Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Wikidata and the Linked Open Data Ecosystem for the Performing Arts/Final Report
Report Status: Under review
Due date: 30 April 2023
Funding program: Wikimedia Alliances Fund
Report type: Final
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General information
[edit]This form is for organizations, groups, or individuals receiving Wikimedia Community Funds or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their final results.
- Name of Organization: Canadian Arts Presenting Association
- Title of Proposal: Wikidata and the Linked Open Data Ecosystem for the Performing Arts
- Amount awarded: 27672.96 USD, 34800 CAD
- Amount spent: 60363 CAD
Part 1 Understanding your work
[edit]1. Briefly describe how your proposed activities and strategies were implemented.
We undertook exhaustive outreach activities (not covered by the grant) to raise awareness of Wikidata among industry associations and to offer the opportunity to upload their member information to Wikidata. We met with no less than 24 industry associations, unions and awards organizations (hereafter called associations). Of these, 7 proceeded to upload their members’ data to Wikidata, either directly or via the Artsdata knowledge graph (this excludes two uploads that were completed prior to this grant’s start date). In addition, named entities from the Artsdata knowledge graph were also uploaded to Wikidata.
Following these batch uploads we held five data enrichment activities with members of the participating associations.
CAPACOA also hired paid editors to fill-in data gaps needed for intended reuse (this activity was not covered by the grant but was necessary to achieve certain outcomes).
In parallel, we held four Meetups of the WikiProject Performing arts community and the WikiProject Cultural venues to address data challenges experienced over the course of the batch uploads. Class items were created and documented in the WikiProject Cultural venues.
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you felt were effective in achieving your goals?
Even though individual outreach efforts were not covered by the grant, we found them to be absolutely necessary to realize batch uploads. Activities in this area involved:
- raising awareness of Wikidata (what it is and what benefits it could provide to associations’ members);
- providing guidance on minimal data points required for disambiguation in Wikidata;
- helping the associations develop and implement a consent strategy and a communications strategy.
Our lessons learned in this area and the resources that we developed were disseminated in this blog post: https://linkeddigitalfuture.ca/2022/10/25/connecting-with-arts-service-organizations-a-key-to-opening-data/
The Cultural venues datathon (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Cultural_venues/Datathon) was more successful than other data enrichment activities, because it was designed tied to a clear aim – creating a complete high-quality database of cultural venues – that participants saw as valuable and achievable. In other words, it was a “publish with purpose” project rather than an “open by default” approach.
The meetups were also quite successful in that participants were able to identify and implement solutions to almost all modelling challenges identified over the course of batch uploads.
3. Would you say that your project had any innovations? Are there things that you did very differently than you have seen them done by others?
We used a range of methods to extract-transform-load (ETL) data to Wikidata. In several cases, we used natural language processing to extract information from front-facing directories. This information was first transformed and loaded into the Artsdata knowledge graph, and it was then uploaded to Wikidata. The advantage of this ETL method is that it can easily be repeated over time with little to no human intervention.
Although we wouldn’t call this an “innovation”, we did develop an expertise in accompanying associations over the course of their batch upload project. For the last batch upload with the Associated Designers of Canada, this upload project started on September 19th, which was fairly late in our project grant timeline. This project went very swiftly and wrapped up in time for a series of Wikimedia Commons workshops in mid-February) in which the newly created items were meant to be reused (see the project report: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MHj_E2o8bgZoh15XRk4wq9dcuJnp4sEOTnpEO_VRMdc/edit?usp=sharing).
Another innovation was the creation of a widget that displays the total number of items edited for each data catalog uploaded under the umbrella of CAPACOA’s Linked Digital Future Initiative: https://culturecreates.github.io/artsdata-widget/#/
4. Please describe how different communities participated and/or were informed about your work.
As mentioned above, pretty much all performing arts associations in Canada were individually contacted to be informed of the possibility of uploading their member information to Wikidata. This outreach was conducted in English and in French (Canada’s two official languages).
