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Grants:APG/Proposals/2018-2019 round 1/Wikimedia UK/Progress report form

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Purpose of the report

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This form is for organisations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their progress after completing the first 6 months of their grants. The time period covered in this form will be the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January–30 June of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing grant metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organisations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.

Summary

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Wikimedia UK continues to deliver an exciting, impactful and innovative programme across our different areas of activity, and we are delighted to be able to share with readers the highlights of this activity as well as our insights and reflections on this work.

Within our first programme (Creating Knowledge Equity), we were able to put a lot of energy into the Celtic Knot strand, which is making more impact through the momentum this work is gathering. The connections we are growing within Wales and Scotland allow for more open doors, more recognition, and an increasingly vibrant volunteer community.

Within Developing Digital Literacy, we are continuing the in-depth collaboration with Edinburgh University, are delivering an expanding range of Wikimedia in the Classroom courses, and have launched our third education Wikimedian in Residence at Coventry University, as planned. The schools education programme in Wales has also seen impressive developments and is set to continue (despite initially being planned to finish this Autumn).

In terms of Changing Policy and Practice, we've had a number of notable successes in terms of organisational change. This shows the importance and persuasiveness of this aspect of our advocacy work, while our broader sector activity and UK policy work has had less tangible results. It has been harder to engage effectively with UK policy makers due to a volatile political context so far this year. We hope this will stabilise by next year, and that we’ll be able to draw on numerous materials and case studies developed this year to advocate for change towards openness (such as the WIR impact booklet or our new education brochure).

The 'Developing Wikimedia UK’s capacity and profile' strategic aim and new programme strand has placed more of an emphasis on our work within the international Wikimedia movement, which takes various forms. In the context of the emerging new global strategy we are crystallising the areas where we feel we can be particularly helpful to the rest of the movement, and see several key areas of expertise where we can share learning, resources and ideas, such as Wikimedians in Residence.

We are now working to a new strategic framework for 2019 - 2022, that has been developed through consultation with staff, board and other stakeholders. The strategy builds on our achievements and learning from 2016 - 2019 and represents a coherent new iteration rather than a complete change of direction. The UK strategy is still in draft form and due to be finalised in autumn 2019, which has allowed us more scope for flexibility and experimentation whilst still giving an overall sense of purpose to our work.

Strategic context for Wikimedia UK

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Draft Strategic Framework for 2019–2022

Wikimedia UK believes that open access to knowledge is a fundamental right, and a driver for social, educational and economic development. We work with the Wikimedia Projects such as Wikipedia to enable people and organisations to contribute to a shared understanding of the world through the democratic creation, distribution and consumption of knowledge. We are committed to the ideal of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge, and believe that here in the UK, we can play a unique and important role in realising that vision.

Wikimedia UK’s strategy is informed by and supports the strategic direction of the global Wikimedia movement. Our work will focus on the knowledge and communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege; breaking down the barriers that prevent people and organisations from accessing and contributing to free knowledge, and supporting the development of technical solutions to help eradicate inequality and bias on the Wikimedia projects.

Our vision is of a more tolerant, informed and democratic society

Our mission is to support and advocate for the development of open knowledge, working in partnership with volunteers, the cultural and education sectors and other organisations to make knowledge freely available, usable and reusable online.

Wikimedia UK is working towards the following long-term outcomes:

  • Our work has significantly increased free, online access to knowledge
  • The Wikimedia projects reflect our diverse society and are free from systemic bias
  • Learners in the UK are able to understand and engage with open knowledge
  • High levels of information literacy have strengthened civil society and democratic processes
  • Wikimedia UK is recognised as a leading organisation for open knowledge

Our strategic aims for 2019–2022 are to:

  1. Increase the representation of marginalised people and subjects on Wikimedia
  2. Work with partners to develop digital, data and information literacy through Wikimedia
  3. Create changes in policy and practice that enable open knowledge to flourish
  4. Develop our capacity and profile as a leading organisation for open knowledge

Our delivery model is based on the cross-cutting strategic priorities of partnerships, community and technology, which are an essential element of all our activities.

2019/20 Indicators, targets and programmes – background

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As part of the process of renewing our strategy for the next three years, we have been reflecting on and reviewing our success measures. In applying for 2019/20 funding from the Foundation, we defined and set targets for five metrics as required, which are the Grant Metrics and Defined Metrics below. Our aim for this year was to revise and shape our metrics in the light of the new strategy, and learn from planned programme innovation in 2019. Below we present initial metric ideas which are designed to explore our impact more deeply. We are approaching these in an iterative style and will continue developing them throughout 2019/20, as indicated to the Foundation. In this process, we are not only hoping to gain a better understanding of our programme’s impact, but also to offer these reflections to the rest of the movement (who are generally more focused on outputs).

The new metric ideas presented below are inspired by the review of our delivery between 2016 and 2019 and reflections on our Theories of Change, as well as the difference we are hoping to make over the next three years. We anticipate that they will be informed by board-level discussions about outcomes, impact and programme excellence, particularly at our away day in September 2019. In the meantime, we are continuing to track results against the metrics used in the period 2016–2019; however it’s worth noting that as there is a focus on experimentation and innovation during 2019/20, it is harder to predict outputs and these may be lower than the results achieved in 2018/19.

Our programme strands are outlined below, and broadly correspond to our strategic aims. These represent a refinement rather than an overhaul of our previous programmes, with many projects and partnerships having continued into 2019/20.

In reviewing the logic models for our previous three programme strands, and designing new theories of change for each of our newly defined programmes, we have drafted an overall organisational theory of change, which draws together our vision and our strategic aims - making the link between the different areas of our work:

Wikimedia UK believes that to achieve our vision of a more tolerant, informed and democratic society we need to improve the representation of diverse people in the knowledge ecosystem, increase civic engagement by building digital literacy, and secure policy changes which increase access to open information for all. To effectively achieve these goals we must also work on strengthening our voice and sector recognition.

Without access to knowledge, we can’t build understanding. Without diversity of content, this understanding is limited.

Grant metrics overview – all programs

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The table below shows our results for all programmes. Later in this report, we report on our achievements against the grant metric targets for each individual programme.

Metric End of the Year Targets Achieved outcome at half year mark Explanation and/or Examples of Activities
Participants GM1 6,000 3,702 People attending our events: Wikipedia in classroom courses, conferences, workshops, training, editathons, and community meetups.
Newly registered editors GM2 1,000 306 Mostly from education courses, and new editors trained as part of volunteers trained to help with uploads (e.g. WiciMon project in schools in Wales).
Articles added/improved GM3 250,000 129,892 287 articles created using data for Wicipobl project; 478 Wikidata edits - Adding Welsh language labels to items related to NLW collections and improving death dates and references for Dictionary of Welsh Biography data. 21,261 Wikidata edits from the resident in NLW.

4862 Wikidata items created using metadata for each image - all data added in English and Welsh; 1000 new cy articles created using data combined with human contributions.

Volunteer hours 20,000 13,407 4,640 hours come from Wikipedia in Classroom courses, 142 hours from editors part of the NLW Volunteer Programme creating and/or improving articles on health, the Dictionary of Welsh Biography and translation; 157 hours spent by students in Wales taking part of the WiciMon project in Wales. The rest are made up of wiki training, workshops, editathons, the AGM, meetups and other events.
Total audience and reach (online or in person engagement with Wikimedia UK) 70,000 52,806 Includes 48,798 social media subscribers, 236 leading volunteers.

Other big groups:

250 people attended presentation by Lucy Crompton-Reid in CILIPS Scotland 2019: Creating a more tolerant, informed and democratic society through open knowledge; 206 students involved in dentistry courses organised by Nour Geres; 80 people attended Martin Poulter’s presentation in Oxford: "Wikidata: Knowledge Representation the Easy Way" lecture at Digital Humanities Summer School;  60 students attended Aaron Morris’ Skills Week workshop in Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni, Secondary.


Achieved Target has been achieved or exceeded
On track On track to achieve the target
Opportunity for improvement Good progress has been made towards achieving the target, but the target has not been reached
Attention required Little or no progress has been made towards achieving the target

Telling your program stories

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Programme 1: Creating Knowledge Equity

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Strategic goal: Increase the representation of marginalised people and subjects on Wikimedia

Theory of change

Currently in draft and subject to change during the activity year

Wikimedia UK supports the creation of more complete information online, by uncovering and sharing knowledge about marginalised people and subjects, which in turn will lead to a more informed and tolerant society. As part of this process we will engage with marginalised people, enabling and empowering them to become contributors and community leaders.

Long term outcome:

Wikimedia reflects our diverse society and is free from systemic bias.

Metrics

As highlighted above, we didn’t set targets for the remainder of indicators; instead drawing on a comparison with previous years to assess progress.

Indicator 2017/18 half year achieved 2018/19 half year achieved 2019/20 half year achieved
Participants 865 1,019 546
Newly registered editors 233 312 203
Articles added/improved 233,684 +

11,314 added to Commons

688,643 +

6,685 files uploaded to Commons

127,823
Volunteer hours 4,515 5,620 3,212
Total audience and reach 956 1,101 672
Leading volunteers 91 82 126
Images/media added to Commons 11,314 6,685 2,905
Images/media added to Wikimedia pages 440 5,460 980
% uploaded media used in content pages 3.88% 81.6% 29.64%
New articles added 36,214 18,919 6,546

Potential impact metrics – emerging ideas

We are considering the following ideas:

  • Using Event metrics tool functionality to track the range of language Wikipedias on which we are working
  • Analysing the diversification of content producers. This could be done in a range of ways, potentially going in depth into diversity statistics tracking. This could include looking at the number of events we run which have a defined underrepresented group as the target audience.

