Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Australia 2019-2020

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Application or grant stage: grant in progress
Applicant or grantee: Wikimedia Australia
Amount requested: $33,750 AUD + 10% contingency ((27,000 USD + 10% contingency))
Amount granted: 37,125 AUD (wth contingency= ((27,000 USD + 10% contingency))
Funding period: 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020
Application created:
Recommended application date: 1 May 2019
Midpoint report due: 15 January 2020
Final report due: 30 July 2020

Application[edit]

Background[edit]

These two requests are required of first-time applicants. In future years, you can use reports to substitute for these requirements.

  1. Link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements in the past year.
    Midterm report
  2. Link to one learning story you have created or contributed to, that demonstrates how your organization documents and applies learning.
    WikiShootMe_Tennant_Creek

Link to these documents, for the upcoming funding period, only if you have them.

  1. Link to your organization's staffing plan, for the upcoming funding period. This organization is not requesting staff.
  2. Link to your annual plan, for the upcoming funding period.
    The 2018 annual plan is the current plan. The 2019-20 annual plan will be developed from a new strategic plan to be workshopped at our community conference in June 2019.
  3. Link to your strategic plan, which includes the upcoming funding period.
    A Strategic Plan is the focus of a workshop planned for June 2019, for 2019-20 this is planned as part of our event in June 2019. Our proposed 2019-2020 budget has recognised that for future strategic activities rather than combining the planning with a collaborative event to gain maximum return for the costs involved we'll need to allow for facilitation of an earlier event.

Please add your grants metrics to this sheet. Note that requirements for shared metrics have changed for grants starting 1 January 2017 or later. Grants with start dates before 1 January 2017 should still use the old Global Metrics.

Please visit this worksheet to view global metrics targets and progress.

Programs[edit]

Please use the templates provided to add information about each program you are planning for the upcoming funding period.

Introduction

Following our first experience of planning, implementing and reporting against an annual grant in 2018-19, Wikimedia Australia is keen to build on this work in our second Simple Annual Plan Grant application. This is a consolidation phase. As well as an allocation to support the costs of managing the chapter, we are seeking funds to maintain the two major program areas of:

  1. Community Support
  2. Outreach and Engagement.

The application is to cover the period of 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020.

Major achievements in our first year relate to successful outreach and engagement events, many of which involved community members as facilitators. A key priority for the next twelve months is to build strategic partnerships with a number of these organisations, with a view to sustaining the initial interest and activity.

Our other key activity is engaging with, and supporting the editor community. We are planning a community survey and a conference that will provide opportunities to engage in the movement strategy and the development of a local strategic plan.

Our governance processes are well-established. Increasing the diversity of the Wikimedia Australia membership and governing committee is a goal for the next election period.


Community support program

The key goal this year is to engage directly with current and emerging editors in Australia. As well as continuing to support face to face events such as WikiClubs, training events and meetups, we will work on additional ways of providing support, given our geographically dispersed community. This may involve engaging external expertise to create and manage regular newsletters, storytelling for media outlets, and community surveys.

WikiClubs and Noongarpedia

Four WikiClubs will continue to meet regularly in Australia during 2019-20. Regular events at the local level strengthen community connections and collaborations, support editor retention and provide a known group of editors who can be called upon to support Outreach and Engagement events. Most WikiClubs have a focus for each event, with a specific skill or project shaping the work. Each WikiClub has a level of independence from the chapter with WMAU provisioning them to undertake small activities like regular meetups, workshops and edit-a-thons that bring the contributors for the local area into collaborate. Like user groups the WikiClubs are saved the burden of legal and financial administration which are provided under the umbrella of WMAU.

Indigenous content projects, including the Noongarpedia project represent an area of importance for Wikimedia Australia, and the Wikimedia movement. As an Indigenous language project promoting knowledge equity it involves partnerships with both the Noongar and the academic communities and is a tangible model for future Indigenous language partnerships in Australia, and globally.

The significant project goal for the next period is to continue to tell the story of Noongarpedia. This will involve engaging with The Noongar community, Western Australian organisations, such as Museums and universities, in order to further develop Noongarpedia. Also required is recognition from the WMF language committee to understand the local issues of colonial impact, cultural impediments and support for the project team in moving from the incubator space to nys.wikipedia.org is now critical for on going success.

