The Sticker Commons - Open Science Festival 2026

By: Alex Brandsen

TDCC-SSH attended the Open Science Festival in Delft, and with the collaboration of Chris Hartgerink (Research Equals) and Mariana Lanari (Archival Consciousness), we initiated The Sticker Commons.

Stickers are small and playful yet meaningful. On laptops, notebooks, phones and water bottles, they signal affiliations, values and community ties. Through the recording of stickers on objects, The Sticker Commons turns stickers into an interactive exploration of openness, art and research. Where do stickers co-occur? Which stickers are the most common or rare? Do we see a distinction between the personal and the professional, or a blurred space where values trump affiliation?

At the event, we used the Mobile Archiving Unit from Archival Consciousness to record the object with some basic metadata; the brand of the item and the decade the owner was born in. This data was instantly added to a knowledge graph and displayed on a screen, giving an overview of the items and stickers of participants. The knowledge graph can be viewed online: https://artemis.biblio-graph.org/public/

Besides the recording, our sticker exchange table proved extremely popular, with many people taking and leaving stickers. This proved to be a space where discussions could go beyond open science and into more personal, value-driven and even activist topics. We saw people engaging with us, and with each other, and through values shared through the stickers, created more sense of community.

The event was a first test, to gauge the interest of people, but based on the positive reactions, we are planning to repeat this at other events!