Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Public Engagement Campaign around Depths of Wikipedia at 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and other shows (ID: 23840161)
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Applicant Details
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Berlination (talk • accounts • contributions • edit count)
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Main Proposal
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
Public Engagement Campaign around Depths of Wikipedia at 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and other shows
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2026-07-01 - 2027-06-30
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
International (more than one country across continents or regions) UK (Scotland), U.S.
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Not applicable
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
Despite its large online community, Wikimedia has not cracked the in-person public engagement on a repeatable, scalable basis in the United States. The closest is Wikimedia New York City’s Wikicurious series, funded by Craig Newmark. WikiHaus has also held events at SXSW and Sundance for WikiPortraits Studios and others. There are also various Wikipedia Days, but they happen once a year and in scattered geographic locations. This is of concern because it is well noted that the number of newly registered editors is dropping year over year, along with Wikipedia pageviews, at a semi precipitous rate. There is a lot of online discussion on how to stem this decline, but we want to try to actually do something as an experiment. We think that Wikipedia needs an in person strategy that is repeatable and can work at scale. One of the institutions which has cracked the “Wikipedia experience live” is Annie Rauwerda’s Depths of Wikipedia, which started with an online following and now sells out theaters across the United States, filled with hundreds of Wikipedia lovers (editor and non-editors). Currently, Depths of Wikipedia has 2 million followers on Instagram, 800,000 on X/Twitter and over 200,000 subscribers on TikTok. The entertaining show has been highlighted by the New Yorker (“Wikipedia in the Flesh”), The New York Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle, While some of the audience are diehard Wikipedians or casual editors, many have not registered at all. We would like to tackle that. WikiHaus, working with Wikimedia UK and Wikicurious, wants to partner with Annie to see if we can turn the engaged audience members into a pipeline of registered users, starting with the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe Festival where shows run in August for 28 days. Although it takes place in Edinburgh, it’s a very international audience, drawing people from not only the UK, but from the United States, across Europe and Australia. We also like the Edinburgh Fringe shows as an experimental Petri dish because the theaters are smaller and thus the audience more manageable. We are applying for 100-seat theaters, which is small enough that a handful of Wikipedia volunteer editors can be helpful to the audience and help trouble shoot. In the large 600 person venue that are common on tour, the audience size would be too overwhelming for an experimental basis. Also the sheer repetition of the shows help us figure out the common snafus when you ask a group to do mass registration by mobile. In discussions with Wikimedia UK and WikiCurious, our current best working hypothesis for creating a funnel is to create a QR code that is put up at the end of a show that takes people to a landing page. There people can register with their name, email, optional phone number and geographic location (which allows us to segment them for follow up). Our hope is to design a process where we can help audience members set up a Wikimedia account without getting blocked (very common and frustrating problem on mobile, and probably part of the reason for decline registration numbers). Our goal, using a format we used during a November 2024 WikiPortraits/WikiCurious NYC event, is to get people to upload at least one phone from their phone onto Wikimedia Commons. That photo can be of Annie Rauwerda, or something else they have seen as at Fringe, since we assume many people will have photos on their phones. We would have support volunteers in the audience to give advice on how to caption, add categories and avoiding images that have copyrighted posters or buildings in them. We believe that uploading photos is a more accessible way to contribute to Wikimedia for newcomers than editing on English Wikipedia at this point.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
Assuming that Annie Rauwerda’s Depth of Wikipedia show is accepted into a venue she likes at Fringe, we would work with her to set up a QR code that is part of her show. Either it is displayed before she starts, or after.
If she does a full run, that would be 28 shows with up to 100 people per show. Those people would be encouraged to register and upload photos onto Wikimedia Commons.
Since we plan to have emails and contact info of audience members captured, we are having active discussions with Wikimedia UK to see if we can use those contacts to draw audience members (and others) into more in-depth in-person training, and ask-a-Wikipedian session.
Longer term, we would try to segment those emails and follow up to see who would want to become volunteer editors through Wikicurious or other similar events in other countries.
