Grants:APG/Proposals/2019-2020 round 1/Wikimedia UK/Impact report form

Summary

2020 was an extraordinary year for everyone, and Wikimedia UK was no exception. However, as a chapter we have a lot to be proud of over the past year, both in terms of how we responded to the pandemic - supporting our staff, volunteers and partners in the sudden pivot to online working - and in the innovative and impactful programme we have been able to deliver.

This impact report for the financial year 2020/21 (which ended on 31st January 2021) provides a comprehensive overview of our work within each of our four programmes; including metrics and results, highlights of programme activity, key learning and an indication of how the programme resonates with strategic movement priorities. Some of the highlights of our varied programme across the year include:

Working with the London College of Communication’s Student Changemakers programme to design and launch a new Decolonising Wikipedia Network
Exploring the theme of threatened heritage, bearing in mind our new programmatic commitment to climate issues and drawing on our internal expertise in archaeology
Building on the successful partnership model of content generation between Llên Natur (the nature website for Wales), Welsh Wikipedia and Wikidata to scale up this work into six other Celtic languages
Working with Wikimedia Ireland to deliver Celtic Knot 2020 online, which had over 100 registered participants and offered a valuable mix of talks to inspire and inform attendees, and workshops/troubleshooting spaces to help attendees work through barriers they experience on their language wikis
Organising and facilitating a movement strategy workshop focused on minority language communities
Supporting and growing the Scots wiki editing community through a series of events and other interventions, following significant international media interest in the actions of a single editor
Supporting the Wikimedian in Residence at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, who has extensively reviewed the work of the Society and produced a report detailing potential policy changes and a wide range of project ideas to engage with Wikimedia and embed open practices
Designing and delivering an online version of our well regarded Train the Trainers programme, which was key to supporting the skills and resilience of our volunteer training community
Supporting the ongoing collaboration between the Welsh Government, National Library of Wales and language enterprise MenterMon in the delivery of a Wikipedia-based education programme in Welsh secondary schools
Supporting the high impact, innovative work developed and delivered by the Wikimedian at the University of Edinburgh, and launching a new booklet of case studies of Wikimedia in UK education in partnership with the University
Persuading the Welsh and Scottish Governments to move significant elements of their content onto open licences
Working closely with the British Library to develop the internal case and secure funding for a second Wikimedian in Residence, who will be working within the Digital Scholarship Department but with a broad remit across the Library
Presenting at a wide range of online events and conferences, including the Creative Commons Global Summit and two prestigious Westminster Media Forum policy seminars
Joining the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Licensing Review Advisory Group and helping to ensure a change of policy that means all digital outputs from NLHF funded projects are now required to be released under an open licence
Supporting the UN's misinformation campaign, and helping to amplify key messages through the participation of our partners and allies

Finally, it’s worth noting that Wikimedia UK ended the year with its largest surplus (of just over £52,000) in over six years. Whilst this was partly due to cost savings during the year, it also reflects a very robust year in terms of fundraising, with increased support from individual donors.

Wikimedia UK’s strategic context

Strategic Framework for 2019–2022 Wikimedia UK works in partnership with organisations from the cultural and education sectors and beyond in order to unlock content, remove barriers to knowledge, develop new ways of engaging with the public and enable learners to benefit fully from the educational potential of the Wikimedia projects. The work of the UK chapter is informed by and supports the strategic direction of the global Wikimedia movement, and focuses on the knowledge and communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege.

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

Our mission is to be the platform which enables the long-term sustainable development and use of open knowledge in the UK.

We are currently delivering activities across four interconnected programme strands, as follows, which are aligned with our strategic aims:

Increasing Knowledge Equity (Aim 1, Increase the representation of marginalised people and subjects on Wikimedia)
Developing Digital Literacy (Aim 2, Work with partners to develop digital, data and information literacy through Wikimedia)
Changing Policy and Practice (Aim 3, Create changes in policy and practice that enable open knowledge to flourish)
Growing Wikimedia UK’s Profile and Capacity (Aim 4, Develop our capacity and profile as a leading organisation for open knowledge)

Organisational Theory of Change:

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.

