I am very happy to see the launch of the Digital Literacies Network, designed to Digital Literacies Network designed to empower Individuals and Communities and launched by my long time friend Cristina Costa, Associate Professor at Durham University in the UK and her colleague Michaela Oliver.

The Digital Literacies Network, they say, "is dedicated to empowering digital citizens through collaborative learning and creative practice in digital culture. We believe that digital literacy is not just about technical skills, but about cultural knowledge, identity, voice, and participation in a diverse, interconnected world.

We strive to:

• Co-produce knowledge: working with young people and adults alike to design, create, and share digital artefacts so that what is learned reflects their lived experiences and perspectives.

• Cultivate critical digital literacies: encouraging reflection on how digital tools, platforms, and culture shape how we see, tell, and share stories: who is included, who is silenced; how power, identity, representation and access play out online and in digital media.

• Foster digital cultural knowledge: honouring the cultural, social, and emotional dimensions of digital life: how people's backgrounds, communities, values, and aspirations inform what digital literacy means for them.

• Build inclusive, participatory learning: ensuring that formal education, informal learning, and community contexts work together; creating spaces that are safe, respectful, and responsive to diversity (geographical, socio-economic, cultural, age, gender, ability).

• Support innovation and practice: developing creative outputs (like co-produced picture books, lesson plans, games) as both methods and evidence of what digital literacies with and for young people can look like.

• Influence policy and institutions: sharing research and practice to help schools, universities, community organisations, funders and policy makers understand the importance of digital cultural knowledge and methods of co-production; advocating for learning systems that see young people and adults as digital citizens and active agents in digital culture."