Wiki In Africa/GLAM

Wiki Loves Africa is by far Wiki In Africa's largest GLAM project. Beyond the media contest, Wiki In Africa ran a series of training interventions from 2020 to 2022 called WikiAfrica Heritage with the Simon's Town Museum. This process is documented below. In 2024 the training program was in stasis due to personnel transitions at the museum. The program might resurface in the future.

WikiAfrica Heritage is a GLAM training and support initiative, initially created for heritage professionals and enthusiasts based within the Western Cape, South Africa. The programme being developed is intended as a template that can be adapted to other programmes across Africa, and beyond. The initial programme started in May 2021 and will roll out through out the year. It is a collaboration between Wiki In Africa and the Simon's Town Museum, Cape Town.

Preceeding this event was the Descendants of slavery event funded by the FindingGLAMs initiative from Wikimedia Sweden.

Main goals of the programme

Develop a slow, manageable, collaborative, consultative and supportive programme with Heritage and memory professionals and enthusiasts to introduce and facilitate the integration of Wikipedia and Open movement practices into the Heritage sector in Cape Town
Provide knowledge, theoretical information, practical application and programme development support as alternatives in their community and education programmes
Inform and assist as heritage organisations put skills and knowledge into action:

in the form of content expansion and creation directly on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons and in the development
in the development of realistic community and education interventions that are adapted to their unique situations, limitations and resources.

Build a nurturing, self-sustaining and supportive local then regional network that helps and assists each other.
Share this model with communities across Africa to grow and develop the GLAM space.

The main elements of the collaborative and consultative programme are:

Knowledge transfer :

Find out about Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects and communities, Open licences and copyright, GLAM partnerships, Education programmes, case studies, etc.

Skills acquisition :

Learn how to edit, work with info boxes, add data, upload images, teach others, where the best resources are, etc.

Content creation (practical application):

Add to and improve existing articles that reflect your community, focus or passions. Understand the challenges through practical application

Programme development:

Support as you develop your own community or education programme

Project Impact (end 2021)

10 WikiAfrica Heritage Members representing 8 heritage organisations in the Western Cape, South Africa received an introduction to Wikimedia and the GLAM benefits for working with Wikimedia Communities over 4 working sessions.

Project impact 2022

Wiki Loves Women celebrates women leaders with the SheSaid drive. The drive is aimed at improving the visibility of women in creating new or improving already existing Wikiquote entries related to them. In November 2022, the WikiAfrica Heritage initiative hosted an intensive 3-day training at the District Six Museum's Homecoming Centre to add South Africa's notable women to English and Afrikaans Wikiquotes.

Eight heritage and culture professionals from Cape Town attended the intensive training course. During that time the participants were introduced to Wikimedia. They registered accounts, navigated the spaces, added images, and after one-on-one training added 25 articles detailing quotations by notable South African women, from political powerhouses to contemporary thought leaders, journalists and musicians.

Read more:

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