Free online resources on arts and culture for learning and entertainment
Welcome to contribute to the open and growing list
Amid the Covid-19 outbreak, free resources are growing online that help to expand our horizons while maintaining social distancing.
You are welcome to contribute your recommendations of online resources via this document.
Free online resources
| Serial number | Free resources | Note | Link |
| 1 | [Art]
Google Arts and culture |
Explore the beauty of museums as 2,500 world-class museums and galleries are offering virtual tours and online collections on Google Arts and Culture pages. This include many of the world’s biggest museums: Tate Modern and the British Museum in London; Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; The Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum in NYC
In most, visitors can browse through entire exhibitions online. They can also walk through some of the museums using Google’s street view. |
https://artsandculture.google.com/partner?hl=en |
| 2 | [Art]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
Visitors can browse more than 406,000 hi-resolution images of public-domain works in The Met collection. The artworks can all be downloaded, shared, and remixed without restriction. | https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection |
| 3 | [Art]
Nightly Met Opera Streams |
Each day, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City presents free streaming of a different encore presentation from the company’s Live in HD series. Free drawing lessons | https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/ |
| 4 | [Literature]
45 places you can download tens of thousands books, plays and other literary texts completely legally for free |
Here you can find a collection of 45 websites where you can download tens of thousands of books, plays and texts for free. These sites are also all completely legal.
Browse works by Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Joseph Conrad, William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Edgar Allen Poe and other famous writers here. |
https://nothingintherulebook.com/2017/01/10/55-places-you-can-download-tens-of-thousands-books-plays-and-other-literary-texts-completely-legally-for-free/ |
| 5 | [Art]
[Parent-child] Stuck at home? Take free drawing classes from famous illustrators |
A list of free classes by famous illustrators. Most of them target kids, but adults can learn from it too. | https://www.fastcompany.com/90478307/stuck-at-home-take-free-drawing-classes-from-famous-illustrators |
| 6 | [Children]
Home learning resources |
Another great list for schools and families. This link includes free ebooks, and resources for subjects such as maths, history, sciences, languages. Teachers worldwide share their resources and materials. | https://chatterpack.net/blogs/blog/resources-list-for-home-learning |
| 7 | [Children]
Children’s books |
Here’s a catalogue of free-to-listen children stories in six languages, powered by Amazon-owned Audible. | https://stories.audible.com/start-listen |
| 8 | [Children]
Enter an Archive of 6,000 Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized and Free to Read Online |
Enter the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature here, where you can browse several categories, search for subjects, authors, titles, etc, see full-screen, zoomable images of book covers, download XML versions, and read all of the over 6,000 books in the collection with comfortable reader views. | https://ufdc.ufl.edu/baldwin/all/thumbs |
| 9 | [Science]
HKU MOOC: Epidemics II |
Provided by the University of Hong Kong, in this course, we will look at the fundamental scientific principles underlying epidemics and the public health actions behind their prevention and control in the 21st century, with follow-up discussions and supplementary content on how these concepts may be helpful to us in better understanding the COVID-19 outbreak. | https://fightcovid19.hku.hk/hku-mooc-epidemics-ii-launches-with-covid-19-content/ |
| 10 | [Economy]
HKU MOOC: State, Law and the Economy |
Economic concepts often give a fresh and unobvious perspective when applied to the study of how the state, law, and the economy functions and are interrelated. Provided by the University of Hong Kong, this course teaches students essential economic concepts in an intuitive manner relevant to the study of political economy. | https://fightcovid19.hku.hk/mooc-state-law-and-the-economy-i/ |
| 11 | [Film]
Free online classes with the best documentarians |
Led by Oscar-winning director Ruby Yang, the Hong Kong Documentary Initiative at JMSC of the University of Hong Kong, is now offering 74 master classes to the public for free.
Film auteur Werner Herzog, avant-garde artist Tsai Ming-Liang, the directors of Honeyland— Ljubomir Stefanov & Tamara Kotevska, renowned editor Mary Stephen and cinematographer Kirsten Johnson, are some of the eminent faculty members who will be conducting these classes. |
https://fightcovid19.hku.hk/free-online-classes-with-the-best-documentarians/ |
| 12 | [Science]
[Parent-child] More exciting than Jurassic Park: An Introduction to Dinosaur Ecosystems |
Dr. Michael Pittman of the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Earth Sciences, together with Professor Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (Chinese Academy of Sciences), will lead you on an expedition to the Gobi desert to unveil a famous ancient ecosystem!
In this course, we will take you to Erlian, Inner Mongolia, and leading museums and institutions to explore dinosaur biology; how palaeontologists reconstruct ancient ecosystems using fossil and modern evidence; the traits and significance of a Late Cretaceous dinosaur ecosystem. |
https://tl.hku.hk/2020/01/more-exciting-than-jurassic-park-an-introduction-to-dinosaur-ecosystems/ |
