Indic Oral Culture User Group is unrecognized user group dedicated to bring 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, so it is important they are documented. For the sustainbility of such a practice it is important that documentation is carried by individuals dedicated to open knowledge, preferably from the language community itself. Therefore, this user group will bring together such individuals and create a system for providing training, equipment, sharing of learnings, best practices and other related aspects of on-ground recording of cultural knowledge.
The aim of Indic Oral Culture User Group is to bring 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 will focus on creation of content like:
Folk songs
Folk tales
Oral history
Cultural documentary like dances, culture-specific food preparation etc.
IOC User Group coffee chatA coffee chat 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. An online chat group has been created for updates.