Background

This programme strand builds on our 2016–19 programme Diverse Content and Contributors, and relates to our long-term outcome of ensuring that the Wikimedia projects reflect our diverse society and are free from systemic bias, as well as our strategic aim from 2019 to increase the representation of marginalised people and subjects on Wikimedia.

The drive towards knowledge equity in the global strategic direction resonates with an increasing awareness amongst UK content holders of the need to represent diverse stories and histories. Minority and indigenous languages are a significant part of this agenda, with Wikimedia UK seen as one of the experts in this area through our critical role in the Celtic Knot conferences and other initiatives.

With the UK’s imperial and colonial history and world class cultural holdings we believe that we have a responsibility to facilitate digital cultural repatriation, and reanimate cultural heritage for new and diverse audiences.

We are also one of the most culturally diverse countries in Europe, with over 300 languages spoken including many immigrant languages, and indigenous living languages such as Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. Our work with minority languages is gaining an increasingly high priority and profile both nationally and internationally, with this work coalescing around the annual Celtic Knot conference, which has so far been held in Edinburgh (2017), Aberystwyth (2018) and Penrith (2019).

Feminist Wikipedia editathon at Ditchling Museum of Arts and Craft

We remain committed to addressing the gender gap, and have engaged with Art+Feminism at an increasingly strategic level over the past few years. On a year-round basis our staff and volunteers work proactively with partner institutions to encourage them to consider how their own activities and collections could help improve the online representation of women and their works. We have a very good gender balance within our staff team and board, and are proud of the fact that over half of our lead volunteers are now women.

Highlights of programme activity

Minority and indigenous languages (with a focus on the Celtic Knot)

The key celebration and knowledge sharing event in this strand of work was our Celtic Knot 2019 conference in July, described in detail in the case study below. Importantly, we focused the event on very small languages and brainstormed support and development opportunities available to them. Our ongoing work within the broader Celtic Knot theme included:

  • National Library of Wales completed their Government-funded WiciPobl (Wiki People) project. This resulted in almost 2000 biographies being published on the Welsh Wikipedia, using both human and bot contributions. A translation event was held, together with a focused Wikidata activity. This included around 500 Wikidata edits improving data from the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, and work on a Welsh history for the Dictionary of Welsh Biography timeline project.
  • We are continuing work on the Wicibroject Cyfoes project – improving the quality of articles on the Welsh Wikipedia by ensuring all time related fields in infoboxes are automated, through Wikidata. Tens of thousands of Wikidata infoboxes have been added onto articles on cywiki.
  • At the National Library of Wales we’ve been working on the Peniarth Manuscript collection which is on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Images of manuscripts were added to Commons and Wikidata. Additionally 21,261 Wikidata edits were made creating items for Peniarth Manuscripts and the Framed Works of Art collection, including works by J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Gainsborough.
Dumfries Stonecarving Project documents and researches the stonecarving heritage of Dumfries in collaboration with local photography groups. This beautiful element of Scottish heritage is largely overlooked. The images uploaded as part of the Dumfries Stonecarving Project are seen by 10,000 people a month.
  • The Dumfries Stonecarving Project to document and research the stonecarving heritage of Dumfries in collaboration with local photography groups continued through the first half of 2019. This beautiful element of Scottish heritage is largely overlooked and the project has helped redress this through Wikimedia.
  • The LingWiki editing group event in June was the second joint editathon with staff from Linguistics and Anthropology at Oxford University. The event focused on representing minority languages and cultures with a further aim to improve the general content related to anthropology. The group continued to make edits to minority language and linguistics pages and the task of improving anthropology pages.

Technology for diversity

We’re continuing to develop ideas where we’re using technical solutions to expand and amplify underrepresented knowledge. The projects to highlight:

  • We were well represented at the Hacio’r iaith 2019 conference. This is a key tech gathering in Wales exploring how technology applies to and through the Welsh language, and this year – for the first time – half the programme was focused on Wikipedia. Our Wales Coordinator was there participating and making connections, while the National Library of Wales Wikimedian delivered a Wikidata talk and Sparql Workshop. We are encouraging Hacio’r iaith to focus fully on Wikimedia projects for 2020.
  • Science Museum – We met a representative from the Museum at the 2018 GLAMWiki Tel Aviv and discussed the potential use of Wikidata, possibly via Wikibase. The conversation continued, and we are now entering a more detailed collaboration planning stage. They envisage using Wikidata to manage their extensive collections data, with a particular focus on research capabilities and the possibilities offered by linked open data. A particular value we see is interrogating their collections data to uncover areas where the Science Museum has unintentionally underrepresented certain subjects. The technical capacity and expertise in the museum offers the potential for large-scale, well-managed work with linked data, and there is a good level of understanding of the challenges and opportunities of this work within the museum already.
  • We have been exploring how WikiJournals may be useful in our context, and have identified several potential applications. What’s particularly interesting is the possibility of using WikiJournals as a publishing platform for underrepresented topics – content that might not have secondary sources otherwise. A group we’re supporting, LingWiki, has already published content on the journal, so we’ll be looking into this more closely.

Gender Gap

  • Art+Feminism provided a focal point for our gender gap activities in the spring. We collaborated with a range of institutions on editations including the University of Loughborough, Imperial Medical College, the University of East Anglia (workshop on women in amateur cinema by drawing on their film archive), and Royal Holloway University of London. Our CEO Lucy gave a talk at the Women and Power Conference at Oxford University, which focused mainly on events held by the cultural heritage sector in 2018 to mark the centenary of women’s suffrage. We established a contact with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography at this conference and may work with them in the future on gender gap activities.
  • Paul Mellon Centre – This relationship is part of the Art+Feminism initiative, but it developed outside of the main strand of work taking place in spring. Art+Feminism attracts partners throughout the year and we sometimes deliver events outside of the main ‘campaign’, while still benefiting from the association. In this case we delivered an editathon which resulted in very high quality content creation, and covered specialist areas of art that needed expansion. The institution is well placed to contribute to Wikipedia as it holds a wealth of knowledge about deceased artists that are generally notable, as well as having a good member base of people with academic writing skills who are interested in the subject. A volunteer has planned another event for September 2019 focusing on sculptors.
Photos from Europride Vienna, uploaded for Wiki Loves Pride

Diverse contributors

  • We have been discussing a collaboration with the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre who are interested in learning how to make some of their archive on black British history more publicly available. Work such as training on Wikipedia or engagement with WikiJournals could be a path to surfacing some of the archive.
  • We supported two LGBT+ volunteers to attend Wikipedia for Peace at Europride Vienna 2019, organised by Wikimedia Austria. This included taking and uploading photos for the Wiki Loves Pride competition, an editathon across a range of languages, and participating in Wikimedia’s LGBT+ User Group meeting – advising on future plans, and inputting to the development of criteria for global resource allocation.

Underrepresented cultural heritage

This is a programme we want to develop even further over the next few years, taking advantage of the diversity of content and connections available to us in the UK. A few examples from Q1 include:

  • Threatened Heritage in Libya – We are working with King’s College London (KCL) to explore the potential for using Wikimedia Commons as an image repository for photos of threatened heritage sites in Libya. A Wikidata element is also likely since there is a gazetteer of sites under threat. KCL are strong in digital humanities and are developing their understanding of Wikimedia Commons.
  • Kurdish Wiki – To support our plans for a Kurdish Wikimedian in Residence, we have building a coalition of interested people and organisations, including Kurdish academics with connections to universities in the region, and a civil servant within the UK government who is advising us on funding opportunities. There are still lots of questions about delivery on the ground and recruitment, but if we are able to secure funding to make the post a reality we will work with Wikimedia Foundation staff and volunteers – and other allies in the region – to develop our understanding of the local situation.

Progress towards the plan, changes

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(Compare to our proposal)

We’re pleased to see that the anticipated thematic strands have developed strongly in the first half of the year. We were able to put a lot of energy into the Celtic Knot strand, which is making more impact through the momentum this work is gathering. The connections we are growing within Wales and Scotland allow for more open doors, more recognition, and an increasingly vibrant volunteer community, which is illustrated by our ‘Scottish community’ case study in Programme 4 below.

As is normal for this stage of the year, some of the new leads mentioned in our proposal (e.g. Horniman Museum) have yet to turn into tangible projects, while new partnerships have been developed that we didn’t anticipate at the start of the year – such as Hacio’r iaith.

Challenges and learning

Early in the year we worked through a challenge within our programme in Wales. In 2016 we reached gender parity in biographies on Welsh Wikipedia, a first across the movement for Wikipedias with more than 10,000 articles and was a very proud achievement. We have been working to try and maintain this balance, by (for example) encouraging editors to create female biographies if they have also written an article about a man. This piecemeal process was somewhat disrupted by the Wici People project delivered by our partner organisation the National Library of Wales, which generated 2000 biographies. Most of these new articles on the Welsh Wikipedia were about men – such is the nature of the source material within the library – which threatened to skew the site’s hard-won gender parity. To overcome this, volunteer editors worked hard to create a corresponding number of female biographies; however this was a significant effort. We have now agreed with the Library that where possible, future externally-funded projects of this kind will consider aspects such as gender balance and quality, as well as article creation numbers. The situation led to reflections on the complex relationship between targets and programme delivery, and reinforced the importance of working with the Wikimedia community in this delivery.

