Ministry of Culture-Performance Venues & Architectural Heritage

The Ministry of Culture's Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank project is holding a special open call for photograph submissions that invites all the people in Taiwan to piece together Taiwan's collective memories of the past. From September to October, the Ministry of Culture will cooperate with the world's largest photography competition for historical monuments, Wiki Loves Monuments, to expand the licensable collection of photographs on Taiwan's heritage sites and gather more unique photos of local cultural sights and scenes.

The aim is to awaken the cultural identity of all the people on this land, and to reflect on and share Taiwan's culture with the world. Through the spirit of sharing, the Ministry of Culture hopes that the cultural memories of Taiwan will be transformed into cultural assets that can be used all over the world via the Creative Commons copyright-management scheme. This open call will select outstanding works to participate in the 2019 Wiki Loves Monuments global competition, which in turn will help spread the beauty of Taiwanese culture to the world.

To preserve and reconstruct the collective memories of the land and the people, the Ministry of Culture launched the Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank project in 2019. Starting from the basis of having a macro vision of Taiwan's culture, the project aims to document people's cultural life by creating a publicly accessible database.

Through the collection of photos, the project will delve into each person's memory capsule by using the themes of "Loving Monuments" and "Collecting Memories." For two consecutive months, the open call will collect individual and group photographs of subjects including documents, historic sites, landscapes, social events, local industries, festivals, and folk treasures. Each picture and unveiled story are the cultural assets of the Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank.

The Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank project looks forward to establishing a comprehensive and sustainable ecosystem for utilizing Taiwanese cultural materials. The objective is to help promote a cultural movement that will see creative collaboration, diverse innovation, and a combination of what's virtual and real, thereby achieving the preservation, interpretation, and diversification of Taiwan's cultural DNA.

The ongoing project will accelerate the public's input and output of culture, transforming all participants into creators of original IP content and contributors to the marketing of Taiwanese culture. For more details, please visit https://memorybank.culture.tw/.