This outreach was also informed by principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, as well as by a series of consultations with Indigenous artists and organizations (not covered by the grant). The outcomes of this work have been remarkable. First, the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance adopted their own Data Sovereignty Strategy (https://ipaa.ca/data-sovereignty-strategy/). Then, the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance implemented a series of data-centric improvements to their member directories to collect clear disambiguating information for Wikidata. Finally, after the upload, they implemented a final round of improvements in their directories to integrate Schema structured data and to display members’ Wikidata IDs.
We also made efforts to lift language barriers that prevented French-speaking colleagues from participating in our meetups. Starting in September, we offered English-French interpretation. This made it possible for three new participants to join the working group. Over the course of the project, we had 27 unique participants in these meetups – nearly twice as much as our target.
We deployed considerable efforts to share information about our work.
As mentioned above, we published a blog post on our lessons learned from outreach. We also published two more posts about our batch uploads (see below).
In addition, we made several presentations about our work at conferences such as Go Open Data, the Canadian Open Data Summit and the DARIAH-EU WG Theatralia conference Performing Arts: Transitioning to the Digital Age (sample presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Odqk8cwrmPMuhqm3gnpWbuT-6kP2g1cCfcOqIZtYccM/edit?usp=sharing)
5. Documentation of your impact. Please use the two spaces below to share files and links that help tell your story and impact. This can be documentation that shows your results through testimonies, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, etc.) social media posts, dashboards, etc.
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
https://linkeddigitalfuture.ca/2022/09/30/indigenous-artists-linked-data/ https://linkeddigitalfuture.ca/2022/10/25/connecting-with-arts-service-organizations-a-key-to-opening-data/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jydqERqAfF4 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Odqk8cwrmPMuhqm3gnpWbuT-6kP2g1cCfcOqIZtYccM/edit?usp=sharing https://linkeddigitalfuture.ca/wikidata/
6. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Agree |
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Neither agree nor disagree |
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | Strongly agree |
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Strongly agree |
E. Encourage the retention of editors | Disagree |
F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Agree |
G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement. | Disagree |
7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?
We definitely lowered barriers for integrating content about performing arts artists, organizations and places. We notably established processes by which individual artists can give informed consent to disclose their member information in Wikidata. Artists and cultural workers who do not wish to engage with Wikidata or who don't have enough time for it are only required to read the information shared by their association of union and to give their consent for uploading their information to Wikidata.
However, we were not nearly as successful as anticipated in growing the community of active contributors to Wikidata and to Wikimedia Commons. Even though members of participating associations were given the opportunity to participate in data enrichment activities following uploads, the level of participation was not high and only two participants continued to contribute to Wikidata after the events.
More information is available in this section of the LDFI annual report: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MVA6RuX7MEk_ceF3NhiLoZISAj4FtWgPyW1aeDBQpDw/edit#heading=h.ahg4p7hih7cf
Part 2: Your main learning
[edit]8. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What did you learn about these areas during this period?
Through the Cultural Venues Datathon, we successfully tested our assumption that themed activities organized around a clear and compelling rallying goal (i.e., documenting all Canadian performing arts venues in Wikidata) can generate deeper engagement than generic Wikidata workshops. We were unfortunately not able to validate this assumption in subsequent data enrichment activities.
In our grant application, we also wanted to "test our assumptions regarding focusing on tangible use cases to convey the benefits of populating data in Wikidata” as well as “finding out whether Wikidata-powered applications are truly perceived as benefits by the performing arts community."
CAPACOA launched the LIVE Performing Arts Directory in July (https://linkeddigitalfuture.ca/2022/07/21/live-directory-crossroads-open-data/) as a proof-of-concept for open data reuse in the context of an online directory. The directory’s venue information and content is entirely pulled from Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons
We also made a brief presentation of the directory at the DARIAH-EU WG Theatralia conference and it made a positive impression upon participants. Here’s a comment from a participant: “I found yours and Bridget’s presentation fascinating yesterday and something which I would like to learn more about.”
9. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities?
Our primary objective was to “meet structural needs for populating work and production items”, which was one of our few tangible use cases for data reuse. This objective was based on the assumption that performing arts companies would see value in sharing their work and production information via Wikidata. In spite of our best efforts, we have not been particularly successful at conveying this value. We only had 62 participants in data enrichment activities and 34 actual editors. About two thirds of the 34 editors were returning contributors. 13 were new editors who created their Wikimedia user account on the day of the clinic. Only 2 new users continued to contribute to Wikidata after the clinic, which is far less than we had hoped. This lower than anticipated level of ongoing engagement is likely consequential to the discontinuation of the regular Wikidata workshop series: these new users were not given further opportunities to practice their skills. All of this being said, 4 new work items were created and 2 more work items were edited during the “data enrichment for dance” activities. While these six items are fewer than we had hoped, they nonetheless offered a demonstration of the reuse of person items created over the course of our diverse batch uploads (sample work item: http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q115255940).
10. How do you hope to use this learning? For instance, do you have any new priorities, ideas for activities, or goals for the future?
On the one hand, with the exception of the datathon, none of the other activities generated as much long-term engagement as our former regular workshop series: very few of the participants continued to contribute to Wikidata after the event. Some participants did show an interest to participate in more Wikidata activities, but we lacked an ongoing program to sustain their engagement.
On the other hand, even though the regular series did not attract as large an audience, it did have a loyal core group of Wikimedians who valued the opportunity to hone their skills in a group setting. This program, however, experienced attrition: the number of participants progressively decreased over time. Without a means of recruiting new participants, such a program would be bound to collapse.
Our lessons learned is that neither one-off events nor ongoing editing sessions are not enough, on their own, to generate and sustain long-term engagement with Wikidata. In the future, if we want the arts community to integrate Wikidata in their digital practices, we have to provide both: 1. Occasional introductory workshops held in collaboration with host associations or in conjunction with conferences; and, 2. Regular series of accompanied editing sessions.
Considering the time commitment that a regular series of sessions would require, the we are now exploring options to join forces with the LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Working Hours.
11. If you were sitting with a friend to tell them one thing about your work during this fund, what would it be (think of inspiring or fascinating moments, tough challenges, interesting anecdotes, or anything that feels important to you)?
Our projects with Indigenous artists, with Indigenous arts organizations and with the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance have been some of the most rewarding work I have been given the opportunity to take on. We nearly doubled the number of Indigenous artists from Canada in Wikidata - and this endeavour continues as we consult one Indigenous artist at a time to describe them as they wish to be described in Wikidata. This is a significant contribution to the decolonization of Wikidata and to the reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
12. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- All resources developed over the course of this project were assemble on a single "media library" web page ("médiathèque"):
https://linkeddigitalfuture.ca/wikidata/
Part 3: Metrics
[edit]13a. Open and additional metrics data
Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
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N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Additional Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
13b. Additional core metrics data.
Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of participants | Our activities are meant primarily to engage participants as editors, which are reported below.
Besides our anticipated 220 editors, we anticipate having 15 unique participants at quarterly LODEPA meetups. |
235 | 156 | Total participants in Datathon and 4 clinics: 135
Unique participants in LODEPA Meetups: 21 Registration and attendance in the data clinics was lower than what we had hoped for. In spite of our best promotion efforts, the value proposition that Wikidata offers to performing arts organizations is not enough to convince them of dedicating their limited time to it. |
Zoom attendance reports.