Case study

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Celtic Knot conference Cornwall 2019

Wikimedia has co-organised the Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference every year since its inception in 2017. It is an important opportunity for Wikimedians working in and with minority and indigenous languages to meet in person in order to share learning, inspire others, invigorate language communities and overcome challenges together. Building on the success of our previous two language-conferences, in 2019 we hosted the conference in partnership with Cornwall Council, with the event taking place at the University of Exeter’s Penrhyn campus. This third Celtic Knot Wikipedia Conference aimed to show how Wikimedia can be used in innovative low-cost ways to support small, minority languages. We wanted to help smaller language communities to participate in workshops and sessions with an emphasis on transferring knowledge from larger languages to smaller languages; practical sessions for participants from smaller languages with less expertise; and general networking for language communities to make the most of Wikimedia to support their languages. The groups we focused on experience many challenges that can be hard to appreciate by large, well established languages – such as lack of official backing or disagreements on the written script. A talk by Annas Sedrati from the Moroccan User Group encapsulated these issues perfectly.

The first Celtic Knot conference primarily aimed to support the development of the six Celtic languages, however with this year’s conference we broaded the programme to explicitly include any small, regional language community interested in using Wikimedia and in linking Wikimedia projects between languages. This brought submissions from new communities as well as those we had worked with before, such as Wikidata editors making use of its multilingual applications, and Wikimedians dealing with specific challenges such as integrating oral traditions into a primarily textual website. With the focus on minority languages it was important to match up with the right community – and we were very pleased to see the Cornish group taking the lead on hosting the conference. Cornish is spoken by a relatively small number of people (estimates vary) and is classified as ‘critically endangered’ by UNESCO.

Mark Trevethan working at the Cornwall Council attended our first two Celtic Knot conferences and was keen to host the third. His presence at previous editions of the conference led to discussions with volunteers with the Welsh Wicipedia and researchers at Bangor University. Cornwall Council are aiming to double the number of Cornish speakers, and ensuring there are readily available digital resources is an important aspect of making the language accessible and ensuring its survival. The Celtic Knot has inspired more work on the Cornish language, with interest in using Wikipedia in classroom settings and at heritage sites. As well as bringing together Wikimedians separated by geography but encountering similar challenges, the conference has the opportunity to help the growth of the Cornish language. The conference was filmed so those unable to attend can still benefit from the discussions and the sessions are available on our YouTube channel and Wikimedia Commons.

One of the aims in coming to Cornwall was to stimulate more Wikimedia activity in Cornwall and in the Cornish language, through exposing participants to the skills of those in more active communities. We acknowledge that there is a very low level of wiki activity in Cornish/Cornwall, but this is partly due to a lack of understanding about how to use Wikimedia to its full potential, for example in education. We therefore also invited people from Bangor University, who are helping to develop the online Cornish dictionary – including use of Wikidata – based on the work we’ve facilitated in Welsh.

Having attended the previous two conferences, Mark was able to see how other mid-sized languages are using Wikimedia and wanted to bring that energy and expertise to Cornwall. A big part of the conference was showing models of how wiki collaborations made things easier for small languages, and it was clear that many ideas could be tried in Cornwall. After the conference Mark reported several encouraging signals of connections – the conference seemed to have a strong impact on the people who attended. The ideas he’s been exploring as a result were:

  • Holding editathons in English and Cornish to develop the Cornish Maritime Churches project on Wikipedia – this is very relevant to Cornish culture.
  • Developing more articles in Cornish with the help of Robin Owain
  • Using Wikipedia to provide information on Cornwall’s threatened ecology, particularly 30,000 miles of hedges which are around 4,000 years old in parts, and which provide habitats for local wildlife. This would involve starting to develop our own content, rather than translating.
  • Using Wikimedia in education, based on the WikiMon model – this will need some work to develop but there is a lot of interest in this. Cornwall is investing in Superfast Broadband, and has an accompanying social inclusion programme which this could potentially fit into.

This sounds very positive and we are hoping to help the community take some of these ideas forward!

Programme 2: Developing Digital Literacy

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Strategic goal: Work with the Wikimedia projects to develop digital, data and information literacy

Theory of change

Currently in draft and subject to change during the activity year

A shared understanding of the world is important to the creation of a tolerant and democratic society, however this can be seriously undermined by widespread misinformation and disinformation. To counter this, Wikimedia UK works with educators and other partners to develop digital literacy skills, with a focus on information, media and data literacy.

Long term outcome:

People in the UK are able to understand and effectively engage with open knowledge. High levels of information literacy have strengthened civil society and democratic processes

Metrics

As highlighted, we didn’t set targets for the remainder of indicators; instead drawing from our continuity to assess progress.

Indicator 2017/18 half year achieved 2018/19 half year achieved 2019/20 half year achieved
Participants 445 819 1,734
Newly registered editors 104 297 103
Articles added/improved 1,003 1,003 2,069
Volunteer hours 3,730 4,832 8,427
Total audience and reach 477 858 1,801
Leading volunteers 32 39 67
Articles added 73 142 285

Potential impact metrics – emerging ideas

We are considering the following ideas:

  • In 2019 we ran a simple metric looking at digital skills development in students taking our Wikipedia in the Classroom courses. This was done on a small scale and with limited indicators. There is a potential now to deliver this much more systematically (e.g. at the start and end of each course), and with more metrics according to what we learnt in the pilot.
External audio
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'Once upon an open', a talk by Dr. Sara Thomas, from Soundcloud, retrieved 13 September 2019

Background

Digital literacy is highly relevant in the UK at the moment, with opportunities to support the growing demand for charity digital skills, as well as data literacy skills for the general public. As interest in the potential of understanding, using and sharing data grows within UK institutions, there is a real opportunity for Wikimedia UK to facilitate this work, through Wikidata and other initiatives.

Wikimedia UK believes that engaging with Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects – particularly through becoming a contributor – can enable learners to understand, navigate and critically evaluate knowledge and information. Over the past few years we have been growing our education programme, focused on the development of Wikimedia as a teaching and learning tool in the UK, with content production as an output but not the key outcome of this work. We are collaborating with a range of prestigious higher education institutions in this programme, with a particularly impactful partnership at the University of Edinburgh. We have been slower to launch any large-scale initiatives within the schools sector for various reasons, despite some excellent localised work in schools taking place in Wales and Scotland. In 2018 however, alongside our partners in Wales, we achieved a major breakthrough with the inclusion of Wikimedia within the Welsh Baccalaureate. In the next iteration of our strategy, our education work will focus even more strongly on digital, data and information literacy, with a renewed commitment to engaging effectively with schools across the UK.

In the period 2016–2019 our education and learning programme was a relatively new priority for the chapter, and we have been gaining in confidence, expertise and credibility in this area over the past few years.

Highlights of programme activity

The new strategy offers a more focused approach to our education programme, including a clear commitment to developing projects and partnerships that support data literacy – which is emerging as an area of expertise. We are also continuing many activities from the last few years, building further on digital literacy work in schools and universities.

Higher education’s engagement with Wikimedia as a digital literacy tool

Wikimedia continues to be used in the university classroom. February to July 2019 saw courses at Queen Mary University London, Edinburgh, Imperial College London, Stirling, Sheffield, Swansea, Derby, and the London School of Economics, covering diverse topics from film studies to competition law. Some course leaders are also using their experience of using Wikimedia in the classroom to encourage their peers to do the same and sharing their experiences. This is important as sharing knowledge about how to use Wikimedia in the classroom increases the capacity to support courses at universities. It also helps to encourage discussions about open access and open knowledge within institutions.

We are also developing new partnerships in this area:

  • Course planning with the University of Birmingham – Seeking to create a new module at the University of Birmingham using Wikimedia in the classroom. James Everest is one of the convenors for the BASc course at UCL which got students to edit Wikibooks in November 2018. Building on this success, the course will continue, and James has been asked to do something similar at the University of Birmingham (where he also works). James hopes that the course can be used to encourage institutional change and more engagement with open access.
  • Course planning with the University of Kent – Seeking to integrate Wikimedia editing in a new module. Inspired by the course at the University of Sheffield (which now operates with occasional WMUK input) lecturer Edward Roberts wants to get students writing about early medieval history. We arranged to have two seminars with Edward’s class in the autumn term to help students get to grips with editing.
  • King's College London, Digital Humanities Department – possible collaboration, having a very broad discussion about how this could be relevant to specific courses around digital skills.
  • We also launched our third university-based WIR, at Coventry University. Inspired by work at the university of Edinburgh and Oxford, Daniel Villar-Onrubia has spearheaded the creation of a Wikimedian in Residence in the university’s Disruptive Media Learning Lab. The team has a cross-departmental remit to support classroom teaching, and it is hoped that the resident can use this to bring Wikimedia into the classroom, encouraging digital literacy skills and taking an active role in decolonising the curriculum. The project also has a GLAM component, so the Resident will be working with the university's librarians and publishing staff on campaigns such as #1Lib1Ref, and WikiCite, and with the archives team on making use of Coventry's specialist collections.

Wikimedia in schools

Our collaboration with WiciMon really picked up momentum in 2019, with the resident/Co-ordinator Aaron Morris delivering a wide range of exciting projects. The Welsh Baccalaureate Community Challenge moved into the next phase, with students delivering their own community engagement projects in the summer term following their earlier training – setting up Wiki Clubs for primary school children, teachers or local community homes.