Volunteer Support Program

The Volunteer Support Program (VSP) is a mini-grant initiative that supports Australian contributors to Wikimedia projects to obtain resources or share their knowledge about the projects and/or WMAU activities. Funds involved are generally small amounts and designed for maximum flexibility and responsiveness. Most VSP activities are ad hoc, and may be granted for a range of expenses related to presenting at conferences, or hosting events, to purchasing resources in order to generate content, or developing a new skill. All VSP applicants are required to be in good standing as well as to have a demonstrated contribution history available for, or in use in the projects, and to report on their activity. Grantees will be asked to complete a report on the process related to the VSP grant.

Australian Community Conference

WMAU will initiate and administer a community conference during 2019-20, and apply for funding for this through conference grants. Funds are requested to enable the groundwork to be prepared, and coordination of this proposal including research for the logistics and program, scholarships required.

Support for community member engagement in regional and global events

The Australian community feels its distance and isolation from the wider movement. Enabling wider community involvement in global activities - both on-wiki and in-person is very important to us.

The development of the East, South East, Asia, Pacific (ESEAP) regional network has been important in building understanding and collaboration beyond Australia. WMAU is committed to being part of and contributing to this network and its activities. This includes hosting a regional conference at the next appropriate opportunity.

As a chapter we also request funding to be able to run an open scholarship process for global events or conferences such as Wikimania, WikiEd that enables at least two members of the community to share their knowledge and experiences. It is vital to learn about initiatives elsewhere, that can be disseminated among the Australian community. One of the scholarships will be designated as a diversity scholarship with a focus on new contributors from under represented local communities.

Outreach and engagement

Outreach to the wider Australian population is a priority, in order to increase engagement. Wikimedia Australian continues to increase the number of people who know about Wikipedia and related projects, who understand how the projects work, and who are attracted to contributing. Specific target audiences include educators, the GLAM sector, and rural and Indigenous communities.

The outreach and engagement program for this period includes continuation of successful activities, a more proactive approach to new opportunities, and increased capacity for responding to partnership requests. We will look to be developing templates for media outreach that can be used with partner organisations for increased understanding of what projects can do for partnering bodies.


WikiTowns

WikiTowns are collaborative projects between local councils, historical societies and other interested partners, supported by Wikimedia Australia. They focus on supporting locals to contribute quality content about their town and heritage, and then use QR code technology to promote and educate about their place. It is another example of knowledge as service.

With developments in Wikidata and QR code integration there is exciting work to be done across this project.

  • Toodyay - expand the number of articles and increase the number of QR codes within the area
  • Fremantle - re-engage community following the loss of a partner organisation, expand content on Fremantle
  • create the foundations for a new WikiTown
  • establish permanent QR codes using Wikidata, and create a new Wikitown QR reader that expands across more Wikimedia projects

A technical issue must be solved before this work can proceed as current QR codes are not working. Learning experience in the 2018-19 sAPG this item was removed from our budget, the decision later had a negative impact on a collaborative partnership that required attention. WMAU has committed to following this through with the Directors of QRPedia, and request funding for either a technical fix (which will help the other QR projects around the world with typeface issues) or to replace codes locally to restore faith with our partners.

Content competitions

Competitions generate new Australian content on a particular theme from a broad range of contributors, many of whom are new to Wikipedia. The competitions raise awareness about open licences in the broader Australian community and provide Wikimedia Australia with media opportunities. High quality images, datasets, and textual content can be promoted locally and globally, and there is an opportunity for email conversations with winning contributors.

WLE and WLM will continue to be supported by WMAU with 10 cash prizes being awarded and entries submitted to the international judging, our experience is that some contributors choose not to accept the prize and gift it back to WMAU the budget for the two events reflects this. This year its planned to transition these events to new organiser to further develop community leadership capacity. With Wiki Loves Science past experience in Australia has shown that participation rate isnt as significant, we have chosen this year to offer only a single more substantive prize of a weekend in the Nations capital to improve participation. We are also planning to run a WikiSource competition to encourage more proof readers of Australian content, including early Indigenous language records.

Engagement with GLAMs

Wikimedia Australia has a long history of GLAM-Wiki projects its where the Wikimedia and GLAM communities first came together, WMAU continues to look for opportunities to build awareness of the benefits of partnering with Wikimedia. As well as collaboration with larger GLAMs, particularly State libraries, there are opportunities this year, to collaborate with small to medium regional libraries, historical societies, museums and galleries.