Our current three year strategy covers the period February 2019 to January 2022 ( WMUK’s Strategic Framework for 2019–2022). Given the significant impact of Covid-19 on our partners, supporters, contributors and ourselves, we decided to revisit the assumptions underpinning our current programme at our board awayday in September 2020. In particular, we took a fresh look at our external environment, and updated this section of our strategic framework here. At this meeting - and in further conversations with the staff team - we also explored a number of emerging programmatic themes, detailed below under ‘Emerging themes and priorities’.

Here are a number of reports, articles and research papers relating to some key issues for the cultural, education and civil society sector in the UK, that underpin our own organisational priorities. This is not an exhaustive list but gives a flavour of the current context and external environment that informs the chapter’s work.

Decolonisation of museums a key trend in the UK
Decolonising curriculums of increasing interest within UK universities - e.g. 'Decolonising the curriculum: what’s all the fuss about?' and Academics: it's time to get behind decolonising the curriculum
Arts Council England to introduce a ‘decolonisation’ checklist for content-holding organisations
Fake news and digital literacy within the English school curriculum
Online Harms White Paper could put restrictive requirements on Wikipedia in the UK
Building internal Wikimedia UK resilience, move to online delivery, to support the changes experienced by the GLAM sector

Resonance with Wikimedia 2030

Wikimedia UK has been involved in the development of the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy since its inception, and remains committed to its successful delivery. During September and October 2020 we held discussions with staff and trustees to identify global priorities for implementation and to explore the recommendations and initiatives through the lens of our own organisational priorities, as well as the skills and expertise that the UK chapter and community could bring to the wider movement. We had further meetings in November with the Celtic Knot community and (separately) contributors to English Wikipedia, to explore these questions with editors and community organisers.

The clearest overlap between the movement strategy and Wikimedia UK’s own strategy is Recommendation 8: Identify topics for impact. In particular, our work to develop diverse content and contributors and increase the engagement and representation of marginalised people and subjects, resonates closely with initiatives 8.37 Bridging content gaps and 8.38 Content initiatives in underrepresented communities. Our partnership work has for a few years now focused primarily on underrepresented communities and knowledge, and now increasingly on decolonisation. This work brings with it international connections, and we would be excited to connect with other affiliates to drive these initiatives forward. Depending on how the movement structures its global knowledge sharing and programme coordination, we see ourselves able to lead on or support thematic hubs set up around Recommendation 8 (through our expertise in Wikimedians in Residence, underrepresented content, and digital literacy).

Global metrics overview

Overall

Metric	Targets	Results	Explanation and/or examples of activities
Participants GM1	7,000	8,729	People attending our events: Wikipedia in classroom courses, conferences, workshops, training, editathons, and community meetups. The rising number of online events and volunteering opportunities attracted a bigger audience.
Newly registered editors GM2	1,500	797	New editors were engaged mostly via our editathons and education courses, larger contests as Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), and our volunteer programmes in Wales. The pandemic affected this metric heavily, which is why we were quite far from reaching the target. Newcomers prefer in person training to learn editing, which was limited this year. The lower number also reflects fewer students at Wikimedia in the classrooms - several of which were paused or cancelled.
Articles added/improved GM3	250,000	761,672	Wikidata: 42K new Wikidata items were created during WLM images adding the images also to WD, a volunteer using PiBot to edit Commons and Wikidata, and the National Library of Wales’ resident and WD scholar adding items from NLW collections to WD, e.g.on Welsh chapels. About 645K WD items were improved/edited by the Welsh WD scholar at NLW improving datasets from the NLW collection, by other volunteer projects e.g. (Wikiquote project, Welsh bird name project). Furthermore, WLM in the UK and the Code the City in Scotland also resulted in large WD edits, while others improved WD via bots (Pi Bot, University of Coventry resident). Due to limitations of Event Metrics of measuring Wikidata edits only up to 50K, we judge that the number of edited items is higher in reality. Wikipedia: more than 25K articles were created, out of which 21K by a bot to Welsh wiki on USA cities (a pilot consulted with the community), and 1.5K on fungi. The rest of the articles were created during editathons and educational courses. About 50K WP articles were edited, in larger numbers through different Welsh volunteer programs (27.5K), during ScotsWiki editing events (6.5K), and by the University of Coventry resident (3K). Remaining content comes from the rest of our programme activity, e.g. education courses and workshops and editathons.
Volunteer hours	25,000	31,696	6,300 hours come from Wikipedia in Classroom courses. 2,730 hours was spent by lead volunteers organising events and interacting with WMUK partner institutions. The rest (22.6K hours) are made up of wiki training, workshops, editathons, the AGM, meetups and other events.
Total audience and reach	75,000	104,266	Includes 95,030 social media subscribers, 8,729 event participants plus 507 leading volunteers. This high result reflects the extra work we were able to put into general communications activities, including on social media, thanks to additional capacity; plus our increased profile and visibility around Wikipedia’s 20th birthday.