With the Welsh Bacc activity being handed over to students, Aaron was able to shift his focus towards other strands of work. These are all connected to education, and inspired by Wikimedia UK and Menter Mon’s strategic priorities:

  • WiciBach: Ongoing Primary School work where we target year 5 and 6 pupils with Wikipedia awareness sessions and workshops involving research, coding, referencing and image uploads. This project involved eight new schools between May and July.
  • STEM subjects: A new WiciMon teaching module about STEM subjects was created, following WJEC giving us permission to use their digital materials. The module involved GCSE pupils writing  articles on things they are studying in class as a tool to revise for their exams, and is proving to be a good way of reinforcing their learning as well as developing Wikipedia editing skills. Two schools participated, with the plan being to hold future sessions prior to scheduled exams over the next year.
  • WiciNatur: This project involved two Primary schools on Anglesey, with children supported to write articles about their shared nature reserve. It was delivered alongside another Menter Mon project, Cwlwm Seiriol, which is funded by the National Lottery and aims to involve communities in determining how to protect and improve their local natural environment.
  • Wythnos Addysg Oedolion/Adult Learners Week: This project with Anglesey County Council involved workshops with year 5 and 6 pupils, who then went on to train adults in Wikipedia. The pupils created their very own presentation about the world of Wikipedia, and together created content about Anglesey history.
  • Curriculum inclusion – In addition to ongoing work with WJEC/Welsh Bacc, Aaron (WiciMon resident) initiated a partnership with STEM Gogledd + CBAC/WJEC to target 14-16 year olds through GCSE STEM subjects. It’s early days, but this could see the teaching of Wikipedia skills becoming an inherent part of the GCSE framework.  
Learning to edit

Developing digital literacy beyond the education sector

  • Banner Repeater – working with this physical and online archive of artists books to develop a Wikibase and a data schema for artists books. Banner Repeater’s funding bid from the Arts Council for this project was successful, with £34k secured to support events, training and the development of the schema (alongside funding from Wikimedia UK, committed in 2018/19). This partnership has mainly been focused on its internal community and resources for the past few months, working on meetings to discuss the fairly specialised subject of determining the correct schema for the complex and diverse movement of artists’ publishing. We are also connecting the project to the Royal College of Arts, drawing on their technical and design skills. Now, however, we are moving onto a wider consultation around data schema and linked-data compatibility. This activity will have a strong data literacy development element, working with external communities and promoting the work we’re doing with Banner Repeater. This is an emergent area of work – there is a lot of interest about Wikibase in the cultural sector, but the Wikimedia movement does not have a tested model of how to engage institutions or teach it successfully. We are therefore hoping to develop some resources or materials as part of this project that can be reused by others.
  • SLIC & Information Literacy – we have connected with SLIC on their Information Literacy project. We advised on both the use of the Wikimedia projects to help deliver IL learning, and also advocated that the toolkit should be made available on a CC-BY-SA licence.
  • Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) – Since 2016 the Museum of London Archaeology’s ‘Thames Discovery Programme’ has been doing more work with over 75s. The programme gives them the skills to record and preserve their local heritage, especially that which is at risk from development or environmental factors. This year Will Rathouse, who leads the Programme’s community engagement, contacted Wikimedia UK to arrange for Wikipedia training. The plan was to teach the museum’s volunteers the skills to share information, as well as improve their digital literacy. The workshop gave them new insight into how information is shared and constructed online through the lens of Wikimedia.
  • Open Data Institute Aberdeen/Code the City - establishing connections with interested parties in Aberdeen and the surrounding area: linking to data initiatives and supporting the growth and development of the open data community, including bringing together partners from different sectors (mainly education, heritage and culture) for Wikimedia project events.
  • To teach some information professionals Wikidata, we run a ‘SPARQL as a Foreign Language’ workshop at the Bodleian Libraries for their staff. The workshop design was to  get people using the Wikidata Query Service without discussing any technical jargon. By the end, trainees could make multi-statement queries, including optional statements, and present them in different views including maps. The session was deliberately focused on SPARQL and not Wikidata, but the trainees raised questions about how data get into Wikidata and how it could be made more complete. It turned out to be a way to get people curious about Wikidata and how they could contribute to it.
  • In tandem we are developing explanatory videos for Wikidata, building a bank of materials to be used in training and outreach activities.

Progress towards the plan, changes

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Editathon at Conway Hall

(Compare to our proposal)

The core elements of this programme are going to plan, with strong delivery - we are continuing the in-depth collaboration with Edinburgh University, are delivering an expanding range of Wikimedia in the Classroom courses, and launched our third education Wikimedian in Residence at Coventry University, as planned.

The schools education programme in Wales has also seen impressive developments and is set to continue (despite initially being planned to finish this Autumn).

It has been harder to shape programmes focused on misinformation, which we hoped to do at the time of the proposal. We have several pitches prepared, including around the Online Harms paper mentioned in Programme 3 - none of them are set to be implemented imminently though.

Challenges and learning

In spring 2019, our programme coordinator leading on education came back from sabbatical, which gave us an opportunity to check in on the Wikimedia in Classroom courses and explore any challenges they may have been experiencing. 2019 marked our first collaboration with the University of Derby and the London School of Economics (LSE) on classroom courses, providing support and advice to course leaders using Wikipedia in the classroom for the first time. Support for LSE included helping one group of students negotiate the deletion of the article they were working on, which resulted in it being restored. Though it does not seem to have had a negative impact on the students, the course leader is now uncertain about if the experiment will continue into the next academic year. This shows that a difficult experience with the editing community can lead to the course not being continued. A model that has worked in other cases is to have students draft articles in their sandbox, publish when ready, and prepare reflections on the process which will then also draw on their analytics skills.

The course at the University of Derby was partly inspired by other university courses and the work of Roger Bamkin as a volunteer and Wikipedia advocate. On two occasions, the outreach dashboard stopped working, which caused concerns about the reliability of the tool. Each time the situation was resolved within a day, albeit after the lecture with the course leader. The course leader, Caroline Ball, remains very positive about Wikimedia and wants to use her course as a case study within the university to encourage more people to use Wikipedia in the classroom. We are also now working with her to organise a ‘teachmeet’ learning and sharing session for educators at and beyond Derby University.

Case study

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Impact of the SLIC residency - distributing digital skills through a network

Adapted from Delphine Dallison’s impact report

We concluded the Wikimedian in Residence project at the Scottish Library and Information Council in spring 2019. This 18 month programme aimed to facilitate culture change at the libraries within SLIC’s network. The end of the project provided an opportunity to reflect on the impact that was brought about by the Wikimedia collaboration.

In the eyes of SLIC’s Head of Programme, the Wikimedian in Residence project has given staff the confidence to look beyond the collections they hold on their shelves and see themselves as key content creators, able to steer visitors to high quality digital resources.

We ran a survey of the project’s participants (staff from libraries across the network), and found the results very revealing. Feedback from the residency has helped highlight the fact that open knowledge projects are still a new area for librarians in the Scottish library sector. Across the sample of respondents, only 17% were aware of any open knowledge projects having previously taken place within their organisation and only 8.5% had been directly involved in those projects.

Survey respondents mainly participated in the SLIC Wikimedian in Residence by attending the one day Introduction to Wikipedia for Librarians training sessions offered by the resident throughout the project. They also reported taking part in a variety of other opportunities that were offered including attending an advocacy session, participating in one of the Wikimedia campaigns (Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Libraries, 1Lib1Ref) and either organising or participating in an editathon.

Since taking part in those activities, 83% of respondents have reported feeling more confident explaining the principles of open knowledge to others. 70.5% reported feeling more confident about working on open license projects. 76% reported feeling more confident about overcoming arguments against open knowledge and 88.5% felt more confident about spotting the potential of open knowledge projects in different areas of library work. 80% of respondents have recommended using Wikipedia to one of their library users since taking part in the project.

Librarians gave the following examples of how taking part in Wikipedia activities has been beneficial to their work:

Not only did the programme train library staff but it included train the trainer sessions to ensure there are an engaged network of librarians involved in the Wiki community now that the residency has ended. 40% of the questionnaire respondents completed the Trainer the Trainer programme offered as part of the SLIC residency. 60% of respondents reported feeling somewhat confident about delivering their first Wikipedia event and 25% reported feeling very to extremely confident. Most respondents felt that their confidence would increase with more editing practise and after delivering their first event.

Respondents also reported that they felt confident about who to contact for support from Wikimedia UK if needed when running future events. (All training resources are publicly available).

When asked about future plans, all the respondents fed back that they are either currently planning future Wikipedia activities (60%) or would like to (40%). Between 70% and 75% said they would be likely or very likely to be involved in the 2019 Wiki Loves Monuments campaign, to take part in a future Wiki Loves Libraries campaign and to participate in #1Lib1Ref. 66% are also likely or very likely to run a WikiProject Women in Red event.

