The Indic Oral Culture is an informal user group dedicated to bringing oral culture from the Indic linguistic region to Wikimedia projects. Community practiced and ceremony specific oral culture like folk songs are disappearing fast due to changes in lifestyle and cultural homogenization, so it is important they are documented. For the sustainability of such a practice it is important that documentation is carried by individuals dedicated to open knowledge, preferably from the language community itself. Wikimedia Foundation supported projects mentioned in the 'Projects' section below have brought together such individuals and created a system for providing training, equipment, sharing of learnings, best practices and other related aspects of on-ground recording of cultural knowledge.
The Indic Oral Culture projects are bringing together various Indic communities to digitize oral culture. The community will learn from each other, create training material, share resources, and organize events to create awareness. The linguistic diversity and their non-textual knowledge and culture can be brought online and strategies to support such content will be created. It is focusing on creation of content like:
IOC User Group online meetupAn online meetup was conducted with participants on 26th August 2023. It began with introductions by the participants, thereafter discussions on participants' language, and their goals with respect to representing the language on Wikimedia projects. A Whatsapp group has been created for updates.