Meetups minutes. |
Number of editors | 140 unique editors in datathon
80 unique editors in other editing activities We will track new and returning editors during these activities. |
220 | 84 | New editors: 41
Returning editors: 43 And 5 returning editors attended more than one activity. The number of new editors was not as high as we had hoped. This being said, the large proportion of returning editors indicates that these offerings met very specific needs that were otherwise not met by other more generic Wikidata events. Indeed, several comments in the chat thanked the organizing team for the exhaustive presentation slides that were presented and made available for reuse. The data clinics have proven to be fairly effective for data cleaning and enriching: 8 items created (including 4 new work items); 50 more were edited (including 2 work items); 445 edits in total, one in ten of which were references added. Only 2 new users continued to contribute to Wikidata after the clinic, which is far less than we had hoped. This lower than anticipated level of ongoing engagement is likely consequential to the discontinuation of the regular Wikidata workshop series: these new users were not given further opportunities to practice their skills. |
Zoom reports
Outreach dashboard. |
Number of organizers | 8 core team members
11 association/union workers involved in components 1 and 2 |
19 | 17 | Core team members: 7
Associations and unions: 10 |
Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wikidata | More than 14,000 items loaded to Wikidata (we don’t know yet what proportion will be new vs existing items)
3500 edits to 140 venue items over the course of the datathon (140 editors x 25 edits on average) |
14000 | 11175 | 4974 Wikidata items edited as part of batch uploads.
5870 items edited during the Cultural Venues Datathon. 58 items edited during the data enrichment clinic for orchestras. 250 venue items manually edited by summer students after the datathon 23 organization items manually edited as part of the upload with the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance |
Open Refine upload reports
Outreach Dashboard |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
14. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?
No
15. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future.
We experienced challenges aggregating batch upload metrics from multiple team members. We are confident about the number of items touched. However, we had to make estimates for the number of items created in certain uploads.
Of the 4974 items touched, we estimate that 3547 (71%) were created items and 1427 (29%) were edited items.
Detailed "contributions" metrics:
- 4974 Wikidata items edited as part of batch uploads.
- 5870 items edited during the Cultural Venues Datathon.
- 58 items edited during the data enrichment clinic for orchestras.
- 250 venue items manually edited by summer students after the datathon
- 23 organization items manually edited as part of the upload with the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance
11175 items edited in total.
16. Use this space to link or upload any additional documents that would be useful to understand your data collection (e.g., dashboards, surveys you have carried out, communications material, training material, etc).
- Upload Documents and Files
- Here is an additional field to type in URLs.
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r0FBcILHGG6GKyuDDT_M8nVUhsxDhpvw1Z--Z7d7BiU/edit?usp=sharing
Part 4: Organizational capacities & partnerships
[edit]17. Organizational Capacity
A. Financial capacity and management | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
B. Conflict management or transformation | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
C. Leadership (i.e growing in potential leaders, leadership that fit organizational needs and values) | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
D. Partnership building | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
E. Strategic planning | This capacity has grown but it should be further developed |
F. Program design, implementation, and management | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
G. Scoping and testing new approaches, innovation | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
H. Recruiting new contributors (volunteer) | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
I. Support and growth path for different types of contributors (volunteers) | This capacity is low, and we should prioritise developing it |
J. Governance | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
K. Communications, marketing, and social media | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
L. Staffing - hiring, monitoring, supporting in the areas needed for program implementation and sustainability | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
M. On-wiki technical skills | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
N. Accessing and using data | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
O. Evaluating and learning from our work | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
P. Communicating and sharing what we learn with our peers and other stakeholders | This has grown over the last year, the capacity is high |
N/A | |
N/A |
17a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Peer to peer learning with other community members in community/ies of practice* (structured and continuous learning and sharing spaces), Using capacity building/training resources online from sources WITHIN the Wikimedia Movement
17b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build capacities? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Lack of training that fits contextual needs and interests
18. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your organizational capacity has grown, and areas where you require support?
