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Grants:Project/Rapid/Community of Soul: Writing Black Music History Editathon

< Grants:Project | Rapid
statusfunded
amyc29/Community of Soul: Writing Black Music History in Wikipedia
increasing diversity of Wikipedia by partnering with African American cultural centers to do outreach editathon events themed around Black Musical History in the US
targetWikipedia and WikiData, English language edition
start dateJuly 1
end dateOctober 1
budget (local currency)4,800
budget (USD)4,800
grant typeindividual
grantee• amyc29
contact(s)• amymarie@mit.edu


Create your report

Please see the sample Editathon/Training application before drafting your application.

Project Goal

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Choose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.

  1. Recruit new editors
  2. Add or improve content
  3. Address content gaps
  4. Increase editor diversity

Project Plan

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Activities

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Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:

1. Are you doing one editathon or training or a series of editathons or trainings?

To start, we will be doing a series of four editathons in four cities: in Memphis at The Memphis Slimhouse, in Chicago at the Stony Island Arts Bank, in Nashville at the National Museum of African American Music, in Richmond at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art.

To address the main problem of editor diversity, our strategy is thus:

1. Partner with local cultural community centers in key cities (with a particular focus on those with limited Wikimedia project involvement)

2. Produce all-day music-themed events that offer new editor training; an edit-a-thon tied to a regional-specific musical genre; local guest speakers; a DJ; and refreshments.

3. Advertise/promote our events in diverse media outlets to reach a broader public audience

4. Review event outcomes for process improvement and community reach, document our work through multimodal storytelling vehicles

We believe that this is a formula worth pursuing as we have been beta-testing it and have now run successful events using this format in the following places pre-Covid:

Chicago, IL (January 12, 2020) at The Stony Island Arts Bank: our theme was "Frankie Knuckles and Friends"--Knuckles is widely considered the 'godfather of house music' and Chicago is considered its birthplace, so this all-day event at Chicago's newest African-American cultural center brought out a really good crowd, trained a new cache of editors, solidified local community connections, and yielded numerous contributions to Wikipedia. (We have been invited back this summer for another event!)

Cambridge, MA (February 1, 2020) at MIT. This event was titled "Prince-o-pedia" and was focused on expanding coverage of Prince-related articles (and his collaborators, etc) on Wikipedia. Attendees were from the Prince fan community and were excited to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia, which resulted in some good edits.

Charlotte, NC (February 8, 2020) at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Art and Culture. This event was tied to WikiProject Hip Hop and featured a local DJ and two guest speakers (Grammy-nominated songwriter, rapper, and producer Mad Skillz and acclaimed film editor/director Farah X, who most recently directed the award-winning documentary The Remix: Fashion X Hip Hop as well as videos for Prince, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Rapsody, and others). We received a lot of local news coverage for this event--one such piece is this one: https://qcitymetro.com/2020/02/05/hip-hop-edit-a-thon-addresses-lack-of-diversity-in-wikipedia-content-editors/

We believe our approach is distinct for a few reasons. First and foremost, we are committed to expanding coverage of Black History in the English language edition of Wikipedia. We believe the best way to do this is by empowering a more diverse pool of editors through community training (outside of a traditional classroom setting). We have seen music serve as an effective tool for engagement. By adding additional elements (guest speakers, refreshments, partnering with a local cultural center), we also offer a way to build community that will remain after our event is over.

Additionally: though our events are held at local cultural centers in the cities that we visit, we are have also partnered with librarians, faculty, and staff at local colleges and universities, public libraries, and affiliate organizations like afroCROWD and Black Lunch Table. We also reach out to the local Wikimedia user groups in those communities and invite them to participate.


2. How have you let relevant Wikimedia communities know about this proposal? You are required to provide links to on-wiki pages to inform these communities about your proposed work. Examples of places where this can be done include community discussion pages, affiliate discussion pages, or relevant project talk pages.
You may also provide information about external social media channels you may be using.

This was our pre-Covid community discussion page for the project (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Amyc29/Community_of_Soul:_Writing_Black_Music_History_in_Wikipedia). We will continue to publicize using events pages such as this one we created for the Charlotte editathon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Charlotte/8_February_2020)

3. How will you let participants know about the edit-a-thon? In what ways will you be communicating with them?
For example, these can include on-wiki spaces, social media channels, mailing lists, messaging apps, or physical/online gatherings.

We will use social media (IG and Facebook--not only Wiki groups, but Facebook advertisements, etc). Also, the cultural institutions with which we partner advertise for us as well. To get the word out to the Black Community in particular, with previous events we have been featured in radio interviews and news outlets targeted toward a diverse audience.

4. Do you have experienced Wikimedia editors to lead the event? Please provide links to the usernames of these individuals.
For example: User:I JethroBT

yes, User: amyc29 will lead the events. In addition, as has been our practice in the past, we solicit local experienced editors from regional user groups as well as local colleges and universities to provide volunteer support.

5. Do participants have the equipment or skills needed to participate and contribute high quality content? If not, how will you support them?

new editors will be well supported by volunteer editors; prior to the event, the organizer also makes a detailed event page (see Charlotte example above) with links to articles needing updating as well as quality source material. The cultural centers with which we partner provide additional laptops and tablets for users if needed.

6. How will you engage participants after the event(s)?

To engage participants after the events, we send follow up thank yous, email surveys and stay in touch on our mailing list to update of upcoming events.

7. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

Our project uses a series of community events (hybrid tech-training/editathon/social gatherings) to empower a more diverse pool of Wikipedia editors to contribute on music-related topics--particularly those of significance within the Black community. We are focused on engaging individuals from historically underrepresented groups in communities where there are demonstrated gaps in knowledge equity.

The main problem we are trying to address is the lack of editor diversity in the English language edition of Wikipedia. Another (equally important) problem we wish to address is content gaps, particularly those pertaining to Black contributions to American musical culture. We feel strongly that with regard to editor diversity, this can be attributed to a lack of platform-specific training as well as a lack of awareness of the specific content gaps that exist (and opportunities to contribute to the Wikimedia projects).

What is documented depends on who is doing the documenting. That said, if Wikipedia is to be reflective of the world, its editor base should be too. Knowledge is power, and we believe that this initiative functions as a form of social activism by deliberately empowering a broader range of contributors to document cultural history and notable biographical figures. Further, we both believe in the power of music as a connecting force, a point emphasized by educator and musician John Gray in this TEDX talk. Given that, we have seen music serve as a way to garner community interest and attendance at our events and are excited to continue this work.

Impact

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How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets:

  1. Number of events

4 events

  1. Number of participants

25+ participants at each event

  1. Number of new editors

at least 10 new active editors for each event

  1. Number of of articles created or improved

at least 5 new articles and 5 updated articles for each event

  1. Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events)

at least 3 repeat participants for each event--we will also be streaming live via Zoom

Resources

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What 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).

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.

For each event (x4):

Food 250 Advertising/promotions 100 Wikipedia swag 100 DJ/entertainment 500 Transportation costs 250 Total $1200 for each event, x4=$4800

Endorsements

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Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

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