Grants:PEG/WM UA/Free Vocal Music concert/Report


Report accepted
This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY Pending has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
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Compliance and completion

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Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?
Answer YES or NO.
YES
Is your project completed?
Answer YES or NO.
YES
Did you use any of the grant funds?
Answer YES or NO.
YES

Activities and lessons learned

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This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Activities

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Provide a detailed list of activities performed to complete this project, descriptions of these activities, and the amount of time spent on each activity. This section should also include a list of participants, or a link to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event.

Planning and Preparation

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The idea to put on such event first appeared after the permission for this book was given by the widow of the translator Yurii Otroshenko[1]. We have managed to get the permission to publish its content under the free license. Then the willing performers were found. The rehearsals mostly took place in Kyiv National Culture and Art University. Sometimes they took place at project lead's home (about 20 hours were spent for this). Also it took around 20 hours to prepare the scores. 10 hours were spent for learning accompaniment. According to the estimation, the soloists were to spend 10-15 hours in order to prepare for the concert. Some time was spent for ordering the posters, playbills, renting the hall. Also press releases were to be prepared.

As some funds were to be found, the decision of the Board was issued on the 26th of April, and on the 1st of May the grant application was submitted[2].

The event

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The vocal concert took place on May, 15 in the Great Hall of House of Scientists in Kiev. It was announced as a wikimeetup, and 17 wikipedians have visited this event. It was a bit tricky to have a list of participants for this event, but it is possible to estimate the attendance judging from the photos (around 100-120 people).

The program of the concert, links to audio and video files could be observed here.

Photos from the concert are stored in the category on Commons: WikiConcert 2013 Kyiv. There were some posts about this concert: "Слово Просвіти", gazeta.ua, "Музична скриня". Also the information about this event was presented in WMUA blog and WMF blog. There was also a post on Ukrainian Wikinews about the concert that was translated into Russian and posted on RUWn.

Some audio recordings are included in Wikimedia Ukraine presentation CD among with recordings from our other music-related collaborative projects such as collaboration with Lviv Music Academy and Chestnut piano competition. This CD will be used for further popularization of Wikimedia movement among musicians.

Mainly the performers were merited artists, thus taking pictures of them for illustrating the articles in Wikipedia and using in other Wikiprojects was also important.

Lessons learned

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What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects? Consider the following questions and respond with 1 - 2 paragraphs.
What went well?
The concert had a huge success, and a lot of people learned more about Wikimedia. Also we were invited to give a similar concert in Maksym Rylsky Museum. In this case the hall rent will be free of charge and this will be a good opportunity to brisk up our GLAM activity.
What did not go well?
The main shortcoming was the financial one. Because of a delay in funding[2], we did not have possibility of buying audio equipment in time and had to borrow the equipment. We received money as late as early July[3]. The concert season as well as academic year ended before this date, thus we had no opportunity to use the equipment yet. Though we certainly plan to use it next academic year (starting September).
Some organizational shortcomings were also present: we forgot to put up our banner. It was also decided to create something like a check-list for events, in order to avoid such mistakes in future. For the awarding ceremony of Wiki Loves Earth contest (took place in less than one month) the banner was delivered and established. Also we had not enough time to print out the playbills, thus we had to pay extra for printing them faster.
As for the budgeting: a box of paper was to be included, as the performers were to be provided with the scores. And some transportation costs were to be included (to deliver the food and playbills, and banner).
We would really love to avoid repeating these mistakes in our next projects. That's why analyzing our projects after they are completed is really important.
What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?
We would vary the concert program and performers. It seems reasonable also to attract students as performers, not only merited artists. There was an idea to organize a live broadcast of the concert, using a web camera, but sound quality was our main concern here. This grant equipment will enable us to think about this idea closely.

Project goal and measures of success

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This section should reference the project goals and measures of success described in the approved grant submission. See Grants:PEG/WM UA/Free Vocal Music concert to review the goals and metrics listed in the approved submission.

Project goal

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Provide the project goal here.
The goal of the concert emphasized two aspects. The first one was popularization of free licenses. Vast majority of works performed are free-licensed and the audio/video recordings of their performance are also free-licensed thanks to performers' consent. The second one is an idea of multilingual knowledge. The same way as encyclopaedic knowledge is represented in more than 250 language versions of Wikipedia to be understandable for readers from all over the world, the vocal music could also be performed and heard in different languages. Moreover, being sang in a mother language of recipient a word becomes much more touching and affecting then being sang in a foreign language (see an article by PhD H. Hanzburg for further details). Therefore the goal of the project could be formulated as making world musical artifacts more available, more understandable, more touching and free for Ukrainian musicians and lovers of music.
Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.
Yes. We have made some musical artifacts more available. Particularly 10 songs by Schubert, Schumann, Rakhmaninov, Rimski-Korsakov in Ukrainian translation are available only at Wikimedia Commons. The success of this concert gives us the right to declare that Ukrainian-translated world vocal classic is really more understandable and touching for Ukrainian listener (suppose the same is correct for any language and any nation accordingly).
The concert has already helped to receive permission for publishing some compositions by Ivan Karabyts under free license and now we have negotiations with Maksym Rylsky's descendants about publishing Rylsky's works under free license. This convinces us to say that the second aspect is also successful. Also it should be noted that more significant effect requires organizing such events regularly, at least twice a year.