  • Facilitated online training modules for libraries

Wikimedia Australia has been approached to offer facilitated online training for Australian library staff. Once developed this could enable more effective outreach to libraries, particularly in costly to access regional areas. Content from existing online courses, (eg Education projects, and a WebJunction course in 2018) can be customised for Australian contexts, and facilitated by experienced trainers. This funding is for initial scoping and coordination of online modules, in collaboration with current library partners, and library associations. There is also an expectation we can attract local sponsorship to support content development and instructional design.

Chapter governance

WMAU must continue to fulfil its legal, financial and reporting responsibilities as an incorporated association registered in Victoria, and a charity registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC). As well as WMF responsibilities, this includes managing our 2019 Annual General Meeting in October, Consumer Affairs Victoria reporting, and Quarterly Business Activity Statements to the Australian Taxation Office, along with the provision of insurance to enable local outreach.

Committee handover face to face meeting

Wikimedia Australia has been fortunate to have long-term, experienced editors and key community members on the Committee throughout its ten year history. As we move into the next decade, and to align with the movement’s strategic direction, our focus should be on increasing the range of voices in our membership generally. With this the need to develop new people into leadership roles with in the community, previous experience has shown a significant drop out of new committee members during the first term. As community we need to stem that loss by ensuring that these people have a solid foundation of WMAU activities to build on, and to capture institutional knowledge that may be leaving our leadership group. At least 2 new recruits to the committee in 2019 At least 4 states/territories represented on the committee Increase the diversity profile of the committee in terms of language, age, gender, etc

Committee strategy planning summit

During the next twelve month period there is a need for a strategic planning summit to set both the mid term strategic plan, and the next annual plan. The committee is intentionally made up of members from as many different states and territories as possible, so there are inevitable travel and accommodation costs to meeting face to face. As identified above our decision to co-locate 2019-20 planning dependent on a collaborative event has caused an issue with timing and our preparation for sAPG processes and planning, this will utilize our presence in one place to facilitate 2020-21 planning rather than be dependent on external factors.

Staff[edit]

Please use the templates below to add information about each staff or contractor position you are planning during the upcoming funding period.

Budget and resource plan[edit]

Link to a detailed budget for the upcoming funding period. This budget should include all of your organizations expenses. Please specify which expenses will be covered from your APG. : {{{Budget}}}


Midpoint report[edit]

This is a brief report on the grantee's progress during the midpoint reporting period.

This is Wikimedia Australia’s mid-term report related to our Simple Annual Plan Grant 2019-20, covering the period of 1 July to 31 December 2019. This year is a consolidation phase for the chapter. As well as operating the chapter, we have two major program areas: 1) Community support and 2) Outreach and engagement.

Program story[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Wikimedia Australia October newsletter outlines activities from July - October 2019.

Learning pattern[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

This year Wikimedia Australia has focussed on developing community capacity through regular online community meetings. This learning pattern outlines some of our learning from working in this way: Online community meeting platform

Progress[edit]

At the six-month stage, we are pleased to report against our annual plan, with strong metrics in some areas, and financial outlay running below budget at this stage, although major funds are committed through the first three months of 2020. Major achievements relate to targeted community support with several activities taking place both online and face to face. Monthly online community meetings have been a key initiative in this period. Technical development of our website, introduction of forms for events and funding applications, and use of the Wikimedia Space calendar for events has further strengthened our support for members. Outreach is ramping up in the next six months. A changeover of management committee has required new office bearers learning their role. Reporting and collection of metrics is an area requiring development within the committee and the community.

Proposal: Engagement with GLAMS and Wikidata[edit]

Proposal for reallocation of funds following mid-term adjustment

At the midterm review of progress against the Wikimedia Australia Annual Plan 2019-20, there were a number of activities within the budget that had to be postponed due to pandemic-related restrictions. Wikimedia Australia would like to take this opportunity to reallocate up to $8,000 to this project to develop materials which will enable us to more successfully engage with GLAMs, and meet increasing demand for training and Wikidata projects.

The problem

We need well-researched and designed Australian GLAM-friendly materials that address these stages of Wikidata projects:

  • 'Pre-upload' stages of GLAM institutional engagement (a value proposition, early stage planning, data identification and prioritisation);
  • “Impact” stages (measurement, benefits realisation).