In addition, Fringe shows always have a certain number of comp tickets for each show, which can be distributed to active Wikipedia editors. Our discussions with Wikimedia UK makes us think we can use those tickets as a thank you and reward for some of our most active editors, and perhaps even draw them to Edinburgh.
Longer term, if this works, we would love for this QR code process to be part of her ongoing Wikipedia show. If Annie does not find a venue at Fringe she wants to work with, we would instead use this rapid grant to do similar programming built around her shows in the U.S.
Note, we are not proposing to start in the U.S. because those are very large audiences, so we would have to come up with a different support workflow, vs the 100 or so in Edinburgh
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
- User:Annierau, Depths of Wikipedia founder and performer. She’s the reason everyone comes out to see Wikipedia IRL. (Volunteer for this project, but her shows itself could either lose money or make money given how Fringe works out)
- User:Berlination. Volunteer support staff in the show. Fringe performer. Friend of Annie, and previously has been on stage for Depths of Wikipedia.
- User:PhilipRomanoPhoto. Volunteer support staff in the sessions, and long time Wikimedia photographer. If you’ve seen a Broadway photo, it is likely by Philip.
- User:Abzeronow. Wikimedia Commons admin, who can help categorize and nicely deal with problematic photos uploaded by the audience (lack of freedom of panorama in the UK). Unclear if he can be in person yet in Edinburgh, but he is happy to help remotely.
- WMUK staff. Helping create logistics for local Edinburgh events for new registrants and figure out a good way to distribute tickets to active Wikipedians.
- UK Wikipedian volunteers yet to be determined.
*Producer of the show, perhaps User:Berlination, or if not, likely not a Wikimedian.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
There are a few segments we are targeting.
- Non editors who like Depths of Wikipedia enough to pay for an in-person show. We want to see if we can create a process to convert some portion of them into active contributors. We estimate between 1500 and 2500 people will see the show during August, which is realistic given that Depths of Wikipedia can sell out theaters seating 600+ in large metropolitan cities in the United States.
- Casual editors in Scotland, and others who already attend the Fringe for fun, where a complimentary show ticket as thanks can help build up a more engaged real life wiki community (we can target attendees with geobanners)
- Active editors across the UK, who would be interested enough to come volunteer and help make these shows a success, and possibly replicate the model if it works at other events.
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
We have met with Wikimedia UK about whether they can use the Depths of Wikipedia show as a public engagement tool for their community. Their team is discussing what is possible given the cost of Edinburgh Fringe and their budget. Since the Fringe tickets are (generally) paid, it was important to have a free event run alongside the show.
We have had discussion with the organizers of Wikicurious to see if an geographically segmented email list of interested editors-to-be could possibly be useful to them for their events across the country. This is not clear as the geographic distribution of audience members may not be where they are targeting. However this can address a small geographic gap, as within the UK, Scotland has the least geo-coverage in Wikidata.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Not applicable
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Other
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Not applicable
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement
Learning and metrics
[edit]- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
We would like to see if we can create a repeatable onboarding process for Annie’s shows, or other in-person events that draw a lot of people (such as Wikipedia Days in January).
We what to see if we can use email and mobile phone to help create a workflow where we can track people’s user names and follow up based on contribution level.
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 2000 | Estimated audience size for the show 2000 (this may be smaller if she gets a smaller venue)
|
| Number of editors | 500 | Our goal is 600 (or 1/4) of those who attend can upload. As this is an experiment, our estimates here may be wildly off if people really struggle with up |
| Number of organizers | 5 | This includes WMUK staff, producers, the performer and coordinator. |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |
| Wikimedia Commons | 500 |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
These are largely mobile photos people will upload from their phones.
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
Yes
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| New editors registered | How many people can be get registered through Fringe and other shows. | 500 |
| 50 | Number of new editors who do something beyond the initial upload. | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
We would use the Wiki Education dashboard or a version of it that allows for onboarding nicely through mobile.
Financial proposal
[edit]- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
5000 USD
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
5000 USD
- By submitting your proposal/funding request you confirm that you have read and agree to the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy, and the Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback
[edit]Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).