The site

A Developing Story brings together and promotes multimedia from and about the developing world. From professionally produced campaign work, to user-generated Flickr photosets, podcasts and written testimony, the site is designed to help these stories reach new audiences as well as creating, over time, a categorised archive for those working in international development to use for reference and inspiration. You can learn more about our approach here. You can read the frequently asked questions here.

The campaign

While we believe that there’s clear value in bringing together this public-facing, awareness-raising communication material, we also want to do something similar for communications that are used in international development – e.g. radio scripts, posters, mobile text messaging campaigns, etc, used in health campaigns, etc.

Unfortunately, almost none of this material is available in the public domain. A public health campaign about the risks of HIV is run in South Africa, for example, but the artwork and radio scripts aren’t available to someone doing the same thing in Malawi six months later. And that’s what we want to change.

We believe that all Government funded communications for use in international development should be available in a central, easily accessible database under Creative Commons licenses. A database where photographs, posters, scripts, public information leaflets, etc, can be downloaded, copied, translated and adapted for local audiences, saving practitioners time and money and therefore ultimately saving lives.

In an age where we recycle many of our physical objects, it seems strange that most of the international development communications work funded by Governments, IGOs and even NGOs is completely lost after the short campaigns they promote.

We believe that a few simple changes will have real and immediate impact on the way the international development community communicates. All it really requires is a change of attitude from Government, a simple addition to all relevant contracts which obliges the supplier to make any communications work they produce as part of a funded project, e.g. photos, text, video, available under an appropriate Creative Commons license on a central database.

(Incidentally, we’re not saying that anyone should do less communication work, we just think that we should be getting more mileage out of the money spent. Running more campaigns without having to ‘reinvent the wheel’ each time. Using funding to create more content to help educate and promote their work.)

Precedents

There are precedents for removing restrictive licensing practices and opening up information for wider access in the work Hans Rosling and others did to free up access to data at the UN, and to a certain extent the Push for the Pool campaign to create a patent pool for HIV drugs.

Focus and scope

We’re currently focused on changing things in the UK, which is where the founders of the site are currently based. However, we believe that our aims and approach would have benefit elsewhere. If you would like to support our campaign, or simply know more, then you can contact us here.