Proposed solution

  • Commission a content developer to build out the content within the existing framework and with Subject Matter Expert (SME) input from the Wikidata community.
  • Work with the Australian Wikimedia community to identify suitable institutions to approach and test the materials in an iterative way.

Outcomes

  • A foundational set of globally reusable assets that can be further developed.
  • Content for webinars to brief the Wikimedia Australia community presenting to GLAMs about Wikidata
  • Improved relationships with Australian GLAM institutions
  • New data from 5 Australian institutions contributed by end of 2020

Spending[edit]

Please report your organization's total spending during the reporting period, or link to a financial document showing your total spending.

Here is where your spending notes/explanations are.

Final report[edit]

This is Wikimedia Australia’s final report related to the Simple Annual Plan Grant 2019-20, covering the period of 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020. This year was intended as a consolidation phase for the chapter. As well as operating the chapter, we ran two program areas: 1) Community support and 2) Outreach and engagement.

Program story[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Know My Name//Art+Feminism 2020 was a major outreach activity undertaken in partnership with the National Gallery Of Australia, and state-based galleries.

Learning pattern[edit]

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

To inform our engagement work promoting Wikidata with the Australian GLAM sector we undertook a major analysis project. Wikidata: Engagement with Australian GLAMs Report

Results[edit]

The global metrics spreadsheet records total results for 2019-20


See detailed results in Wikimedia Australia 2019-20 Annual Report

Community support[edit]

The key goal this year was to engage directly with current and emerging editors in Australia. This involved continuing to support WikiClubs, training events and meetups, as well as publishing three newsletters.

Online community meetings

A new initiative this year was establishment of monthly online community meetings. This was designed as a solution to the fact that our geography means meeting face to face to be a rare and expensive activity. The benefits of meeting and staying in touch with other Wikimedians can increase participants’ level of engagement, provide a network for finding support and for learning new things. It can also improve on-wiki interaction when people know each other.

We were pleased to be offered a low cost online meeting platform from Fred Dixon at Blindside Networks hosted on the open source BigBlueButton web conferencing software. Having a consistent place to meet each month has been helpful, and by the time Covid-19 made online meetings the only option, we were well-established.

The program has usually included brief state, national and global Wikimedia news, an opportunity for every participant to report on their activity in the previous month, and to ask questions, or raise issues. Presentations included a WikiSource demonstration (Sam Wilson), 1Lib1Ref launch and presentation from State Library Queensland (Jacinta Sutton), Research partnerships (Heather Ford & Amanda Lawrence), Global strategy and re-branding (Alex Lum); and Wikipedia Day 2020.

Noongarpedia and WikiClubs[edit]

Noongarpedia

Wikimedia Australia was asked during the World of Wikipedia Conference if we could assist Ingrid Cumming in presenting on the Noongarpedia project and the challenges faced with the inclusion of Australian Indigenous knowledge at Wikimania. Ingrid was funded to attend Wikimania. She presented in the Languages Space on Australian Indigenous language on Wikipedia.

Ingrid was recognised in the 2020 Western Australian Heritage Awards for her role in setting up and maintaining Noongarpedia, Australia's first Indigenous language Wikipedia. The commendation for an individual who has made a significant contribution to heritage and has demonstrated best practice standards acknowledged that:

Noongarpedia has enabled young people to embrace knowledge as a means of breaking down barriers, enabling ancient Noongar knowledge to become a heritage tool locally and globally.

Western Australia

WikiClub West held regular gatherings at Riff, an inner city co-working space, catching up and discussing work on Wikimedia sites, and welcoming others to find out more and get involved in Wikimedia.

In 2019, digitisation sessions were held, working with content from the City of Canning Heritage Collection, including material relating to local Volunteer Fire Brigades and Frederick William Davies, a recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal. Wikimedians were involved in an invitation-only Be Connected Seniors Tech Expo, as well as a large outdoor lifestyle event for seniors.

Northern Territory

Alice Springs’ first pub, an opera singer, an artist and a local favourite picnic spot were just some of the pages created at edit-a-thons in Alice Springs. Wikiclub NT supported two workshops at the Alice Springs Public Library on 15 October for Get Online Week 2019. Twelve locals learnt to edit Wikipedia for the first time, supported by Wikimedia Australia’s Caddie Brain and the library’s Special Collections Coordinator Alice Woods. Focusing on local people, places and histories, the group created ten new pages and have since gone on to create 50 new pages related to Central Australia.

