Cultural heritage institutions increasingly consider Creative Commons licences as a useful model for overcoming the barriers created by traditional copyright frameworks and for opening up archives, databases and collections for public use. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this claim. This article therefore focuses on the use of Creative Commons among cultural heritage institutions in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium) and presents the results of two sector surveys held in 2008 and 2012. Using two data points, the study provides an overview of the evolution of the use of Creative Commons and reveals the copyright policies of cultural heritage institutions.