To have 119 librarians trained in editing Wikipedia and 32 trained as trainers who will be able to upskill and encourage more library staff to get involved is a massive achievement for public libraries in Scotland. Over 40 librarians outside the public library sector have also benefited from the residency, paving the way for some exciting cross sectoral work. The project has also created 55 new articles on Scottish history and culture, and the creation of these pages by Scottish Libraries and their communities is a very special output from the project. Respondents acknowledged that the project had had an impact on the organisations they worked for, with 80% agreeing or strongly agreeing that it had helped their organisation develop new digital skills, 75% that it had increased their organisation's expertise in relation to copyright and open licenses, 70% that it had increased senior support for open knowledge projects and 62% that it had encouraged an organisation-wide buy-in to the benefits of open knowledge. Librarians still felt that there were barriers to overcome in developing a culture of open knowledge in their library, highlighting the following:

  • Issues around capacity, staff skill levels and time input
  • Issues around engagement or resistance at a senior staff level
  • More work needed to develop staff knowledge and expertise on copyright and open licenses
  • More time needed to roll out training across their wider staff team
  • Structural issues such as the separation of libraries and museums, when they should be working together
  • Organisations sticking with the better known paywall system for digital collections rather than considering the benefits of open licenses

However, librarians also related the many benefits to the wider library sector that this project had helped highlight:

  • "Libraries are about access for all and [open knowledge] supports this ideology."

Programme 3: Changing Policy and Practice

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Strategic goal: Create changes in policy and practice that enable open knowledge to flourish

Theory of change

Currently in draft and subject to change during the activity year

Open access to information is a fundamental right and a prerequisite to building understanding, but political and market forces in the UK can strive to keep information closed and inaccessible. It is therefore essential that we advocate for change at an institutional, sector and policy level, making the case for open access to knowledge.

Long term outcome:

Our work has significantly increased free, online access to knowledge and information.

Metrics

As highlighted, we didn’t set targets for the remainder of indicators; instead drawing from our continuity to assess progress.

Indicator 2017/18 half year achieved 2018/19 half year achieved 2019/20 half year achieved
Participants 1,620 1,806 1,422
Volunteer hours 1,871 4,258 1,769
Leading volunteers 71 66 43
Responses to consultations 3 2 1
Policy change affected 0 1 1

Potential impact metrics - emerging ideas

Our advocacy metrics are already quite impact-oriented and we may not need additional KPIs. Facilitating change within UK organisations is one of our strengths, however, so we are considering implementing additional mechanisms of capturing change. These may not be metrics, but tools for evidencing ongoing change within our partner organisations. Current ideas include:

  • Surveying organisations (e.g. WIR hosts) before and after the residency collaboration. We do currently undertake exit interviews looking at outcomes, but don’t generally take formal stock at the beginning for benchmarking purposes.
  • The WIR impact report highlighted several dimensions of impact (e.g. changed internal perceptions, reach, scalability). These could be used as a basis for impact measurement in this strategic area.

Background

There is an active debate in the UK about the future of civil society and the role of the third sector within this. Some very wide and pressing themes fit into these discussions such as Brexit and society's fragmentation, participatory democracy, media literacy and the data revolution. Wikimedia UK can offer novel models to address many of these issues, in the context of advocating for more open policies and practice as an important step to achieving our vision of a more tolerant, informed and democratic society.

Wikimedia UK is a significant voice for open knowledge within the UK, advocating for more open policies and practice at an institutional, sectoral and public policy level. We recognise the importance of one-to-one relationships in creating sustainable change, however we are increasingly seeking opportunities to amplify these messages by contributing to events, conferences and publications, and developing large-scale partnership projects; such as those with Amnesty International and the London Mayor’s office in 2018. In addition to our financial support for the EU Free Knowledge Advocacy Group, in the past few years we have been actively involved in the campaign to make changes to the proposed EU Copyright Directive - developing new relationships with British MPs and MEPs as a result. In 2019, we have been continuing to support international advocacy efforts, whilst putting an increasing emphasis on influencing the UK legislative and policy environment as we exit from the EU.

This programme strand pulls together our advocacy and public policy activities with our work to create more open policy and practice within content holding institutions.

Highlights of programme activity

Organisational change towards openness

Natural Resources Wales have released some of their videos under an open licence.

The internal advocacy work this year so far has been a combination of exploring new avenues, and developing our existing relationships even further. We are expanding our advocacy activities in Wales and Scotland, as we feel it’s a good time to start working with new partners, drawing on our accumulated case studies and the momentum from current successful partnerships. This includes reaching out to organisations that have previously been less open to working with us. Key examples of this include:

  • National Museum of Wales - we have been working on shifting their policies towards openness for years, with little effect. It is the next logical organisation though to try and create large-scale change in Wales, and using evidence we’ve amassed so far we are making another approach, supported by the Welsh Language Commissioner.
  • National Museum of Scotland - we have recently started to develop a relationship with the National Museum of Scotland, discussing internal advocacy, KPIs and monitoring, plus some quick win activities. This is an organisation that has previously been somewhat resistant to our approaches, so this opening is very promising.
  • University of Leeds - Discussing how to work with Wikimedia, with case studies from the National Library of Wales, Edinburgh University and Oxford University. There is the potential for a multi-university collaboration spanning the White Rose Consortium (Leeds, York and Sheffield). We are continuing discussions with the volunteer at Leeds who is spearheading this initiative.
  • The Resident at The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland has been running interviews of staff and stakeholders to develop a strategy on how the society can better integrate Wikimedia resources and ethos into the work they do. This is the key background work that will help us implement a wider collaboration around Scotland's Year of Coasts and Waters 2020.

In terms of our long term, established relationships, there are a few key things to highlight in terms of their continuing engagement with open knowledge:

  • University of Edinburgh won the award for 'Innovative Use of Technology’ at the Herald Higher Education Awards 2019, to recognise the value that Wikipedia in the Classroom brings to teaching. This will highlight its value to other universities in the UK. The award is also strengthening the discussions that our resident is leading around the “Curriculum 2025” development, putting the focus on open knowledge and digital literacy.  
  • The National Library of Wales marketing team is looking at sharing more information about their work with Wikimedia through social media accounts and platforms. This is a signal of the whole organisation embracing working with Wikimedia and seeing its value, not just an isolated department.
  • Oxford University is currently implementing its GLAM Digital Strategy, “To embrace the opportunities offered by digital to democratise access to the collections, eliminating geographic, cultural and economic boundaries.” There are many strands to this strategy, and some of the work relates to search and discovery of digitised materials. This is exactly what our resident in Oxford has been working on. His three “explorers” – Wikidata-driven proof-of-concept web applications – have been presented to the programme board and other committees and have shaped the institution’s thinking about how linked data can assist search and discovery. We will see outcomes of this in 2020, but at this stage it’s great to see the policy itself. See the case study below for a broader view on this.

Sector-wide advocacy

Two activities with potentially sector-wide impact that we’d like to highlight:

Aled Roberts was appointed Welsh Language Commissioner 1st April 2019.
  • The Welsh Language Commissioner - we are discussing policy change with the Commissioner. They are very keen after we’ve briefed them on all the work that has happened in Wales so far, and the potential of the Wikimedia projects in Wales. This contact is helping us with advocacy within targeted organisations in Wales as well. As a first step The Commissioner uploaded two videos on CC-BY-SA: one in Welsh and another with English subtitles.
  • The National Library of Wales released an impact report of their Government-funded project WiciPobl (Wiki People). It highlights the value of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool. It also demonstrates how working with Wikimedia can help cultural heritage institutions build and support new communities and achieve outcomes which align with their core values whilst increasing access to, and use of, their digital collections. It follows Europeana’s ‘impact playbook’ framework, and we expect it to receive significant exposure, further promoting the long term benefits of working on open knowledge. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wicipobl_Impact_Report.pdf

On a delivery level, a coordinated #1lib1ref campaign took place in Scotland across January and February. This was led by the SLIC resident, who was able to use the networked nature of her post to reach a wide range of institutions in Scotland. The aim of 1Lib1Ref Scotland 2019 was to activate librarians across the entire library sector in Scotland. In order to do so, the WiR promoted the campaign using SLIC's key contacts list in all the Scottish local authorities as well as boosting the campaign on social media with the help of campaign amplifiers such as CILIPS (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland), the Scottish Health Information Network (SHINE) and the SLIC social media team. 1Lib1Ref was framed as a professional development opportunity and underpinned with training opportunities for librarians in the form of free one hour webinars delivered by the SLIC Wikimedian in Residence. There were five webinars in total attended by a wide range of professionals including school librarians, public librarians, law librarians, FE and HE institution librarians and health librarians. Two of the webinars were specifically tailored to health librarians in response to a demand for Wikipedia specific training after the SLIC Wikimedian in Residence delivered the keynote speech at last year's SHINE conference. The webinars were recorded and widely shared for any librarians unable to attend the dates of the live events, and we will be able to reuse much of the materials produced for this activity.