Queensland

QWiki Club, the regular monthly meetup of State Library of Queensland's Wikipedians, continued until the library closed due to COVID-19. Jacinta Sutton launched #1Lib1Ref 2020 at an online community meeting, sharing some secrets on the way State Library of Queensland goes about this campaign. Across the three week campaign running until 5 Feb, 26 State Library editors made 348 edits to 183 Wikipedia articles with support from Jacinta Sutton and Kerry Raymond.

New South Wales

Women Write Wiki continued to meet at the Women’s Library, until the convenor, Ann Reynolds supported the community to move online to keep their editing and conversation going through the pandemic.

State Library of New South Wales hosted Sydney editors and local GLAM organisations for a Wikidata Workshop on 16 December 2020. Guests and presenters included:

  • Wikimedian Liam Wyatt, WikiCite
  • Wikidata Update - Toby Hudson, University of Sydney
  • Wikidata Projects - Geoff Barker, State Library of NSW
  • Wikimedia updates - Matt Moore, Wikimedia Australia

There were a total of 19 participants including representatives from the State Library of New South Wales and the National Maritime Museum. Many of the participants were new to Wikidata so the workshop discussions focused on raising their awareness of the capabilities of Wikidata and identifying the applications that the platform might have to their operations. The session yielded positive feedback from participants with opportunities to further develop the use of Wikidata capabilities by participants and their institutions.

South Australia

Adelaide held one meetup this year on 6 March 2020 with five participants, including one new member.

Victoria

In July 2019, the Wikimedia Australia, Parlour, and the Women’s Art Register in Richmond partnered to run a Winter Wiki Edit-a-thon on women artists and architects. The thirteen editors created 23 articles. We look forward to partnering with the Women's Art Register on future events to help encourage more women to contribute to Wikipedia, and improve the coverage of under-represented subjects on Wikimedia sites. Dashboard Melbourne meetups were held in January and February.

WikiCite Australia’s first WikiCite Workshop was held at RMIT University, Melbourne in October 2019, as part of DisruptEd Fringe - with thanks to Leigh Blackall for the invitation. The goal was to learn about Wikidata and how it supports WikiCite projects, and to get a core group started on contributing. Speakers included Alex Lum (Wikimedia Australia), Thomas Shafee (WikiJournal of Science) and Nicole Kearney (Biodiversity Heritage Library), who spoke about the exciting work underway using Wikidata to develop a bibliographic database and a knowledge graph of academic and literary citations.

Following the interest among participants, Wikimedia Australia applied to run a WikiCite satellite event of the Australian library technology conference, VALA 2020 on 14 February 2020 in Melbourne. We successfully won a WikiCite grant which covered the venue and catering. WikiCite ANZ 2020 Report

The 19 participants were Wikimedians, educators, librarians, researchers and open access advocates.

Volunteer Support Program[edit]

There were three applications from community members under the Volunteer Support program in 2019-20. One was for event registration to a GLAMSLAM conference, one related to analysing data on the History of the Paralympics Australia project, and the third was for a photographic documentation of current events.

Support for Community Engagement in Regional and Global Events[edit]

As a member of the ESEAP regional group organising Wikimania in Bangkok, Wikimedia Australia had requested funds to ensure members of the organising committee could attend Wikimania. Once it became clear that Wikimania and other overseas travel was not going to be possible, Wikimedia Australia requested that these funds be redirected to an Outreach project: Wikidata: Engagement with Australian GLAMs. See the report on this project under Outreach and Engagement.

Outreach and Engagement[edit]

Outreach to the wider Australian population is a priority in order to increase engagement. In this program Wikimedia Australia sought to increase the number of people who know about Wikimedia, who understand how it works and who are attracted to contributing. Specific target audiences included educators, the GLAM sector, and rural and Indigenous communities. The objectives for the 2019-20 outreach and engagement program were:

  • Increase awareness and participation of new individuals and organisations
  • Establishment of two new collaborative partnerships
  • Participation in global content competitions and wide promotion in Australia

WikiTowns[edit]

There are two aspects to this project: a) development of the QR code technical functionality, and b) engagement with towns interested in being part of the project.

