projects around the world.