Achieved	Target has been achieved or exceeded
Opportunity for improvement	Some progress has been made towards achieving the target, but the target is not on track
Attention required	Little or no progress has been made towards achieving the target

All metrics totals for all programmes

For metrics disaggregated by programmes, see individual sections per programme below.

	Metric	2020-21 result
1	Total audience and reach (direct engagement) (grant metric)	104,266
2	Digital media reach	95,030
3	Total participants (grant metric)	8,729
4	Number of newly registered users (grant metric)	797
5	Number of leading volunteers	507
6	% of leading volunteers who are women	263 (51.87%)
7	Estimated number of volunteer hours (grant metric)	31,695
8	Volunteers would recommend WMUK (annual)	94.59%
9	Volunteers feel valued by WMUK (annual)	100%
10	Volunteers have developed new skills (annual)	86.61%
11	Images/media added to WM Commons	14,743
12	Images/media added to WM article pages (and %)	8,057 (54.64%)
13	Content pages created or improved, across all WM projects excl. Commons (grant metric)	761,672
14	Number of articles created	67,504
15	Reach of content - image/article views	Articles: 14,909,938, Images: 1,425,460,086
16	Content diversity - % of events where the focus is on underrepresented content	129 out of 257 (50.2%)
17	Language diversity - how many languages have we worked across (annual)	Articles created: 17 (eventmetrics) Articles edited: 80 (eventmetrics) Common uploads 2020-21 re-used: 57 (PetScan) All Commons uploads re-used: 355, incl. 74 wikipedia (GLAMorgen)
18	Geographical reach - % of events outside of London	185 out of 257 (71.98%)
19	# education courses we work with (annual)	9
20	Digital skills - Improved skills and confidence (annual)	3.521
21	New inclusion in courses and curricula (annual)	2
22	Responses touchpoints	28
23	Policy change	8

Number of articles created on Wikipedia during events organised by WMUK in 2020-21.png
Number of articles created in languages other than English or Welsh during events organised by WMUK in 2020-2021 (Wikipedias with at least 10 articles created)
Number of articles edited on different Wikipedias (with at least 100 edited articles) during events organised by WMUK in 2020-2021
Number of articles created and edited in Welsh, Scottish, and Irish during WMUK programmes in 2020-2021 and their views
Wikimedia pages re-using images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (Cat Supported by WMUK) in 2020-2021.png
Number of Wikipedia pages re-using images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons during 2020-2021 (Cat supported by WMUK)

Further explanations for metrics:

Reach of content: we primarily considered image views in Wikipedia articles of the content released with support from Wikimedia UK (Commons category). Note re our very high result of article views in 2020 - note - one of our residents was editing COVID article within the COVID volunteer taskforce, which received very high views.
Programme content diversity: interpreted as the % of events where the focus is on underrepresented content:
Language diversity: interpreted as the number of languages we have worked across: this could be expressed in different ways, each showing the multilinguality of our work.

Articles were created in 17 languages during our events in this past year, including CY, EN, GA, BR, ZH, SCO, and other smaller edits in AR, DE, ES, GD, KW, LA, HR, MT, PL, TR and Simplewiki.