WikiTowns was one of Australia's earliest engagement projects, and continued to be successful activity for many years, centred in Western Australia. When in 2018-19 the existing QR codes stopped working, Wikimedia Australia requested funds to identify and resolve the technical issues. After a frustrating period of working out who could or would fix this, we determined that Wikimedia UK held the key to the solution, and we held two constructive meetings with technical and chapter contacts in the UK to work out the best way forward.

While the technical issues have been largely resolved, a combination of reputation damage, lack of volunteer capacity, and restriction on travel have resulted in no further work taking place on this project. The allocated funds for this project were not used and will be returned.

Content Competitions[edit]

Competition participation was generally low this year, due to a combination of difficulties with coordination and the twin disasters of bushfire and pandemic.

1Lib1Ref May 2020

1Lib1Ref also went online for the May-June session. State Library of Queensland staff met virtually and continued their great work for 1Lib1Ref, with a geographical focus on Brisbane suburbs.

This was the second year of 1Lib1Ref involvement by Yarra Plenty Regional Library, and a training day for library staff had been booked since last year. When a face-to-face workshop was not possible, we converted this to a two-hour online training session, followed by a number of drop-in support sessions where Pru Mitchell or Kerry Raymond were available in the library's online platform to answer questions or demonstrate new skills.

With library staff working from home, and no access to the local history collections, the project had to find alternatives to book citations. The Victorian Heritage Database became the primary resource, and was used to add detail about heritage places to articles related to the library's community. The project was well-managed by Liz Pidgeon, Local and Family History Librarian, and she and the team added 327 citations. Liz reports that:

participants agreed that local place name articles were a good focal point too for a citations project. They enjoyed the collaborative nature of the training, and enjoyed the local history reading and learning aspect.

Wiki Loves Monuments

The quality of the Australian finalists for Wiki Loves Monuments 2019 remained high. The photo taking out Australian overall winner was a photograph by Matthew Machado, taken from inside the heavy machine shop on Cockatoo Island, or Wareamah, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Sydney Harbour, New South Wales. The Wiki Loves Monuments challenge attracts contributions from some great photographers, as well as from a team of editors who work on ensuring data from local heritage registers is added to Wikidata, ready for participation in Wiki Loves Monuments. Thanks to everyone involved in contributing photographs, data, judging and to Bidgee for coordinating Wiki Loves Monuments.

Wiki Science

This was the second time Australia has agreed to organise a local Wiki Science. Many thanks to Dr Thomas Shafee for taking this on. The competition was held at a very difficult time for Australian participation, falling outside university semester, end of school term and in the heat of the bushfire outbreak. There was quite keen interest from scientists for judging the competition, and there were 6 images from Australia submitted to the international judging of the Wiki Science competition.

Outreach and Engagement with Partners[edit]

Partnerships

Franklin Women

A major Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for women in health and medical research was organised by Franklin Women, Sydney to increase the visibility on Wikipedia of women who have made important contributions to the health and medical research sector, as well as increase the number of women who have the skills to become Wikipedia editors. Thirty participants took part at the Women’s College, University of Sydney, supported by Wikimedians, Caddie Brain, Ann Reynolds and Margaret Donald. This event generated several positive media stories, and a significant contribution to content: Dashboard.

This inspired a further edit-a-thon held a month later at the University of New South Wales.

Blue Shield

Wikimedia Australia was approached by Australia’s Blue Shield organisation to help identify GLAM collections that may have been affected based on towns and sites in fire regions. This led to the creation of a list article: List of fires and impacts of the 2019-20 Australian bushfire season.

Art+Feminism and Know My Name

After six months of planning our major outreach project was launched in March 2020 as a partnership with the National Gallery of Australia's Know My Name project. Wikimedia Australia co-hosted a series of edit-a-thons with galleries and libraries around Australia on the weekend of International Women's day. Our goal was to create 100 new pages about female creators, also as part of Art+Feminism.

Thanks to amazing pre-planning and coordination by Caddie Brain and her team in each state, the weekend saw 125 (mostly first time editors) create 69 new articles about female creators. Across the 7 edit-a-thons, 757 references were added to Wikipedia, and participants edited 223 articles.

