Use & cite

A common good, made to be reused

CreaComp is published under an open licence so that it can be used, translated, adapted and embedded. Here is what that permits, what it requires, and how to cite it properly.

Four ways to put it to work

Teach

Anchor a lesson sequence, a yearly progression or a class project in observable descriptors. The Discovery level is calibrated to be reachable with nothing more than a smartphone, which makes the framework usable from lower secondary onwards.

Select the relevant competencies, fix the target level, and have the associated evidence of assessment produced.
Train and assess

Build a legible training offer, aligned with a public and citable framework, and assess it through evidence of creation. The intended requirements of validity — verifiability, inter-rater reliability, traceability — are described in the foundations. CreaComp awards no certification and no equivalence, and its empirical validation is still to be carried out: a certifying offer that builds on it commits its own validation arrangements.

Map your offer onto the 31 entries, then define the target exit level for each.
Locate yourself

A creator, a freelancer or a team can use the map as a mirror: where am I expert, where am I a beginner, which blind spot deserves work now.

Walk through the map level by level and spot the competencies where your actual practice falls short.
Research and inform policy

The framework is open, dated and citable. It lends itself to analysis, to comparison with other frameworks, to national or sectoral adaptation, and to reasoned criticism.

Cite the version and the edition, and flag your adaptations: they enrich the commons.

What the framework does not prescribe

CreaComp prescribes no pathway, no method, no training content, no duration and no tool. It defines no threshold for entering the labour market and produces no overall grade. Any instructional design can build on it; none follows from it automatically. This reserve is not false modesty: it is the condition for one framework to serve a secondary school, a vocational training provider and an independent creator without betraying any of them.

The licence

CreaComp is published under a Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Read the full licence text →

You may

Share the framework — copy and redistribute it in any medium or format.
Adapt it — remix, transform, translate and build upon it.
Use it commercially, including within a paid training offer.

On two conditions

Attribution — credit the author, the version and the edition, indicate whether changes were made, and provide a link to the licence.
ShareAlike — if you adapt or translate the framework, distribute your version under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

No additional restrictions may be added: you may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the licence permits.

Citing CreaComp

Three formats depending on context. Each one can be copied in a single click.

Short citation

In teaching material, a presentation, a website.

Hébert, M. (2026). CreaComp 1.0 — Digital Creative Literacy Framework. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Academic reference (APA)

In an article, a dissertation, a report.

Hébert, M. (2026). CreaComp 1.0: Digital Creative Literacy Framework (2026 edition). Published under a Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

BibTeX

In a LaTeX bibliography.

@misc{hebert2026creacomp,
  author  = {H{\'e}bert, Maxime},
  title   = {CreaComp 1.0: Digital Creative Literacy Framework},
  year    = {2026},
  edition = {2026},
  note    = {CC BY-SA 4.0}
}

To cite a specific competency, add its code and title — for example: CreaComp 1.0, competency 3.3 “Master narrative”. Every competency page offers its own ready-to-copy reference.

Hybrid work, and why say so

CreaComp was conceived by a human intelligence and composed with the help of artificial ones. The intention, the stances and the judgement calls come from an author; the shaping, part of the wording, the translation and the building of this site owe a great deal to generative systems, which made it possible to move faster and aim wider than wholly solitary work would have allowed.

What cannot be delegated stayed human: deciding what deserves to be a competence, placing the boundary between two levels, owning what the framework leaves out, and answering for every descriptor to those who will use it to teach or assess. A machine proposes and accelerates; it does not answer for the result. The author alone remains accountable for what CreaComp says.

Saying so is not a precaution, it is a matter of consistency. Competency 4.3 calls for creating with artificial intelligence through a “reasoned choice of what is delegated and what stays human”, and the Discern thread calls for creating “transparently, fairly and without manipulation”. A framework demanding of creators a transparency it does not apply to itself would be worth little.

It is, finally, what CreaComp argues for: conducted with discernment, hybridisation does not impoverish the work, it raises its ambition. It still has to be conducted well — which is precisely what this framework seeks to make teachable.

Photography credits

Photographs from Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License, which permits free use including commercial use. They are hosted on this site.

Are you using it?

Reporting a use, a translation or an adaptation is not a licence obligation, but it helps keep the framework alive and informs its future revisions.

Write to the author