Grants:IdeaLab/Oral documentation of Mexican artisans
Project idea[edit]
What is the problem you're trying to solve?[edit]
Although there are a good number of Mexican artisans and handcraft traditions that meet Wikipedia notability standards, it is impossible to document them well or sometimes at all because Mexican traditional media has not published about these people, often because they come from marginalized groups. This issue was discussed at Wikimania London at this presentation [1]
What is your solution?[edit]
One of the solutions offered by the audience at Wikimania 2014 was to create videos to cover such topics. An idea what we at Wiki Learning are now able to take advantage of as we not only have a program for students needing community service hours to work with Wikipedia, we have also developed a subgroup of students studying digital arts (video, animation...) who do their hours with Wikimedia. The project coordinator has worked individually with the Museo de Arte Popular for some time and just got the institution to officially sign onto the community service program at Tec de Monterrey as a sponsor of student volunteers. This offers a unique mesh of human and institutional resources for such a project. We also have students with experience in creating Wikimedia-related videos (see https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aCsl3wCpoYo&feature=youtu.be (hopefully this will be on Commons this coming week) and a video to be primiered at Wikimania 2015 https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Students_can_do_more_than_write_new_articles_-_Premiere_of_Tec_de_Monterrey_video_of_student_activities_in_Wikimedia) We have some physical resources such as on-campus studios and editing labs, but lack mobile equipment dedicated to projects such as these, principally a video camera and good microphone.
Project goals[edit]
Our immediate goals are to document at least three important artisans (biographies) working in the Mexico City area, as well as one kind of traditional handicraft (e.g. pottery). Our long-term goal is to set up a system by which this work can continue (with funding from sources from outside the Foundation as well) for an indeterminate time.