Our partners included significant state and national art galleries:

  • Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs
  • Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia
  • National Gallery of Australia
  • National Gallery of Victoria
  • Parlour: Women, architecture and equity
  • Queensland Art Gallery Gallery of Modern Art
  • State Library New South Wales
  • University of Tasmania, School of Creative Arts and Media
  • Women's Art Register


Art, Feminism and Wikipedia in the Classroom

New and expanded articles on Australian women artists, and 684 new citations were the result of work by second-year students at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University in semester 2, 2019. This course by Dr Louise R Mayhew, feminist art historian, examined art practices, from the 1960s until now, that address subjectivity and identity. Students were guided through training modules on the Programs and Events Dashboard, and the development of research, writing and citing skills for biographical articles. Their final upload party was supported by local Wikimedian, Dr Kerry Raymond.

At the end of the upload session, all 37 students had successfully contributed to Wikipedia, developing 13 new and five improved women artist biographies. Together they typed almost 50,000 words and 700 references, garnering over 700,000 views to date. As a result of their efforts, Wikipedia now hosts articles on Alison Alder, Mikala Dwyer, Mary Macqueen and Vicky Varvaressos, and improved texts on Vivienne Binns, Dorrit Black and Joy Hester, among others. (Dr Louise Mayhew paper on The Activist Essay: Art, Feminism and Wikipedia in the Classroom, 2019)

National Gallery of Australia online training

When the National Gallery of Australia closed to visitors in March, one disappointment was the interruption to the Know My Name program on which Australian editors had been working as part of Art+Feminism 2020. It also shut out the Gallery's team of volunteer guides.

With some creative thinking by the Know My Name Program Coordinator, and lots of preparation work by the Gallery's volunteer coordinator, learning team and library staff, Wikimedia Australia supported online Wikipedia training for gallery guides. A huge thanks to Wikimedian, Kerry Raymond for developing and expertly delivering the 100% online training for new editors, over three 2-hour sessions in June. After the first series of training the training dashboard showed that twenty new editors have so far worked on 26 articles related to Australian women artists, and contributed 86 references.

WikiD

The WikiD: Women, Wikipedia, Design project by Parlour and Architexx was nominated for the 2019 Beazley Designs of the Year Award, and was on show at the Design Museum in Kensington, London until April 2020. WikiD is a project that contributes profiles of women architects to Wikipedia. Since 2015, the collaboration has added over 200 new articles, and made 12,000 revisions. In Australia, posts about women in the sector have increased ten-fold.

How do you represent a project like this in an exhibition? Parlour and Monash University commissioned a film from filmmaker Shing Hei Ho and typographer Catherine Griffiths, which provides a sense of the impact of this group of editors. Check out the film WikiD: Women, Wikipedia, Design Wikimedia Australia congratulates Justine Clark, Charity Edwards, Virginia Mannering, Alysia Bennett and all the WikiD team who continue to address the gender gap in architecture and design

Wikidata and GLAMs

Recognising the lack of awareness of Wikidata in the Australian GLAM sector, Wikimedia Australia designed a project that could be undertaken during the period when face to face activities were not possible. For the first time, we engaged a consultant to do this work for us, looking for someone with expertise in content development, and the GLAM sector. The role was to undertake a review of the messages and materials that would be required to engage GLAMs with Wikidata.

The consultant’s initial recommendations have been published, and she is now developing and trialing materials with several GLAM institutions. Wikidata: Engagement with Australian GLAMs

Public libraries of Queensland join Wikidata

State Library Queensland contributed a dataset to Wikidata that includes all public library branches in Queensland. This is one of 30 datasets available from State Library Queensland and it was uploaded by State Library of Queensland's Coordinator of Digital Library Initiatives, Rachel Merrick. Data contributed includes library names, addresses, opening hours, contacts, geographic coordinates, website and online catalogue links.There are 328 branches across 73 library services in the state of Queensland, including 24 Indigenous Knowledge Centres.

Chapter Governance[edit]

Wikimedia Australia continued to fulfil its legal, meeting, financial and reporting responsibilities as an incorporated association registered in Victoria, and a charity registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC). A full review of the chapter's financial system and reporting was undertaken by an accounting consultant, who also provided training for relevant office bearers.

The Chapter AGM was held online on Sun 25 August 2019 with three new members joining the management committee. The committee has members from five states and territories.

A Committee handover face to face meeting was held over the weekend of 11-13 October 2019 in Melbourne.

The follow up Strategy Planning Summit was not held in June 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Spending[edit]

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application

Financial report for spending during the grant period July 1, 2019-June 30, 2020.

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period

AUD $25,130