The public domain is a collective inheritance. It is where knowledge, songs, stories, and art live freely — not bound by ownership, but by memory. Listening to the speakers at the Public Domain Conference, I realised that this freedom is what oral storytelling has always represented for African societies. Long before we learned to write, we learned to remember. Our grandmothers were our libraries; our firesides, our universities.
Every folktale told in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Tiv, or Efik is, in truth, an open resource — shared, adapted, and retold across generations. The public domain, I thought, is not just a legal framework; it is the modern continuation of this communal spirit. It is where digital archives meet ancestral memory.
Bridging the Past and the Possible
My OER project, Introduction to Oral Storytelling and Multilingual Literacy for Creative Expression, grew from this realisation. It seeks to reconnect learners — especially young Africans — with the art of storytelling in their own languages while using digital tools to nurture creativity. The goal is simple yet deeply rooted in creativity: to restore pride in multilingual expression and to treat oral narratives as educational gold.
At the conference, as I shared insights from this project, I spoke about how open educational resources (OER) can decolonise creativity. When we use stories from the public domain, we reclaim agency — not just by consuming content, but by reimagining it. A folktale about a tortoise can become a lesson in environmental ethics. A lullaby from the 1930s can inspire a modern multimedia project. A proverb can turn into a prompt for creative writing in both English and indigenous languages.
In an age when many Nigerian students feel disconnected from their languages and cultural roots, I see multilingual literacy not as a nostalgic act, but as an act of innovation.
Conversations That Moved Me
During one of the sessions, I began to question the use of resources in the public domain. As a lover of movies, I often shared movie posters online without much thought. But now, I find myself wondering: Who owns this poster? Do I need to seek permission before using it? In what ways am I allowed to use it?
Recently, my work has come to rely heavily on archival materials, and those same questions continue to flood my mind. However, I have become more intentional about using free resources and more deliberate in researching their terms of use.
One way to clear such doubts and understand what to use and how to use it is by learning on Open Educational Resources (OERs) — a process that can be guided through training by Free Knowledge Africa. Another important step is understanding intellectual property, especially copyright laws that govern works online, including those in the public domain.
The first key lesson I learned on this journey is that creative works remain protected for seventy years after the creator’s death — but only if they are properly copyrighted.
This is why, as a Nigerian, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) should be your close allies. Building this awareness helps avoid mistakes during the documentation and preservation of archival materials, as well as in the creation of original works.
Documentation or Preservation
For too long, documentation has been mistaken for preservation — as though to record something is to trap it in time. But storytelling doesn’t thrive in preservation; it thrives in participation. That is why my OER modules are designed to be interactive and adaptive, encouraging learners to translate, reinterpret, and perform. Each story becomes a living archive, reborn with every retelling.
During one of the sessions, Fuad spoke about his work with Archivi.ng and the immense task of saving and storing old newspapers. To some, this effort may seem trivial or unnecessary, yet one of his stories stayed with me.
A group of researchers needed detailed information on Fela — not the stories already circulating online, but the ones frozen in time on the fragile pages of old newspapers. As they sifted through those archives, they found not just facts but fragments of his life — who he spent time with, where he went, even hints of his favorite spots and hangouts. The process itself was refreshing, almost like reviving forgotten memories.
This story resonated deeply with me. In my own research on maternal health, I often turn to old newspapers, and within those pages, I find echoes of colonial narratives — headlines, essays, and assumptions that still shape our present. My task now is to remix those frozen ideologies, to retell them through storytelling that speaks to today’s audience. That, to me, is the true beauty of the archive: it allows us to reclaim, reinterpret, and reimagine.
I’ve long believed that our people are not illiterate; they are differently literate. Oral literacy, performative memory, and multilingual dexterity — these are the true markers of African intelligence. And they are sustained by the same spirit that fuels the public domain: shared knowledge.
A Digital Home for Ancestral Voices
Throughout the conference, there was a shared understanding that technology can either erase or amplify culture. The choice is ours. As digital platforms expand, we must decide whether we will only consume imported content or use these platforms to showcase our ancestral wisdom.
This is where the intersection between open access and oral storytelling becomes powerful. By combining digital OER frameworks with public-domain materials, we create an ecosystem where learners can remix folktales, record oral histories, and publish multilingual works under open licenses — ensuring that the next generation doesn’t inherit silence, but abundance.
In my project, learners are encouraged to explore public-domain archives like Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, Archiving and the Free Knowledge Africa repository. They learn not just to read and write, but to curate, interpret, and reimagine. A student can take a 1920s Igbo folktale, translate it into Yoruba, add visual illustrations, and publish it as a modern digital storybook. That is the future I want to see — a future where African knowledge systems are both ancient and digital.
What the Conference Taught Me
The public domain is not just about freeing old works; it is about freeing imagination. It challenges us to rethink ownership, to make education participatory, and to democratise creativity.
As I reflected, I realised that the spirit of open storytelling is an act of justice. It ensures that no child feels that their mother tongue is inferior, that no teacher feels limited by copyright, and that no culture is left untranslated. The open movement, when tied to oral traditions, can heal the gap between global access and local expression.
Toward a Future of Open Voices
In every sense, the conference affirmed what my OER project stands for: access, agency, and authenticity. Access — because every learner deserves the freedom to create and learn from shared resources. Agency — because creativity thrives when people can adapt and remix. Authenticity — because multilingualism and oral traditions are not remnants of the past but blueprints for the future.
As I closed my presentation, I told the audience something I’ve come to believe wholeheartedly:
When we open our stories to the world, we are not giving them away. We are giving them life.
And that, to me, is the true purpose of both the public domain and open education: to let stories breathe, travel, and transform — across languages, across generations, across the world.
Aderonke Abdul
