Grants:Project/Performing Arts Aotearoa - Wiki Project/Timeline

This project is funded by a Project Grant

Timeline for Performing Arts Aotearoa - Wiki Project

Timeline	Date
Milestone 1: Dunedin edit-a-thon	12 July 2021
Milestone 2: Auckland edit-a-thon	14 August 2021
Milestone 3: Wellington edit-a-thon	21 August 2021

Monthly updates

Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.

Month 1 May / June

The project stared 17th May 2021. During May this time was used for research and to set up information to enable the activation of editors. This included creating the project page, contacting people who had either expressed an interest or who had endorsed the application, and potential partners for the edit-a-thons were considered and reached out to, a google spreadsheet to tracking information, and a dashboard to track Wikimedia Commons uploads.

Meeting CAPAOA & Lisa Maule 12 May 2021

Consideration of how to create Wikidata entries including in regards to Māori ethnicity were researched. There was a zoom meeting with the organsiers of the sister project Wikidata:WikiProject Performing arts with Canadian Association for the Performing Arts (CAPACOA) - Frédéric Julien, Director of Research and Development, Bridget MacIntosh, Cultural Strategist and Lisa Maule, NZ Wikiproject Coordinator.

On the 5th June a mini-edit-a-thon was staged as a takeover of the monthly Wellington Meetup Group. This provided good learning for the coordinator about directing people in subject areas they were not familiar with and proves again sometimes seemingly simple editing jobs can be complicated. However with the focus on quality content all of the time was well spent. The topic was to Wikify a Wellington arts event the Kia Mau Festival, and some time was spent on this and some time on improving other performing arts related areas.

Details:

Wikipedia:Meetup/Wellington/Meetup 5 June 2021 Kia Mau project document Results over 12 hours tracked with a dashboard:

Articles Created	25	Articles Edited	89	Total Edits	575	Article Views	234
Editors	7	Words Added	57.1K	References Added	239	Commons Uploads	8

Notes: Articles include Wikidata
It was acknowledged by the participants that improvements were time consuming as base information (such as venues or production companies) is also missing

WIKIPEDIA
Editors have created 31 new Wikipedia articles reported on the project page, improvement to two significant articles, New Zealand Opera and the Chapman Trip Theatre Awards, resolved problems with two draft articles (moved to main space), and fixed problems with four other articles. The 31 articles include 19 new biographies with 14 of these about women and six are of people of colour (three Māori people). Other editing may have been done and tracked in a different place, or not recorded.

WIKIDATA
The targets specified in this project for Wikidata were exceeded within the first week of the project with the concerted efforts of two editors. A Wikidata item was created to track entries. Performing Arts Aotearoa New Zealand (Q106787482). With claims of ethnicity the policy is to include references from a biography, interview or personal website. Ethnicity of white people is strongly encouraged to be included where this information is available. Māori is listed and then also iwi (tribe/s).

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The dashboard is not working so well to just identify performing arts related uploads however a number of images were uploaded and are in use in articles. Uploads will be more analysed later in this reporting. Examples of some June image uploads in this gallery.

J.C. Williamson
Love for Love, 1979, Palmerston North
Manawatu Theatre Society set build
Toi Pōneke arts centre, Wellington
Opera House, Wellington
Te Auaha, venue and performing arts school, Wellington

Month 2 July

Dunedin Edit-a-thon 10 July 2021

An edit-a-thon took place in Ōtepoti Dunedin on Saturday 10 July at the Hocken Collections Library from 10.30am – 4pm, Wikipedia:Meetup/Dunedin 4. This was the first of three edit-a-thons that are part of the Performing Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject funded by the Wikimedia Foundation.
The coordinator Pakoire and co-host DrThneed were joined in person by seven others, which included six new editors from the performing arts community, and two people working remotely in Wellington and Christchurch.
There were two content focus areas for the workshop:

To improve content around the legacy of Allen Hall which is the theatre venue of the Otago University theatre department and has been operating for decades
To celebrate the current performing arts companies in the city by increasing content on people and organisations in WikipediaV

In addition the Theatre Aotearoa Database was put forward as a resource useful for expanding theatre articles.

The red door of Allen Hall is being used as a hook for a Did You Know feature on the Wikipedia homepage which links two new articles created for this event, Allen Hall and Lisa Warrington.

The dashboard for the event recorded the new editors adding 27 references to Wikipedia between them and a total of 2,017 words. Comments from new editors after they had learnt the basics and started editing related to how accessible they found doing it. There was motivation amongst many in the group to continue to meet as a way of progressing the articles they are interested in. With the experienced editors overall including Wikidata the edit-a-thon added 48.1K words, 4 commons uploads, 245 references, across 53 articles including 4 new Wikipedia articles and 15 new Wikidata articles.

Conflict of interest is an area of consideration for editing in performing arts, since most subject experts are also practicing arts and producers. This edit-a-thon / meetup format was useful and people worked on unrelated articles but in tandem with others who knew where to get information.

Both the Otago Theatre Department and the Hocken Collections Library were keen to host this event but the timing meant the Hocken was a better option. It was a very suitable venue and the event was very warmly supported by staff with special thanks to Lynn Benson. The university subject librarian for Art and Humanities Alexander Ritchie has also expressed a desire to support Wikipedia events in the future.

July overview
The Wikiproject has goals to ensure good representation of women, Māori and people of colour artists, producers, productions and organisations to address existing bias in Wikipedia.

There are two more scheduled edit-a-thons as part of this project:

Auckland on Saturday 14 August 10.30am - 4pm at the Auckland Theatre Company studio - 487 Dominion Road, Mt Eden, Auckland 1024. The focus is influential Auckland women in performing arts.
Wellington on Saturday 21 Augusts 10.30am - 4pm at the Nola Millar Library, Te Whaea: National Dance and Drama Centre - 11 Hutchison Street, Newtown, Wellington. The focus is staff and graduates of Toi Whakaari and the New Zealand School of Dance.

At this midpoint of the four month project there have been 31 new Wikipedia articles created that includes 14 biographies of women, six biographies of people of colour and 12 articles about organisations, productions and awards. Some examples are: Nisha Madhan, Honor McKellar, Tanya Muagututi'a, That Bloody Woman, New Zealand School of Dance and Carla Van Zon who featured in a Wikpedia main page Did You Know on 26 June 2021.
The Wikidata entries have far exceeded the project goals with approximately 750 items created or added to. There is more work to do to create opportunities to upload images to Wikimedia Commons under appropriate licences, as predicted this involves a lot of education with individuals and organisations as well as motivating people to follow through.

Month 3 August

21st August Edit-a-thon

Month 4 September

Is your final report due but you need more time?

Extension request

New Final Report due date

31 October 2021

Note on due date extension approval

Noting here that the Final Report due date has been extended to 31 October 2021, giving the grantee an additional two weeks to complete the report. -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 17:58, 10 September 2021 (UTC)