UK policy

  • Lucy has been leading our work to develop our role as a key player within the UK’s openness movement; building on our connections with other open organisations - as relationships within the sector are going to be key to this work - and responding to public policy issues. In particular, she has established strong links with Mozilla, who have this year been campaigning about misinformation and disinformation, particularly in the light of the European elections in May. On Wikimedia UK’s behalf, Lucy signed Mozilla’s open letter to Facebook earlier this year about their lack of transparency in terms of political advertising on the platform, and Wikimedia UK has been involved in several discussions that have been convened by Mozilla with the wider civil society movement internationally. A key member of Mozilla's campaigning team, Brandi Geurkink, gave the keynote speech at Wikimedia UK's AGM in July.
  • In March, Lucy emailed 23 MEPs urging them to vote against Article 13 (now 17) in the final vote on the EU Copyright Directive. More recently, in July, Lucy was a speaker at the prestigious Westminster Media Forum's seminar on UK copyright policy - 'value exchange, international relationships and the Copyright Directive', which had over 120 attendees. As one of the few speakers who represented users rather than rights holders, this was an important opportunity to engage with policy makers on some of the problematic aspects of the legislation, as well as strengthening Wikimedia UK's profile and credibility in this area. Following this talk, Lucy has a meeting scheduled in September with the Head of International Internet Policy at the UK Communications Regulator Ofcom to discuss the regulation of AI in the context of bias; as well as their broader work on online harms.
  • Following the publication of the Government's White Paper on Online Harms in April, Lucy wrote to Jeremy Wright, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, outlining Wikimedia UK’s response. Whilst Wikimedia UK were subsequently invited to a meeting with the Director of Online Harms at DCMS, this meeting was rescheduled by the department a number of times, with several ministerial changes in the meantime following Boris Johnson's appointment as Prime Minister and subsequent cabinet reshuffle. Given the very high levels of instability and uncertainty within the UK Government currently, we've therefore decided to wait and see what happens in terms of Brexit and/or a General Election before actively following up this piece of work with DCMS.
  • Despite our lack of success in actually meeting with the DCMS on this topic, online harms is becoming an increasingly important issue within the UK recently and Lucy is leading a conversation with Samaritans about how we tackle this in terms of Wikimedia. This initiative is ongoing and has various facets which will be reported on more fully in our impact report.


Progress towards the plan, changes

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Mozilla's Brandi Guerkink speaking at our AGM about tackling disinformation online (click for video)

(Compare to our proposal)

So far this programme has been somewhat uneven, with a number of notable successes in terms of organisational change showing the importance and persuasiveness of this aspect of our advocacy work, while our broader sector activity and UK policy work has had less tangible results. As indicated above, it has been harder to engage effectively with UK policy makers due to a volatile political context so far this year. We hope this will stabilise by next year, and that we’ll be able to draw on numerous materials and case studies developed this year to advocate for change towards openness (such as the WIR impact booklet or our new education brochure).

We initially envisioned that Wikidata would play a significant role in this programme, particularly in terms of demonstrating the potential impact of open knowledge. So far however our experience suggests that whilst Wikidata offers exciting illustrations of the possibilities of linked open data, it hasn’t been used by us as a more general advocacy tool; as the organisations we work with on Wikidata projects are usually already won over to the arguments on open knowledge, and want to take their work further.


Challenges and learning

The challenges we worked through around advocacy this year so far were sometimes about not being able to progress a project due to external constraints.

We were looking forward to extending Oxford University’s Wikimedian in Residence programme, with a new engagement lined up with the Ashmolean Museum. It has been particularly important to us due to its impressive advocacy potential - see the case study below. The extension fell through at the last moment due to lack of funds. However, we are still looking at continuing the collaboration. The University of Oxford is looking at options for long term preservation of Digital Humanities data, and the expertise we’ve built through having run the Residency with them may allow for continuation of the project.

As highlighted above, it has been difficult to progress our advocacy work with DCMS around their Online Harms white paper. We have been invited to provide evidence, and argue for the role of digital literacy in combating fake news, however, it’s been very hard to secure a meeting. The recent cabinet reshuffle and an overwhelming focus on Brexit makes policy activity very challenging at this point in the UK.

Case study

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Oxford University's WIR Impact on collections infrastructure in the UK

Our Resident at Oxford University (previously Bodleian Libraries) has been developing inspiring ‘proofs of concepts’ to show how Wikidata can be used to meet a cultural institution’s strategic needs. To see some examples, and to engage with a thought-provoking argument on how Wikidata work can map to an organisational strategy, see this blog http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/digital/2019/03/14/what-wikidata-offers-oxfords-glam-digital-strategy/

Oxford University’s cultural offering includes four museums, the 31 Bodleian Libraries, and the botanic gardens. In 2017 these were brought under the umbrella of a GLAM Division. Across these institutions there are many different catalogues and platforms for sharing images and metadata. Oxford is currently implementing its GLAM Digital Strategy, which focuses on embracing the opportunities offered by digital to democratise access to collections, eliminating geographic, cultural and economic boundaries. There are many strands to this strategy, and some of the work relates to search and discovery of digitised materials. The Resident’s three “explorers” – Wikidata-driven proof-of-concept web applications developed during the residency – have been presented to the programme board and other committees and have shaped the institution’s thinking about how linked data can assist search and discovery.

The residency’s influence goes much further, however. We’d like to illustrate how his work around Wikidata is influencing collections infrastructure in the UK.

Inspired by the residency and the demonstrated potential of Wikidata, three successful proposals were developed by Oxford University to United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI, a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation that directs all government research and innovation funding) to transform access to the UK’s research collection infrastructure. These proposals total over £100m to improve how cultural collections are used in research and innovation. The bids address access to content, digitisation and infrastructure. Each of the bid documents mentions Wikidata in the section on Access to Content, and specifically mentions ‘Depict-o-tron’, a prototype built by the Resident. Depict-o-tron shows how Wikidata can be used to store publicly available informationcapture from the public statements about an artwork, including artworks that are available via a IIIF server rather than Wikimedia Commons.

As a separate but related strand of far-reaching advocacy, Corsham Institute (a think tank that aims to deliver a fair and inclusive digital future for all) has been in touch with the Resident to learn more about his approach. The Corsham Institute are advising DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) on the possibility of a national aggregator of cultural heritage. As part of this they spoke to different stakeholders about the issues the sector is facing in aggregating and sharing digitised collections. The Institute had talks with Oxford’s GLAM division, in which Oxford mentioned that top-level data (“tombstone data”) from many different collections is being added to Wikidata to help with discovery. Wikimedia UK is now directly in touch with the Institute, discussing our potential involvement with this work.

Programme 4: Developing Wikimedia UK’s capacity and profile

[edit]

Develop our capacity and profile as a leading organisation for open knowledge

Theory of change

Currently in draft and subject to change during the activity year

To successfully deliver our strategic goals above, we need to have a solid recognition and stature within the UK, international Wikimedia movement, and the global open knowledge movement. Otherwise our programmes will lack leverage, and, as a small organisation, we will lack impact. Further, we need volunteer capacity and financial sustainability to be able to plan impactful programmes long term.

Long term outcome:

Wikimedia UK is recognised as a leading organisation for open knowledge.

Metrics

As highlighted, we didn’t set targets for the remainder of indicators; instead drawing from our continuity to assess progress.

Indicator 2017/18 half year achieved 2018/19 half year achieved 2019/20 half year achieved
Total audience and reach 51,837 59,449 51,005
Digital media reach 50,146 57,577 48,798
Female % of lead volunteers 38.5% 58.82% 43%
Volunteer engagement and development survey Results at the end of year

Potential impact metrics - emerging ideas

We are aiming to keep the existing volunteer participation, satisfaction and leadership metrics here. There are some new metrics ideas, inspired by the fresh framing offered by this new strategic goal.

  • It would be very interesting to look closer into the impact of our general advocacy work. If we were to move into designing campaigns, this could then also include impact evaluation; however this can be hard to measure in a cost effective way.

Background

Our fourth strategic aim is to develop our capacity and profile as a leading organisation for open knowledge. This does not have a single accompanying programme strand but will be delivered through a range of important internal and external activities - many of which have a clear overlap with, and feed into, our programme delivery - including:

  • Volunteer development
  • International working
  • Communications and external affairs
  • Fundraising and income diversification
  • Organisational development

Within our new strategy, we have separated out our advocacy work with policy makers (in whatever setting, be that a museum or a government department) - this is now the third goal above. Our broader communications designed to inform and engage the general public now sits here, together with other activities designed to boost our profile within the Wikimedia movement, and in the UK generally.

Highlights of programme activity

General outreach (increasing awareness and understanding of open knowledge and Wikimedia UK)

Developing our profile as an organisation centred around the production of new promotional materials about the charity, working with external designers and printers to create a strong visual identity and professional-looking products. We released a beautiful Strategic Report to coincide with the AGM, and were also finally able to print the Wikimedians in Residence impact report. The same designers initially worked on a set of four postcards about the charity, which we are distributing at events and conferences and in other settings - and a short version of the WIR impact report which is serving as a general promotional took about our partnership work.

A key presentation in this context was our Chief Executive's keynote talk at CILIPS Annual Conference, where 250 people heard us talk about 'Creating a more tolerant, informed and democratic society through open knowledge'. CILIPS is the library and information association for Scotland and therefore an important target audience, with our Scotland Programme Co-ordinator Sara and the National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales also giving a talk in a breakout session. Positioning our vision at the centre of awareness raising talks is key in letting people know what the open knowledge can really achieve in the UK and often lead to new connections and partnerships.

We received a fair amount of media coverage through the National Library of Wales outreach work. For example, Jason was interviewed by Radio Cymru about Wikidata and the History Hackathon. He also talked about Wikidata at a ‘Data Treaders’ Libraries event in Manchester, and talked about Wikipedia at the Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum.

