Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/2024 Toronto International Film Festival WikiPortraits Initiative (ID: 22680246)/Final Report
Application type: Standard application
Part 1: Project and impact
1. Describe the implemented activities and results achieved. Additionally, share which approaches were most effective in supporting you to achieve the results. (required)
WikiPortraits attended the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and sent several photographers including Kevin_Payravi, Saraa.kom, Xfranksun, and others. Our photographers attended and shot over a hundred red carpets which featured films, filmmakers, actors, and other celebrities of high significance. Additionally, we attended and photographed panels, press conferences, and other events.
We were able to provide over 2,000 uploads for the Wikimedia Commons (including crops), place them on hundreds of Wikipedia pages, and even write a few Wikipedia pages for notable individuals whom we captured images of.
Since TIFF is a global festival, we were able to capture photos for films and individuals from all over the world, from a diversity of backgrounds, rather than just those in North America. We took photos of many internationally renowned celebrities like Denzel Washington, Sydney Sweeney, Stephen King, Ana de Armas, Florence Pugh, Zoe Saldaña, Salma Hayek, Lucy Liu, Demi Moore, Mikey Madison, and many others.
Compared to other film festivals, we found that the red carpets at TIFF were incredibly reliable and fruitful for our project. We had a straightforward time getting credentials, and we could substitute photographers on a case-by-case basis as needed (which helped new photographers build portfolios). Ultimately, we got to capture a way higher volume of photos than we expected. Simply having our photographers attend the red carpets, along with other events, allowed us to achieve our goals and accomplish a more-than-desirable output.
2. Documentation of your impact. Please use space below to share links that help tell your story, impact, and evaluation. (required)
Share links to:
- Project page on Meta-Wiki or any other Wikimedia project
- Dashboards and tools that you used to track contributions
- Some photos or videos from your event. Remember to share access.
You can also share links to:
- Important social media posts
- Surveys and their results
- Infographics and sound files
- Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects
All of our images can be conveniently viewed on Wikimedia Commons at .
We primarily used the GLAMorgan tool to track usage of our photos across Wikimedia projects:
- We uploaded nearly 2,000 photos, the most of any single WikiPortraits event.
- Used on 121 language versions of Wikipedia as of February 2025.
- Over 500 files have been placed on pages on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other Wikipedia projects; altogether, we garnered 61,286,578 views through those photographs alone in January of 2025, our single most views of any month for any WikiPortraits event.
- Our most-viewed photo in January of 2025 was a photo of Clement Ducol and Camille Dalmais on the English Wikipedia article en:Emilia Perez, which received 3,799,173 views.
- Several photos from en:The Substance cast, most notably of Margaret Qualley and Demi Moore, gained millions of views from both their individual pages, as well as the page for the film, all of which spiked in popularity following the film’s theatrical success.
- We have started to categorize our portraits by demographic, viewable at commons:Category:WikiPortraits by demographic. Of our Toronto photos, at least 500 have been categorized as BIPOC individuals.
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Additionally, share the materials and resources that you used in the implementation of your project. (required)
For example:
- Training materials and guides
- Presentations and slides
- Work processes and plans
- Any other materials your team has created or adapted and can be shared with others
Because of the scale of TIFF, we built a Google Sheet system with dropdowns that we used to assign photographers based on our priorities and availability. We ended up using modified versions of this for Nobel Week and Sundance with great success.
3. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with this Rapid Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals. Required. Select one option per question. (required)
| A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups | Strongly agree |
| B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community | Strongly agree |
| C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups | Strongly agree |
| D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives | Strongly agree |
| E. Encourage the retention of editors | Strongly agree |
| F. Encourage the retention of organizers | Strongly agree |
| G. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement | Strongly agree |
| F. Other (optional) | A large part of our focus was photographing individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, particularly by photographing red carpets and events regarding films and filmmakers from minority backgrounds, as well as those who are non-men.
In terms of retention, several of our photographers are relatively new contributors to the Wikimedia movement; this grant has helped spur their contributions and become regular contributors. |
Part 2: Learning
4. In your application, you outlined some learning questions. What did you learn from these learning questions when you implemented your project? How do you hope to use this learnings in the future? You can recall these learning questions below. (required)
You can recall these learning questions below: This project, in conjunction with our work at Sundance, SXSW, Cannes and potentially Edinburgh Fringe, helps to build a repeatable and scalable template for experienced Wikimedia Commons photographers to get press credentials at well-established internationally significant cultural events. Toronto is also a good festival, because of the relative proximity to New York City and Washington DC, where we can recruit people into WikiPortraits because of the volume of photos and the cost. Each individual photographer is less “high stakes” since we can spread the work around multiple people and help them build a WikiPortraits portfolio.
We also would like to see if the Toronto International Film Festival would be receptive to an official session about Wikipedia and film.
Our intent with this, compared to our previous projects, is to continue to elevate the Wikipedia presence at global-level events such as Toronto, Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, given that the Germans have covered the Berlin Film Festival since 2017. We are trying to establish a track record so that our photographers can be credentialed for Cannes and Venice film festivals in the future.
Historically, volunteer Wikimedian photographers are not plugged into the media infrastructure that is built around credentials. Given the support of letters from senior leadership at the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia Canada, we hope that the press office decision makers of these global caliber events will become more receptive to having Wikimedia photographers participate, as it only serves to amplify the cultural impact of their events across the many language wikis.
