Grants:Project/Rapid/Art+Feminism CT 2021/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Art+Feminism CT 2021.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

We are very happy with how our events. We had planned our event for 2020 and had to cancel due to Covid. We used the funds for our 2020 grant and further funds to expand our 2021 programming, though we still had to provide it all virtually. We hosted four events this year including a guest lecture, a virtual tour of a local art museum (the Wadsworth Atheneum), an all-day edit-a-thon with student and community artist performances, and a Wikipedia editing workshop for area faculty and archive/museum professionals.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
2 events	4 events	Instead of 2 edit-a-thons, we hosted 4 virtual events that engaged theme in addition to one edit-a-thon.
30 participants	173 attendees across 4 events	Our attendance breakdown was as follows: Keynote lecture: 44 Virtual Museum tour: 42 Edit-a-thon with artist performance: 38 Teaching with Wikipedia Workshop: 49

20 new editors	19 new editors
50 articles created or improved	38	Our event dashboard is available here: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Trinity_College/Art_Plus_Feminism_CT/home

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?
What did not work so well?
What would you do differently next time?

We partnered with faculty to present a keynote on relevant research that was open to the public as a virtual event. We were really pleased with the turnout and with the way the talk allowed attendees a way into the central ideas of art+feminism in advance of the edit-a-thon. Similarly, a talk and virtual tour of the Wadsworth Atheneum grounded art+feminism in a local collection and was well attended.

This was the first year we partnered with a student club as collaborators and that was incredibly successful. This group, Nest Artists, was formed in part because of issues of access and representation in more formal art programs and were ideal and enthusiastic partners. We will definitely work with them next year as thoughtful and excellent co-creators. They helped us to promote the artistic performance we scheduled as a midpoint break during our edit-a-thon and it was successful as a space to showcase student and community artists.

The teaching with Wikipedia editing workshop was also very successful in drawing both local librarians and archivist/museum professionals in addition to local faculty. Our facilitator presented a really accessible program about the benefits of bringing editing into the classroom and we will be further collaborating on smaller events on our campuses to involve students and faculty directly.

The Edit-a-thon succeeded drawing international guests via virtual setting and regional guests from area institutions. We had a strong turnout to the artist performance at the midpoint of our edit-a-thon and attendance dropped off on either side of the performance window. We are workshopping if a better day of week (not a Friday) would be more attractive to potential editors. We are also working on incorporating editing into courses and hosting smaller edit-a-thons throughout the year to raise awareness about what to editing and remove any perceived barriers of entry to participating in an edit-a-thon.

Overall, we are very happy with how it went and feel we want to keep a virtual component even if we are in-person next year to allow for remote participation. We will also explore scheduling the edit-a-thon differently to encourage greater participation.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Raffle Prizes = $300

Logo designed by student artist group = $300

Art supplies for event ($728)

Local Artist Support: ($272)

Total Spent = $1600

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

In our 2020 grant we reported $1400 in artist support for a grant originally funding $1128.09. The difference (271.91) has been amended here to reflect the supplemental funding we’ve received through this grant to expand our 2021 event.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?