Contributing to the global Wikimedia movement

This wide-ranging work has been gaining more prominence and focus. Our staff have rich connections with the international movement, and thanks to our recognised expertise we are approached for advice and help across a range of topics. To highlight a few examples:

  • Our published WIR impact report has been very well received, with people coming back to us for comments and further advice. Lucy presented the highlights of the report at Wikimania 2019 in the Partnerships space.
  • We are sharing our education work with the Education User Group, with a focus on promoting the digital literacy research survey we delivered last year. The group has been impressed with the quality of work. Lucy also spoke about this programme within the Education space at Wikimania.
  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - The FAO have freely licensed text they want to add to the English Wikipedia on poorly represented subjects. They were put in touch with us by John Cummings, knowing that there is advice we can offer then. We are in regular contact with staff, creating a workflow to go through their openly licensed reports, identify material which could be added to Wikipedia, and integrate the information into articles.
Robin Owain talking about our education work in Wales
  • Eduwiki (international education conference) at Donostia, April - our Wales Coordinator gave two presentations, one based on mother languages, the second to give an outline of education work in the UK, with a focus on Wikimon, Wales.
  • Wikimedia Summit - in addition to the formal participation of our Chair and Chief Executive at this event, one of our Programme Coordinators attended Wikimedia Summit in a volunteer capacity to assist with the Trust & Safety team. There were also opportunities to build connections with the attendees as a WMUK rep - this was focused on Wikibase and how we can work together to build a community of users. We learnt that the German National Library is deploying its own instance of Wikibase, this combined with a new contact at the British Library and our existing relationship with NLW could be an opportunity for us here in the UK.

Developing the volunteer community

We’ve been using several existing opportunities to tie in volunteer development and increased engagement, for example:

  • One of the goals of the Scotland Coordinator this year is to nurture the community in the North of Scotland. This can be challenging, and to make it work we are focusing on a defined group in the first instance. We are also engaging with the open data community in the North of Scotland, which has led to connections with Aberdeen and Inverness, especially around Code the City meetups.
A Wikidata meetup in May
  • We are running a series of regular Wikidata community meetups. These events include presentations and an informal space to network and exchange skills. We are attracting a range of volunteers, from established Wikidatians to new volunteers interested in getting involved. These meetups are a promising initiative to help build a long-term community of Wikidata users who can engage with Wikimedia UK and the Wikidata project. In June we organised a Wikidata and Openstreetmap meetup. This is another event in a series of Wikidata meetups, each with a thematic focus. This time we decided on a partnership theme - OSM have engaged a community and connections to local authorities. OSM volunteers talked to Wikidata users about overlaps between OSM work and Wikidata. This kind of cross-pollination between Open communities is what we are hoping to encourage.
  • We are working on a #ScotWiki Train the Trainer - increasing the capacity of our network in Scotland. We are working with a trainer on the training design, going quite in depth into our needs and reflecting on what we need to produce and deliver to create the best volunteer experience. This is likely to take place in Autumn.

In terms of recognising volunteers, a prime opportunity was our AGM, and the annual Wikimedian of the Year awards. The Partnership of the Year Award went to Amnesty International for their collaboration with Wikimedia UK on the BRAVE campaign. This project – focused on women human rights defenders – saw 550 articles created or expanded across seven languages, as well as new relationships and partnerships between local Wikimedia groups and Amnesty sections. An ‘honourable mention’ in this Award category was given to The Dumfries Stonecarving Project, which celebrates the sandstone heritage of Dumfries.

Wikimedian of the Year went to Dr. Jess Wade, whose work is making women in science more visible through the creation of a high number of biographies on Wikipedia about prominent women in STEM; and who has inspired others to do the same in science and other disciplines. Andrew Gray received an honourable mention for his extensive and valuable work on his Wikidata project focused on British politicians.

At the AGM, we also took the opportunity to engage our community in the very present conversation about culture and conflict on the English Wikipedia. This is a key discussion, as evidenced by the closing talk at Wikimania later this year. It was important for us to make this a key workshop at our annual gathering, and it resulted in a worthwhile discussion.

Progress towards the plan, changes

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(Compare to our proposal)

This strategic aim and new programme strand has placed more of an emphasis on our work within the international Wikimedia movement, which takes various forms. In the context of the emerging new global strategy we are crystallising the areas where we feel we can be particularly helpful to the rest of the movement, and see the following as key areas of expertise where we can share learning, resources and ideas:

  • Cultural partnerships, with a focus on Wikimedians in Residence
  • Digital literacy
  • Minority and indigenous languages

Challenges and learning

When we establish a new partnership we always have to consider Wikimedia UK’s profile and reputation, and how this could be affected by the collaboration. As we usually collaborate with respected cultural and education institutions in the UK, there is generally an extremely low risk of reputational damage. However, there was a partnership earlier this year where we felt we needed to be much more careful.


Thanks to the publicity for the gender-gap event we ran with the Mayor of London and Bloomberg in 2018, Adidas contacted us via their PR firm, Hope & Glory, interested in doing something similar, this time tying it in with the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Naturally we were cautious as to various risks around Wikipedia being used to promote a specific company, but Adidas and their PR firm came with a fair understanding of our concerns and were clearly interested in focusing on the types of content that are useful to Wikipedia. We did some basic investigations into the ethics of the company itself, and were reasonably happy - Adidas having significantly improved in the ethics of its manufacturing processes in the past decade and having been praised in reports on the subject as a result.

The idea was to focus on women in football, to highlight the disparity in coverage on Wikipedia (there are 165519 articles on male footballers vs 6243 on women footballers), and hopefully improve coverage of women's football and footballers on the site. The partner brought in various women involved in football, sport and sports journalism to participate, and they provided a significant amount of books on the subject to act as sources. We ran an invite-only event with one of our volunteer trainers (herself a keen footballer) during which a number of articles were expanded and created, particularly around historic teams and early pioneers in women’s football.

Another concern we had was that Wikimedia UK would be treated purely as a means to getting more publicity for Adidas, while criticising Wikipedia. This is something that we raised with the PR agency early on, and whilst the initial draft of the press release did risk falling into that trap, our concerns and amendments were taken on board and the resulting press coverage was extremely positive, respecting our angle and giving prominence to the quote from our Chief Executive. The media coverage helped to raise awareness that anyone can edit Wikipedia and the efforts Wikimedia UK is making to tackle content gaps, and the social media response was also strong and very positive. In addition, all of the content produced was of good quality and useful to the project itself, and Adidas made a charitable donation to Wikimedia UK following the event.

Case studies

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Building Wikimedia UK’s profile and connections in Scotland to generate more partnerships Culture on Wikipedia
The intersections between Scotwiki and GLAMwiki

Many key partnerships in Scotland have recently seen the benefit from, or fruition of, long term advocacy work having been undertaken over the last few years. Many of these relationships are intertwined and difficult to describe as a result, however we have attempted to tease out a few key stories to illustrate the functioning and benefit of investment in long term advocacy, which is often hard to capture through existing metrics.

The existing partnership with the National Library of Scotland (including two Residencies) has been tended through regular contact between our Scotland Programme Coordinator Dr Sara Thomas, and key contacts at the Library, including an invitation to and attendance at our ScotWiki partners meetings. Most recently, the library invited Dr Thomas to meet with various members of library staff to discuss a mainstreaming the upload of images to Wikimedia Commons, and to explore possibilities for engagement with Wikidata, in advance of key library staff attending a Wikidata & Libraries meeting following Wikimania. The residents at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh, and a member of staff from the National Museum of Scotland (all of whose offices are adjacent to NLS in Edinburgh), were also in attendance. The main output of that meeting was the organisation of a workshop day later in the year on Pattypan & Wikidata, which will incorporate a document sprint, and be open to other key cultural staff who may be interested. This ongoing work has the potential to release a significant amount of material into the Commons, and we have asked for a focus on underrepresented / marginalised people and subjects.

Dr Thomas was approached (through Twitter) by staff at the National Museum of Scotland, following an exploratory meeting over a year ago, and held a meeting with staff to discuss how the museum might engage further with the Wikimedia projects. Dr Thomas advised on internal advocacy to build a wiki-engaged community within the museum, and a member of staff attended the meeting mentioned above. This work has the potential to unlock a significant amount of material into the Commons, and also encourage organisational policy in the direction of open knowledge.

A series of wiki-based collaborations between Dr Thomas and Dr tara S Beall, across different projects, has been described in their co-authored paper presented recently at the inaugural Heritage Dot Conference this summer (audio recording). These were: a project undertaken with the Showpeople Community of Glasgow whilst ST was resident at Museums Galleries Scotland / seconded to Glasgow Museums, and tara was working with that community; a developing relationship and various editathons with the Strong Women of the Clydeside local history group coordinated by tSB, and spanning the course of Sara’s residencies at MGS, the Scottish Library & Information Council, and her new role as Scotland Programme Coordinator; and the Dumfries Stonecarving Project, 2018-2019. The latter had Wikimedia elements embedded in it from the beginning, and was awarded an honorable mention in the “Partnership of the Year” award at the most recent Wikimedia UK AGM. This work has the potential to increase the volunteer base, increase engagement with marginalised people and subjects, and indeed has, in the development of the three collaborations, encouraged changes in practice toward contribution to open knowledge.

Archaeology Scotland (including key contact & Wikimedia trainer Dr Doug Rocks-McQueen) have been a sponsor of a special prize for Wiki Loves Monuments in the UK for some years. Whist resident at MGS, Dr Thomas networked with Dig It! staff around Wikipedia & Archaeology. Dr Thomas was later employed as Project Officer at Dig It! (Dig It! is coordinated between Arch. Scotland and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, with an office located at the latter) for a year between her residencies at MGS & SLIC, and incorporated Wiki elements into that project, collaborated on the “Scotland’s Castles” project which included upload of images to Wikimedia Commons and a series of editathons, and held a joint editathon with Dig It & SLIC at the beginning of the SLIC residency. Upon taking up the role of Scotland Programme Coordinator, Dr Thomas liaised with Dig It! to get a MoU in place, and worked with them and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland to put the experimental one day a week residency in place. This residency is now being filled by Dr McQueen. The main aim of this residency is to put an open knowledge policy in place for the Society of Antiquaries, and the work described here in general has the potential to increase the volunteer base, release work into the Commons, and provide a model for future work including policy change.

