What exists, what we are looking for, and where we stand

The project in one paragraph

FirstCiv gives communities a place to keep their living heritage — recordings, language, craft and story — under documented, revocable consent, with human review before anything is published and a public record of every decision. The software, the consent model and 22 reference editions in four languages are built and live. What comes next is the part only communities can lead: deciding what to record, how it may be used, and who governs it.

What already works

Reference culture editions

22

Site languages — EN, ES, RU, FR

4

Contributions reviewed by a person before publication

100%

Community contributions published so far

0

The last figure is zero on purpose. The contribution pipeline has been live since July 2026 and has been tested end to end; we are waiting for a community partner to lead the first real collection rather than filling the archive ourselves.

• Contribution intake with consent scopes

  Live

  Uploads of field recordings, with separate choices for public display, research, education and AI processing. See the form.

• Moderation console and public ledger

  Live

  Every decision is logged to a hash-chained ledger at /api/ledger.

• Withdrawal that actually removes

  Live

  Withdrawing consent unpublishes the item and stops its media being served.

• Community claim process

  Live

  Communities can claim their page through For communities.

What we are looking for

• A community partner to lead a first project

  An Indigenous or community organisation that wants to document part of its own heritage, with FirstCiv as the technical partner. Where a fund requires Indigenous leadership, the partner is the applicant and holds the grant.

• Funding for that partnership

  Paid community documenters and advisors, recording equipment, translation, accessibility work and consent-safe hosting — sized with the lead partner for each application.

• A preservation partner

  An archive or university able to hold a long-term preservation copy under the community's access conditions.

Where we stand

FirstCiv is operated by INNOVA CONSULT LTD., a federal Canadian corporation in Ottawa. It has received no funding so far and has no community partnership in place yet. The reference editions are built from open sources and are not community-endorsed. We would rather you read this here than discover it later. Details are on the governance page.

Documents

• About FirstCivMission, founder, what exists today→
• GovernanceDecision rights, review, benefit-sharing, legal status→
• Data sovereignty policyCARE and OCAP® mapped to practice→
• Press kitBoilerplate, facts, logos, screenshots→
• ManifestoWhy the archive exists→

A project plan and budget are prepared for each application together with the lead partner, and are available on request.