Grants:Project/Rapid/Art Jarka/Documentation of endangered buildings and artworks
gmail.com
Please see the sample Photowalk application before drafting your application.
Project Goal
editChoose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed. You can add details to each goal.
- Create and improve Czech Wikipedia articles about notable buildings, artworks, and creators
- Ilustrate Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items on the topic with quality images
- Advocate Wikipedia as a good and reliable source of information
- Recruit new contributors
Project Plan
editActivities
editTell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:
1. How many walks/tours will you organize and how many people on each walk?
- The idea is to support those, who would like to picture take endangered architecture, and artworks as specified below. From the activities in previous years especially from the photo walks, we cannot perform due to the lack of finances, we counted we could make about 20-25 photo walks during the period of the grant. Most of the photo walks will be a single person, some, if the local COVID-19 situation will allow, will be done in more people. This model is known to us from the Wikimedia Czech Republic's Mediagrant.
2. What kind of content will the walks focus on? Why is this topic a priority?
- The main focus of the tours are buildings and artworks which are in danger of destruction in the Czech Republic. We will also focus on the pieces of art, where we can get the permission of the rights holder to get the rights to use it under the free licenses via Wikimedia Commons. This is mostly the case of objects dating back to the second half of the 20th century, but occasionally might be older. We will also cover those, which are not in the immediate thread. The buildings and artists of works must be notable for Wikipedia that articles could be created regarding the policies of Wikipedia. To decide, whether an object needs to be photographed we get policies and skills from Photography of the Czech Municipality Grant.
- The reasons to cover such area are to photograph the object, when it is possible (when the building is demolished, we would hardly ever get the photograph and make Wikipedia a good resource), secondly to advocate Wikipedia as a good resource, by covering all important areas.
- The notion, that we have to photograph these sites came in 2017. when we concluded that the coverage of Czech municipalities is coming to the end and we were wondering, whether we haven't missed something. Slowly it became apparent, there is the domain of contemporary architecture and public artworks that rapidly disappearing. Thus we have started to photo-document them, create articles and Wikidata items. As examples, we can mention Trangas building, where we motivated volunteers to photograph details of the building and its demolition, portraits of its architects, and several translations of Wikipedia article to multiple languages. Another example is the biography of the Sylva Lacinová, where we manage to create a pretty good article about the sculptor, made photographs of her 20 exterior artworks, created 180 photographs in her atelier and negotiated these to be released under the free license. As a continuation we follow with a project on Wikidata to create a secondary database of her artwork, creating Wikidata items and sorting out the photographs. In cooperation with the Czech non-profit organization ArtLib (their project page on Czech Wikipedia), we would like to obtain photographs of her works from Czech galleries, and there is a presumption that the copyright holder could again grant consent to their use under a free license. But this is not the only ongoing project in the area. There are others and many more are waiting due to the lack of funding. That's why we are proposing this grant request to support us at least on transportation.
3. What is the plan to ensure images will be used on Wikimedia projects?
- The goal of the project is to illustrate Wikipedia. Members of our team and other volunteers showed in the past that they are willing to help with the creation of Wikipedia they were placing images on WMF projects alone or with our help. To ensure it for the future, we are ready to help new contributors by organizing online training and workshops and by creating a policy for those who would request financial support that they have to illustrate Wikipedia and Wikidata with their photographs.
4. Do participants have the equipment or skills needed to participate and contribute high-quality content? If not, how will you support them?
- Some of the collaborators showed in the past that they have both good equipment and skills to contribute to high-quality content. Others having fewer skills. For these, we will organize an online training and we will create a written guideline which will be attached to the project page on Wikipedia.
5. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?
- The project is backed by two Facebook groups (Ošklivá architektura, SKLO) with at least 4000 participants where we find contributors, expertise, etc.
- Even most of our cooperation on creating free content is via chat rooms at the time, we plan to create a Wikipedia page, with grant policies, guidelines, friendly space policies, and COVID-19 related guidelines. We will inform the community about sites that need to be photographed. We will also monitor the local COVID-related development and inform our participants about the local restrictions.