N/A
19. Partnerships over the funding period.
A. We built strategic partnerships with other institutions or groups that will help us grow in the medium term (3 year time frame) | Strongly agree |
B. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to bring in more contributors from underrepresented groups | Neither agree nor disagree |
C. The partnerships we built with other institutions or groups helped to build out more content on underrepresented topics/groups | Strongly agree |
19a. Which of the following factors most helped you to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Permanent staff outreach, Other
19b. Which of the following factors hindered your ability to build partnerships? Please pick a MAXIMUM of the three most relevant factors.
Other
20. Please share your learning about strategies to build partnerships with other institutions and groups and any other learning about working with partners?
Developing partnerships takes a LOT of time. The only reason why we were able to do this much outreach is because we had a paid project director and a paid outreach coordinator that committed the time and energy to reach out to no less than 26 arts service organizations, unions and awards organizations during the project and in the year prior the project start. These positions were paid by public funding other than the Wikimedia Foundation grant. If the Foundation seriously wants to foster partnerships, it should consider funding these activities rather than restricting the use of its funds to batch uploads and edit-a-thons.
Part 5: Sense of belonging and collaboration
[edit]21. What would it mean for your organization to feel a sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement?
We already feel a strong sense of belonging to the Wikimedia movement. Wikidata is an integral part of CAPACOA’s data flows. We hired a staff member who is responsible for creating Wikidata items for each new member that joins the association. Our LIVE Performing Arts Directory is populated in part with data pulled from Wikidata: https://capacoa.ca/en/member/directory/ This directory is consuming data created during the Cultural Venues Datathon.
We also make increasing use of Wikimedia Commons.
22. How has your (for individual grantees) or your group/organization’s (for organizational grantees) sense of belonging to the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?
Somewhat increased
23. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
As mentioned above, we hired a staff member who, among many things, is our Wikimedian-in-residence. She made so many contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons in the last year that she received a fellowship from the Wikimedia Foundation.
24. How has your group/organization’s sense of personal investment in the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement changed over the fund period?
Increased significantly
25. If you would like to, please share why it has changed in this way.
N/A
26. Are there other movements besides the Wikimedia or free knowledge movement that play a central role in your motivation to contribute to Wikimedia projects? (for example, Black Lives Matter, Feminist movement, Climate Justice, or other activism spaces) If so, please describe it below.
As part of our association’s commitment to the reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, CAPACOA remains highly motivated to support the Indigenous performing arts community in translating their information into linked open data and making this data reusable via Wikidata (as described in question 4).
This work continues today as we assist the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance (IPAA) in enhancing their member directory. The directory now displays the Wikidata ID for each artist. In addition, we are currently implementing Schema structured data in which concepts are identified with their Wikidata URI.
In addition, CAPACOA recently joined the National Indigenous Knowledge and Languages Alliance.
Supporting Peer Learning and Collaboration
[edit]We are interested in better supporting peer learning and collaboration in the movement.
27. Have you shared these results with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?
Yes
27a. Please describe how you have already shared them. Would you like to do more sharing, and if so how?
Absolutely.
This particular final report will be presented at the WikiProject Performing arts Meetup on June 22nd.
We shared some of our lessons learned at an LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call in April. We are still in touch with the LD4 Wikidata community.
We also notified Wikimedia Canada of our activities. However, our national Wikimedia affiliate has limited capacity to collaborate with projects such as ours.
28. How often do you currently share what you have learned with other Wikimedia Foundation grantees, and learn from them?
We do this occasionally (less than once a month)
29. How does your organization currently share mutual learning with other grantees?
In addition to the activities listed above, we occasionally share updates via the Wikidata Project chat and the newsletter.
Part 6: Financial reporting and compliance
[edit]30. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
60363
31. Local currency type
CAD
32. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Report funds received and spent, if template not used.
33. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.
All invoices for expenses incurred specifically for the grant are detailed in a fourth tab.
Expenses for activities for which we did not seek support from the WMF are listed as "in kind expenses", but all of them are technically cash expenses that were entirely paid for by other grants.
34. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
34a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
N/A
34b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
N/A
34c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
35. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
36. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
37. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.
Yes
38. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.