TIFF is by far our most productive and fruitful WikiPortraits event in terms of efficiency of cost and time. It is large and professionally run, with the red carpet venues being within a seven minute walk of one another, thus allowing us to send photographers rapidly between events. Unlike other events where WikiPortraits might get shut out depending on space availability, Toronto always gave us space if we reserved—even if we had lower priority to pick spots.
In the future, we should invest in stepstools if we’re placed in a spot in the back on a red carpet. TIFF is also exhausting, so we need many more photographers to take advantage of the opportunities to shoot. We ended up recruiting two non-photographers to shoot some of the less competitive red carpets. Additionally, only some of the movies screening at TIFF have red carpets and photo calls, so we were also able to schedule shoots with smaller films on a case-by-case basis by emailing publicists.
For credentialing help, we reached out to Wikimedia Canada. We also asked if they wanted to find Wiki photographers in their local networks. Even with an extensive push, they did not find anyone who wanted to be a photographer at TIFF who also had access to a DSLR. However, we found local Toronto photographers whom we still managed to recruit to shoot press calls at Sundance 2025. We think the approach for Toronto may be to find non-Wikipedians who are photographers and bring them into the Wiki community through their photography.
We also found the WikiPortraits team absolutely did not have enough bandwidth to do a Q&A event for filmmakers and publicists. If we wanted to do something like that, we would have to recruit additional photographers.
5. Did anything unexpected or surprising happen when implementing your activities? This can include both positive and negative situations. What did you learn from those experiences? (required)
Given the size of the festival, we underestimated the number of photographers we needed to effectively capture its red carpets and events. We sent four credentialed photographers, but we would’ve actually liked to have seven. In the future, we probably could use an upward of nine.
Also, we learned that TIFF has such an overwhelming number of photos that we need to give our volunteers enough time to upload their images since they can have upwards of 20 people on a photo call (not all of whom are on call sheets, so they have to be tracked down using various sources) and 20+ red carpets for our most dedicated photographers. Then, it takes some time for the photos to be absorbed by the community and added onto article pages. As a result, the end of our period of activity needs to be set much later (the end of year) to get the most complete stats and results. The activity is not over when the photos are done; the overwhelming number of photos to edit, upload, and place onto Wikipedia is in large part why this report has taken a long time.
6. What is your plan to share your project learnings and results with other community members? If you have already done it, describe how. (required)
Moving forward, we hope to continue introducing and integrating WikiPortraits into the broader Wiki community at events like Wikimania and WikiConference North America. Our sessions at these events attract easily 40-50 people per session and are recorded. We also collaborated with Wikimedia NYC for a WikiCurious photography session in November that drew around 70.
On top of that, we are working with a high school photography teacher/WikiPortraits contributor to bring some WikiPortraits and Wikimedia Commons knowledge to his curriculum. Generally, we plan to create and produce more materials that will be used to promote the cause of WikiPortraits and Wikimedia Commons photography, as well as train photographers and editors alike on how to upload and use photos on Wiki properties. Additionally, we continue to share our knowledge on Wiki and in our international WikiPortraits group chats with countless Wikipedians. We’ve also uploaded all of our photos on Wikimedia Commons, some of which have gone into illustrating Wikidata and Wikipedia articles.
Part 3: Metrics
7. Wikimedia Metrics results. (required)
In your application, you set some Wikimedia targets in numbers (Wikimedia metrics). In this section, you will describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used.
| Target | Results | Comments and tools used | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 150 | 600 | |
| Number of editors | 5 | 10 | |
| Number of organizers | 9 | 9 |
| Wikimedia project | Target | Result - Number of created pages | Result - Number of improved pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 75 | 0 | 2000 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 300 | 2000 | 0 |
| Wikidata | |||
| Wiktionary | |||
| Wikisource | |||
| Wikimedia Incubator | |||
| Translatewiki | |||
| MediaWiki | |||
| Wikiquote | |||
| Wikivoyage | |||
| Wikibooks | |||
| Wikiversity | |||
| Wikinews | |||
| Wikispecies | |||
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
8. Other Metrics results.
In your proposal, you could also set Other Metrics targets. Please describe the achieved results and provide links to the tools used if you set Other Metrics in your application.
| Other Metrics name | Metrics Description | Target | Result | Tools and comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
9. Did you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results? (required)
No
9.1. Please state what difficulties you had. How do you hope to overcome these challenges in the future? Do you have any recommendations for the Foundation to support you in addressing these challenges? (required)
Part 4: Financial reporting
[edit]10. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency. (required)
5000
11. Please state the total amount spent in US dollars. (required)
5000
12. Report the funds spent in the currency of your fund. (required)
Provide the link to the financial report https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dqe02SxkF_nVAlzQ-S8D6m2iCkDlxleaOZ9up67AbkU/edit?usp=sharing
12.2. If you have not already done so in your financial spending report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal. (optional)
13. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?
No
13.1. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.
N/A
13.2. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?
N/A
13.3. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.
N/A
14.1. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?
Yes
14.2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?
Yes
14.3. 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
15. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here. (optional)
We actually spent more on housing, around $6,000, because of the importance of taking as many photos as we could and thus bringing more photographers. As a result, we drew from a mix of private donors and other funds to supplement the Rapid Grant.
Review notes
[edit]Review notes from Program Officer:
N/A
Applicant's response to the review feedback.
N/A