Grants:Project/Rapid/YEG Art+Feminism edit-a-thon/Report

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Please see our dashboard for more details: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/MacEwan_University_and_University_of_Alberta/YEG_Art_and_Feminism_Wikipedia_edit-a-thon_(March_5,_2020)

Goals

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We are happy that we did strong work towards our original goals of:

  1. Recruit and train new editors. We plan to spend special attention to reach out to communities that are underrepresented in Wikipedia’s editor makeup (women, people of colour, indigenous people, LGBTQ+ identified). Create a safe space for people to ask questions and get help in a collaborative environment.
  2. Engage and increase skills for existing editors.
  3. Add or improve the content on the work of artists and authors that are womxn, people of colour and people from the LGBTQ+ community with an emphasis on local and Canadian perspective.

In addition, we established an ongoing committed working partnership between the University of Alberta Library, MacEwan University Library, MacEwan University’s Fine Arts Program, and the Mitchell Art Gallery that plans to continue into future years. Through this partnership and our engaging program, we built a great deal of awareness and established an engaged community for future events, during which we can continue to work on and grow our goals. We were very pleased with this event as our first-ever event. We focused on organizing a small, achievable, and accessible event as a “proof of concept” for a solid foundation on which we can build future events. We are also quite proud of the educational aspects of our programming, including increasing awareness of different methods of knowledge building and sharing, thorough and proper research methodologies and dissemination, writing tips, wiki-media platforms, community building, unconscious bias (including racism and sexism), intersectional feminist methodologies, and local arts contributors. We also gathered quite a list of arts and cultural contributors that are relevant to our local, national, and international contexts whose presence on Wikipedia can be improved at future events.


Outcome

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Please see our dashboard for more details: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/MacEwan_University_and_University_of_Alberta/YEG_Art_and_Feminism_Wikipedia_edit-a-thon_(March_5,_2020)
Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
Number of events = 1 edit-a-thon, 2 training sessions, 2 gallery tours and/or curatorial talks,

1-panel discussion)

1 edit-a-thon

3 training sessions (including a pre-session for our volunteers) 1 gallery tour 1-panel discussion

We met our target programming. We hosted one edit-a-thon that was five hours long, during which we hosted two formal training sessions, one gallery tour, and a great deal of informal training and knowledge building. We also hosted a dynamic and diverse panel discussion directly after the edit-a-thon to further build conversation, awareness, and community. Previous to the edit-a-thon day, we hosted a robust training session for all volunteers.
Number of participants = 40 Total: ~ 45-50

25 at the edit-a-thon and training sessions; an additional 5-10 that attended the panel; an additional 15 that attended the gallery tour

We did not quite meet our target for the edit-a-thon proper but feel that our overall numbers met or exceeded our target number of participants, but in a more diverse way than expected. As our very first event in a community that is not overly familiar with Wikipedia edit-a-thons, we are pleased that we established a committed community, increased awareness, and piqued many people's interest who will participate in future events.
Number of new editors = 30 10 new

5 established

We had 15 registered editors on our dashboard, with about 10 being new and 5 being established previous to our event. Many people ended up being involved through roles and activities other than specifically editing, these being people who volunteered with hosting, participated in the panel, attended the panel, gathered resources, and supported the editing of others. We also had a handful of established editors that did some editing.
Number of articles created or improved = 30 Total: 26

3 created 23 edited

We were happy with this number considering our number of participants and active editors.

3 new pages created:

Some of the pages which we improved:

Added arts references


Learning

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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?

  • For planning, it worked well to divide and conquer according to people’s positions, strengths, interests, and resource access. Our partnership brought together a great mix of knowledge and resource access, including Fine Art knowledge, library resources, technical resources, research knowledge, and Wikipedia knowledge. By bringing together different entities, we also increased our exposure and scope.
  • A pre-training session for volunteers increased confidence and knowledge for the day of the event.

Hosting the event in an easily accessible and public space, allowed for greater visibility and access. Even if people didn’t participate, it increased their awareness.

  • Diversity of programming also offered different ways of engaging and levels of commitment that made it more accessible and approachable.
  • Starting out small and achievable for our first time, as a “proof of concept” for ourselves and our community.
  • We had a large whiteboard onto which participants and people passing by could add names of artists and arts organizations whose presence of Wikipedia could be improved.
  • We had greeters that engaged everyone walking by to welcome and inform them about our event and the larger A+F campaign.

What did not work so well?

  • Getting people walking by to stop and commit to participating.
  • Getting the word out to the broader community.
  • Making our event stand out on a busy university campus.
  • Establishing ongoing editing efforts.

What would you do differently next time?

  • Get the word out sooner and more broadly.
  • Establish more branding and advertising.
  • Work harder to get media coverage.
  • Work harder to establish more diverse community partnerships outside of an academic context.
  • Create a structure of support or larger series of programming that allows for more extensive editing efforts.

Finances

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Grant funds spent

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

Budget item Grant Budget USD Grant Budget CAD Actuals CAD
Food and drink for the event $ 500.00 $ 656.60 $ 641.72
Gift cards for the panel experts $ 115.00 $ 150.99 $ 150.00
Printing costs for promotional buttons and stickers $ 75.00 $ 98.48 $ 78.08 + 11.44 (duty)
Printing costs for promotional materials including posters and handouts $ 75.00 $ 98.48 $ 62.74
childcare / art activity (includig honorariums) $ 500.00 $ 656.60 $ 215.75
Totals $ 1,265.00 $ 1,660.54 $ 1,159.73

Remaining funds

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Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Actual expenses were claimed for the actual payment after the fact (due to payment actually happening after the event), so no reimbursement is necessary.

Anything else

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Anything else you want to share about your project?