Measures of success

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List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.
the number of audio files, uploaded to WM-projects and their duration - 13 audio files appr. 40 min duration and 11 video files[4].
the number of publications in Media about this project - 4 publications in independent sources:
the number of people who attended to the concert - about 100-120
Provide an overall assessment of how your project went according to these measures.
It was expected to get a little bit more publications in independent sources. On the other hand, the number of people that attended the concert was even higher than expected. It is difficult to say about additional measures such as number of musicians and composers encouraged to publish their works under free licenses, we expect it would be clear several months later. We had got OTRS permissions from the performers (8), the composers (2) and a poet (1). It would be great to get a permission for the words here (a still copyrighted translation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland into Ukrainian), but it will need some time, as the translator has died, thus we are to find his successors.
If you were to plan a similar project, would you measure it differently? If yes, please explain how.
Probably no.

Impact

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This section ties this project to Wikimedia's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic goals? Please answer in 1 -2 paragraphs and include specific measures of impact such as the number of readers or editors reached by a particular project, or the number of articles edited or improved.
Stabilize infrastructure
Increase participation
Improve quality
Increase reach
Encourage innovation
The project encouraged musicians to participate in Wikimedia movement and to enrich Wikimedia projects with music-related materials, such as audio, sheet music, lyrics. This increased participation - more and more musician become interested in using and contributing to Wikimedia projects. For example, the widow of Ivan Karabyts was willing to give a permission for some of the composer's works.
Also we improved quality of music-related materials, particularly we enriched articles about composers with the information about Ukrainian translations of their songs and added related mediafiles. For example, this, this and this.
The project provided a previously unavailable material, particularly Ukrainian translations of vocal music. For years this materials remained hardly available even for musicians. Though for more materials being discovered we are to prolong the project particularly by organizing more concerts, collaborating with museums and providing other GLAM-related and educational outreach activity.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

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This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

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Documentation of expenditures has been received by WMF.

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".
YES, though the bank statement will be provided on Monday at the earliest.

Expenses

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Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.
These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.
Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by WMF Grants Program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.

The exchange rate used to calculate the amount listed in US$:

UAH 813.8 per US$ 100.0 (the exchange rate on 26 June 2013)
Number Category Item description Unit Number of units Actual cost per unit in UAH Actual cost per unit in USD Actual total in UAH Actual total in USD Budgeted total in USD Notes
1 Hall rent House of Scientist's hall in Kyiv Per event 1 926.30 113.82 926.30 113.82 108.93
2 Posters Design & printing Per unit 11 32.88 4.04 361.70 44.45 43.80 We were able to save a bit on designing and printing the posters, but printing out the scores for the musicians was not included into the budget. The cost of this additional box of paper is included here, increasing the cost per unit by 0.71 USD
3 Invitations and playbills Per unit 70 6.00 0.74 420.00 51.61 50.00 Invitations were provided by the House of Scientists in Kyiv (20)
4 Food & Beverages Afterparty Per person 30[5] 50.67 6.23 1520.06 186.79 225.00
5 Travel and post expenses Two way train/bus tickets Per person - - - - - 80.00
6 Audiorecording equipment and accessories microphone Rode Stereo VideoMic Pro
audio recorder Zoom H1
accessories APH-1 for Zoom H1
Per unit 1 2400.00
1112.00
258.00
294.91
136.64
31.70
3770.00 463.26 460.86
7 Bank fees and exchange gain/loss Exchange fees, Bank Account fees and exchange gain/loss Per project 1 67.12 8.25 67.12 8.25 4.90
TOTAL 7065.18 868.17 973.49
Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)
973.49 USD
Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if the WMF grant is your only funding source)
973.49 USD
Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above)
868.17 USD
Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project (this total will be the same as the total amount spent if the WMF grant is your only funding source)
868.17 USD
Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.
YES. Kyiv National Culture and Arts University provided us with some organisational support and rooms for rehearsals. The House of Scientists provided us with invitations. Our Media partner "Regionews" provided informational support for this event У Києві зазвучить перший у світі вікі-концерт: "Світова класика українською".

Remaining funds

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Remaining funds are retained by the grantee with WMF's permission until 15 August 2013. After this date, please return any remaining unused grant funds to WMF following the instructions at Grants:Return unused funds to WMF.
Are there any grant funds remaining?
Answer YES or NO.
YES
Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)
105.32 USD
If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.
Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.
We are going to request for reallocation.

References

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  1. We already have his translations in the wikisource. Hanna Kolesnyk-Ratushna was inspired by his works and a CD was burnt
  2. a b The application was submitted a bit too late, as a matter of fact. We were looking for other possible sources of funding at first
  3. Actually at the end of June. As we had Pentecost and our Constitution Day at the end of June, our banks were not working, thus the money was available in July
  4. Two more are to be uploaded still
  5. twenty people are in this picture, but not all participants are here