An international collaboration between researchers in the United Kingdom and the United States, holding creative data in common.
Federated Data Commons for Creative Communities is an AHRC-funded effort to prove that sharing creative work and keeping control of it are not opposites. For two decades, contributing to a shared collection has meant handing it to a platform, and discovering, too late, when the owner changes the terms.
We're building the opposite: a commons where your data lives on a node you hold, speaks to other nodes through signals rather than surrender, and stays governed by the people inside it. The model landscape is our first public artifact, a transparent database of how open the “open” models really are.
Add your work to a local node you own and administer. Nothing leaves your control.
Nodes exchange signals (patterns, summaries, agreements) while originals stay put.
The community sets the terms of use together, and every member can withdraw at will.
Run open models locally, on hardware you control, over data you own.
The commons is a group. Shared verbs, shared stakes, shared say.
Every member can see, reshape, or withdraw their data at any time.
Choose to federate your commons into the wider community, a federated collection of creative data.
Follow along as we build. We'll share progress, frameworks, and workshops as they take shape.