The SLIC residency came about following a presentation given by Dr Thomas toward the end of her MGS residency at a meeting of SLIC Digital Champions (librarians from across Scotland), and a subsequent advisory meeting with Gillian Daly, Project Manager at SLIC. Gillian Daly left SLIC in early 2018 to move to the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities, and Dr Thomas picked up that relationship when she became SPC. Dr Thomas has run editing events at two SGSAH Summer Schools (aimed at early career researchers in Arts & Humanities), and chaired a discussion session at another event (the panel of which also included Dr McQueen). Both ST & DM (Arch Scot) pitched successful ideas for the SGSAH Internship programme, these will likely be combined and the project will focus on the collection of high quality Scottish archaeological images for Wikimedia Commons. This work focuses on literacy work, as well as encouraging policy and practice in the direction of open knowledge. Another ex-member of SLIC staff now works at Art UK in Scotland, and having had experience of the Wikimedia projects through participation in #1lib1ref activities, has been in contact with Dr Thomas to incorporate Wikimedia engagement into a current project, including an editathon and image upload.

In 2018, Dr Thomas used Wiki Loves Monuments as a springboard to engage with a number of different heritage and cultural organisations across Scotland. In partnership with the SLIC residency, contact was made with the Scottish Civic Trust / Glasgow Doors Open Day, with the aim of holding various editathons and increasing participation in the competition, this was actioned through the SLIC residency. In early 2019, and after the end of the SLIC residency, Dr Thomas continued to talk to SCT / GDoD, with regard to more extensive work, and to lock in participation for the 2019 WLM. This work has the potential to unlock material to the Commons, change policy, and expand the user base.

At the AGM, we also took the opportunity to engage our community in the very present conversation about culture and conflict on the English Wikipedia. This is a key discussion, as evidenced by the closing talk at Wikimania later this year. It was important for us to make this a key workshop at our annual gathering, and it resulted in a worthwhile discussion. With our community of members we wanted to explore the policy, cultural, and structural issues on Wikipedia which can contribute to conflict. The session began by gauging the audience’s opinion on whether Wikipedia has a problem with harassment and conflict, before splitting into three groups to discuss some of the problems in more detail.

While the English Wikipedia has an infrastructure for dealing with conflict, it is not always effective or accessible. When the processes are used, results are variable: unambiguous cases where an editor is violating community norms are far easier to deal with more complex situations. With enormous backlogs in areas such as new page reviewing, there is a great deal of pressure on editors to move quickly. Editors who make mistakes or are still learning the ropes run a gauntlet of what kind of experience they might have when encountering other editors. Is it likely to be someone who will take the time to explain issues or someone who has reviewed 50 pages in the last hour and wants to move on to the next? Such cultural and structural problems are not just experienced by new editors and more experienced contributors can run into problems.

Wikipedia’s transparency is one of its greatest strengths, but it can also lend itself to prolonged harassment. Contribution lists are publicly available which means one editor can go through another’s history edit by edit if they want. There are instances where this has happened and editors have found their articles up for deletion. To a casual observer this kind of harassment can be hard to identify since it is often framed within notability policies and the scale of interaction is often missing for context., This can puts pressure on the person being harassed to do something about it.

The discussions raised many large questions which cannot be answered by a chapter alone, but are still worth considering. Wikipedia is not the only online digital community that is learning to deal with conflict, and there may be lessons from other communities. It was noticeable that while discussions were initially focused on one particular aspect identified as contributing to conflict, that they often overlapped; there is an interplay between the culture on Wikipedia, its policies, and the structures of power and technical structures. Lasting change needs to address these issues together otherwise it is resisted. For instance, with technical changes to Wikipedia, there are vocal parts of the Wikipedia editing community who object to changes and feel they are not adequately consulted. Change cannot be imposed from the outside without rupturing a community, and organisations need to work with the community.

Revenues received during this six-month period

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Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
Annual Plan Grant GBP 167500 83750 83750 167500 217534 217534 (see narratives below)
FDC Other Grant 0 0 1980 1980 0 2571
Donations GBP 107500 52303 53159 105462 139611 136965
Gift Aid Claims GBP 8500 4076 3866 7942 11039 10314
Gifts in Kind GBP 67000 38018 44956 82974 87014 107759
TOTAL GBP 350500 178147 187711 0 0 365858 455198 475143

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Spending during this six-month period

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Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
SG1 GBP 33325 18082 21450 39532 43280 51340 118.62%
SG2 GBP 30233 16162 19371 35534 39263 46148 117.54%
SG3 GBP 13705 6432 8460 14892 17799 19340 108.66%
SG4 GBP 12888 1953 6270 8223 16737 10679 63.80%
Fundraising GBP 7850 3275 3216 6491 10195 8430 82.69%
Staff GBP 188752 92571 96659 189229 245134 245754 100.25%
Overheads GBP 66430 32177 28454 60631 86273 78743 91.27%
TOTAL GBP 353182 170652 183880 354532 458681 460434 100.38% N/A

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Variance Narrative – Agreed Budget vs Actuals

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Overall Position

Wikimedia UK’s financial year ends on 31st January and its Q2 end date is 31st July 2019. The figures presented above are yet to be reviewed by our Audit & Risk Committee but are not expected to change. The result at the end of quarter 2 is a surplus of £11,300 against a budgeted deficit of £2,700, a variance of £14,000. Including gifts-in-kind, this variance comprises a small overspend on costs of £1,350, including unspent contingency of £5,000, and a surplus in income over budget of £15,350. The major component of the income surplus was gifts-in-kind.

Income Variances

  • Donations income is very slightly under budget at 2% below forecast. While the fundraising environment in the UK remains challenging, we have achieved a slowing of the attrition rate of regular donors and a focus on securing funds from larger donors has helped to mitigate any shortfall.
  • Gift aid income is marginally behind forecast with a shortfall of £0.5k. This is as a consequence of the overall drop in small donation income.
  • Gifts in Kind (GiK) income is entirely comprised of salaries and expenses relating to our Wikimedians in Residence programme and is ahead of forecast with a surplus of £15.9k. A significant part of the excess over budget, £8.5k, relates to a revision in the recognised financial value of our partnership with National Library Wales. A further £3.5K has been created by our new partnership with Banner Repeater starting earlier than budgeted for. GiK income is matched to an equivalent expenditure as detailed below.

Expenditure Variances

  • SG1 and SG2 both show overspends. Both of these strategic goals are heavily influenced by expenditure on our programmes budget which includes the costs associated with our Wikimedians in Residence programme GiK. As highlighted above, the income surplus for GiK is matched by an associated expenditure increase which has had the effect of creating an overspend in these two strategic areas.
  • SG4 shows an underspend of £4.7k against budget. This can be entirely attributed to a £5k spend budgeted for a Train the Trainer session. Originally planned for Q2 this session has been moved to November 2019 and will therefore fall in Q4 expenditure.
  • Overheads show an underspend of £5.8k. The majority of this, £5k, is our contingency which remains unspent at end Q2. The remainder is a combination of small, insignificant, underspends on Governance and IT.  

The Senior Management Team at Wikimedia UK produce a Quarterly Financial Monitoring Report and an accompanying narrative commentary on a quarterly basis. These include much more detailed breakdowns of variances against income and expenditure along with a summary of current financial prospects, and are available upon request for anyone who would like more insight into the organisation’s finances.

Variance Narrative – FDC Proposal Budget vs Actual budget

As stated in our proposal document for 2019/20, our internal planning cycle means that the budget provided at proposal stage is a draft. The final 2019/20 budget as agreed by the board contains some differences, a summary of which can be found below:

Budget 2019/20 FDC
Proposal Final Change
INCOME £ £ £
Annual Plan Grant           335,000           335,000                   -  
Small donations           185,000           195,000           10,000
Gift Aid             17,000             17,000                   -  
Gifts in Kind           100,000           137,000           37,000
Major gifts/grants (core funding)             25,000             20,000           (5,000)
Major gifts/grants (project funding)             25,000             25,000                   -  
TOTAL PROJECTED INCOME           687,000           729,000           42,000
EXPENDITURE
Volunteer and Community Support             15,000             15,000                   -  
Partnership programmes           145,000           177,000           32,000
External Relations and Advocacy             13,500             14,000                 500
International                2,000                2,000                   -  
Fundraising costs (processing fees)             15,100             15,100                   -  
Premises             51,760             51,750                 (10)
IT & Telephony             19,250             23,750             4,500
Other Office Costs             10,000             10,000                   -  
Governance             10,500             12,500             2,000
Membership                1,000                1,000                   -  
Audit & Accountancy                9,700                9,700                   -  
General Contingency             10,000             10,000                   -  
Staff salary and on costs           382,600           387,200             4,600
TOTAL BUDGETED EXPENDITURE           685,410           729,000           43,590
Surplus / (Deficit)                1,590                       -             (1,590)

Compliance

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Is your organisation compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?

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As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant 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.

  • none other than what's outlined in the section 'Progress towards the plan, changes' for each programme.

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • yes

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 Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • yes

Signature

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Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.