Connecting through openness: A story of collaboration
Professor Chrissi Nerantzi provides an insight into the Building Bridges Northeast OER Summit 2026.
At the recent Building Bridges Northeast OER Summit 2026 which took place on the 25 and 26 March, we had the opportunity to share the unfolding story of our collaboration, a partnership rooted in creativity, curiosity, and a deep belief in the power of openness to make a positive contribution to our world.
Although we come from different contexts, our work unites around a common commitment: widening access to high-quality learning opportunities and nurturing more equitable futures for learners everywhere. This shared purpose became the social glue that brought the ICRSC and Curious Learning together.
ICRSC’s mission is to advance imaginative, sustainable, and socially engaged curriculum design, connecting educators, researchers, and communities through creative and open practices. Curious Learning focuses on global literacy, providing free, rigorously tested mobile apps that enable children to learn to read wherever they are in the world. Their work spans 195 countries, over 5 million downloads, and more than 60 languages, a remarkable example of openness and scalability in action.
Our first collaboration emerged through the open picture book Together. Originally created during a GO-GN Fellowship, Together is a co-created story with open scholars from different parts of the world, illustrated using open cultural heritage materials and new illustrations. The book has already been translated into more than 20 languages by a global community of volunteers and open education advocates. It embodies exactly what motivates us: learning resources that are free, inclusive, locally meaningful and of value, and globally shared.
Curious Learning is currently transforming Together into an interactive digital book for young readers. This includes adapting the text, integrating audio narration, aligning spoken and written language, and preparing additional translations so the story can reach more children around the world. For us, this project is a demonstration of what happens when open education and scalable literacy solutions meet. Something new and of value becomes possible, something neither organisation could have achieved alone.
In our presentation, we reflected on what it means to connect through openness in our volatile world. We asked what it takes for open education to move beyond replacing closed resources and how networks, communities, and partnerships can help normalise open practices. We shared how our collaboration itself has become a space of learning, experimentation, and hope.
The interactive book Together is now almost ready. Check it out.
This is only the beginning. We look forward to growing our collaboration, co creating resources that cross linguistic, cultural, and geographic boundaries, exploring opportunities for imaginative curricula and inviting more colleagues, creators, and communities to join us. Seeking funding for this work going forward will be one of our priorities.
Openness sets the conditions for connection, and it is our collective effort that turns those connections into meaningful action.
We would like to thank Dr Nicolas Simon for inviting us to share our work.
Dr Stephanie Gottwald, Curious Learning and Professor Chrissi Nerantzi, Imaginative Curriculum Research and Scholarship Centre (ICRSC).
