Grants talk:Project/Project/Rapid/Art+Feminism 2020 (ArmAg)/Report

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Armineaghayan, and thanks for your report on your activities supporting Art+Feminism in Armenia. Here are my comments and questions:

• Thank you for working to implement these activities in light of significant challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and military conflicts. I understand that these circumstances were disruptive, made it difficult to organize the events as planned. I appreciate that you worked to find other ways to engage participants using Zoom as well as through offline meetups where possible.
• It's interesting to see that you are using a very deliberate approach of working with some newer volunteers individually, such as the one you mentioned from the Tavoush Branch of Artists' Union. Can you describe a little more about how these individual classes are structured and what you are able to cover? What benefits have you seen from running individual classes that may be harder to do with training in a group setting?

Thank you for the question. I would love to mention that I had the chance to work with a group and with an individual newcomer editor. Working with a group was much more useful, since there were both new and old editors at Zoom meetupps and besides the moderator other active editors brought their skills for newcomers each stating and mentioning the difficulties they had as a newcomer editor. And for individual class I could give the basic information and pay much more attention to the only editor.

• It's great that you were able to work across so many different institutions in this project. Were these institutions ones where Wikimedia events have been held before? Were there any hosting Wikimedia events for the first time?

During Art and Feminism Armenia 2020 I was able to invole some institutions which have not collaborated with Wikipedia before, among them were Gallery of Mariam and Eranuhi Aslamazyan Sisters (Gyumri), Vanadzor Fine Arts Museum (Vanadzor), Ministry of High Tech (Yerevan). Above mentioned GLAM institutions were glad to host our small group and provide us with usefull materials which gave birth to WIkipedia new artcles, Wikidata items and images in Commons. The editors from Khndzoresk village were mostly experianced editors so I worked with mainly in Wikidata. As for Saryan Museum online editathon, I have worked years before individualy with this museum and thought it would be nice to mix High Tech workers with Art and by this we brought many of Saryan's paintings depicting women and Beuty into Wikidata.

• Can you confirm what kind of support or involvement in these activities was provided by Wikimedia Armenia, such as equipment, space, speakers, messaging, or general participation at the events?

I can confirm that I managed to do all these activites by the help of the Grant I got from Foundation. Editors used their own laptops, sometimes my laptop as well, I was able to get Internet Router for offline actvites, spaces were given us free of charge (I managed it with the Heads of Museums), while messaging I used Facebook page Art and Feminism Armenia, which I created for this event and I am using it up today for providing all people interested with information in Wikiworld and esecially in Art and Feminism. Our speakers have been artists, and amomg them we had also editors (User:Mariam Galstyan, UserlːHovAp). In the events we have had editors from different spheres, including artists, doctors, teachers, students and also editors who had participated in the events organized by Wikipedia Armenia.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, for giving me the opportunity to have this event. I will do as well Art and Feminism Armenia 2021 in the coming months, as I get letters from hy wiki editors asking about the evnet for this year. Regards, Armineaghayan/ ArmAg 21:32, 14 May 2021 (UTC)