6. Are you running any in-person events or activities? If so, you will need to complete the steps outlined on the Risk Assessment protocol related to COVID-19. When you have completed these steps, please provide a link to your completed copy of the risk assessment tool below:
- We are running an in-person event, but regarding Step 2 of COVID-19 Risk Assessment protocol, we think we don't have to fill the Risk Assessment tool.
Impact
editHow will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets and feel free to add more:
- Number of newly illustrated articles: 60
- Number of uploaded photos to Wikimedia Commons: 1200
- Number of new contributors: 2
Our calculations come from granted projects Protected Areas and Surface Waters for which the workload and difficulty for participants seem to be similar to our conditions. We base it also on the metric recolected for these projects by user Juandev during the last 10 years.
The number of newly illustrated articles stays for one language mutation. The word newly links to our specific criteria, where an article does not have illustration if does not have photographs at all, has photographs, but of bad quality or just details, and in the case of buildings two photographs.
Resources
editWhat resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).
- We have skilled wikiphotographers, Wikipedia, and Wikidata contributors.
- We have a group of enthusiasts who may inform us of sites that would need our attention, where we can recruit new contributors and which would support us in other ways.
- We have an agreement with the ArtLib association, whose relations to Czech GLAM may lead to the release of images of artwork.
- We have access to certain databases of artwork in the public spaces.
- Everybody can reach digitalized resources via the National Library of the Czech Republic.
- The project lead Art Jarka has a long experience in contributing to Wikimedia Projects especially in the domain of art. She helped with the organization of Wikiexpeditions and editatons in the past. She will coordinate this project and she will be responsible for backing the project with data of an object, which could be photographed, recruiting new contributors, etc. As an educator at the elementary school, she uses Wikipedia in education.
- Juandev, who is a long-term contributor and project lead of several granted photographic projects will be in charge of recruiting new contributors and monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic including informing participants about the actual situation and project lead recommendations.
- We plan to seek support elsewhere in the future to support us with studio photography.
What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount. Participants of the project could request financial support on certain direct expenses. In that case, they should send us a travel report via e-mail and fulfill the criteria. The conversion from CZK to USD was made on January 14, 2021, through the Oanda website. Amounts were rounded up to whole numbers.
- Transportation: 1,385 USD
- Transporation might be done by public transport or car. Long-distance travel is not supported. Participants will be instructed how much income is expected for certain expenditure requests they have. Travelers by car will receive 4,50 CZK / km, which is the amount equal to the amount provided by the Wikimedia Czech Republic.
- Alimentation: 196 USD
- Participants may request support on alimentation if they will illustrate a certain amount of Wikipedia articles and if they were photographing more than 8 hours on the trip up to 170 CZK, and an additional 80 CZK if being volunteering more than 12 hours. Whole-day photodocumentating might be exhausting thus we would like to support participants at least with one hot meal a day if possible and in the case of a very long working day also with a snack in the evening.
- Other: 75 USD
- Here we request support on proofreading texts in the Czech language. Czech people are very sensitive to grammatical mistakes and texts with even minor grammatical mistakes might damage the project in the eyes of the public. At the same time, we are not sure that we can ensure proofreading by volunteers of public releases on time, thus we request financial support on the services of a professional proofreader.
- Total: 1,656 USD
Endorsements
editCommunity members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!
- It's a good idea. When those objects disappear and we write an article about them, we never get photos. Likewise, if there is a possibility that someone allows our photos to be distributed under a free license, then it is necessary to use it because it is generally a problem. --Juandev (talk) 17:28, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
Question: Question: Hello @Art Jarka:, you are a member of Wikimedia Czech Republic. Rapid grant guidelines state that it is a good idea to contact your chapter in advance of writing a new grant proposal. Have you tried reaching to the chapter for direct financial support? This seems like an idea our chapter is likely to support, and it's much more economical than administering a wholly new grant request.--Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 16:58, 19 January 2021 (UTC)- I have been doing last projects with Juandev and Art Jarka and I think this is a good idea, so I support it —Jerryfoto (talk) 12:17, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
Comment Although I see the scope of this project as highly useful, I find Vojtěch Dostál's remarks still very valid. Wikimedia Czech Republic runs a variety of grant projects and since Art Jarka is a member of the chapter, I believe it's a bit inappropriate not to even try reaching some kind of cooperation directly with WMCZ. --T.Bednarz (talk) 15:01, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