Articles were edited in 80 different language wikipedias. Top languages over 100 article edits were CY, EN, SCO, GA, BR, simple, DE wiki. From the rest of Wikipedias, 46 received multiple edits, and 27 had one edit (use of bot).

Our images uploaded to Commons, category “Supported by Wikimedia UK” during this year were re-used on Wikidata, Wikivoyage (DE, EN, HE, PL), Wikisource (EN), Outreach & Simple Wiki, Wikiquote (AR), Wikibooks (EN), Wikiversity (EN), Wiktionary (PL) and 57 wikipedia. Most re-use occurred on EN, CY, FR, ARZ, CA, De, ES, IT, EU and RU Wikipedia.

Baglama2 measures how many views those articles having images (ever) added to Commons in category “Supported by Wikimedia UK” received during the past periods. Using the last month of the year, 355 wikimedia sites had views to articles having our images, out of which 74 were different language Wikipedias. EN, followed by top 5 as FR, DE, SP, IT, RU.

Geographical reach: interpreted as the % of events outside of London - if COVID-19 pandemic would have allowed it: 71.98% (1850 out of 257 events).

Programme 1: Increasing Knowledge Equity

Strategic goal: Increase engagement with and representation of marginalised people and subjects

Background and Theory of Change

Long term outcome: Wikimedia reflects our diverse society and is free from systemic bias	Assumptions There are content gaps on Wikimedia projects which makes it biased and not-representative of our society
Theory of change: Wikimedia UK is helping to create more complete information online; by supporting marginalised people to become contributors and community leaders, and by uncovering and sharing knowledge created by and about underrepresented people and subjects.	Where is our intervention We facilitate the transfer of underrepresented knowledge from content holders to diverse audiences. This usually takes place through the Wikimedia projects but could be through other accessible platforms where appropriate. We develop targeted projects and programmes to recruit, train, support and develop volunteer contributors and leaders from all backgrounds.
Strategic objectives: Develop partnerships that address inequality and bias on the Wikimedia projects Deliver projects that increase access to underrepresented cultural heritage Support the development of minority and indigenous language Wikipedias Engage with volunteers and partners across the UK, widening the charity’s geographic reach Diversify content producers by recruiting new editors from under-represented communities Support the development of a more inclusive culture across the Wikimedia projects Ensure that Wikimedia UK’s own policies and practices support diversity and inclusion	Why us We have connections to the existing editor community, experience in running programmes and training sessions, and strong links with UK content holders.
Activities: Partnerships, projects and campaigns focused on Underrepresented cultural heritage Minority languages (with a focus on the “Celtic Knot”) Gender Gap Diverse contributors	Evidence that it’s working + Who are we reaching (Metrics) Content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects Images/media added to Wikimedia Commons Number of articles created Newly registered editors Volunteer hours Total number of participants Number of leading volunteers Reach of content - image/article views Content diversity - % of events where the focus is on underrepresented content Language diversity - how many languages have we worked across (annual) Geographical reach - % of events outside of London (annual)

Wikimedia UK has been focused on underrepresented knowledge for the past five years, with this work coalescing around the key themes of underrepresented cultural heritage, minority languages, the gender gap and diverse contributors. The movement for equality and civil rights is facing significant challenges worldwide and we believe that open knowledge and knowledge equity have a central role to play in securing social justice.

Over the past two years, we have also been developing a particular thematic focus on decolonisation, both as this affects cultural institutions (decolonising collections) and the education sector (decolonising curricula). In Autumn 2020, we commissioned a piece of research into the way in which non-western visual arts are covered on Wikimedia, to test our assumptions about how certain types of content are represented.

Resonance with the global 2030 strategy

This programme strand 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 for the period 2019 to 2022 to increase the engagement and representation of marginalised people and subjects on Wikimedia. This programme feeds directly into the movement priority of knowledge equity, and our work in this area maps across to the initiatives under Recommendation 8: Topics for Impact. We are keen to share our developing expertise in this area with the movement globally.

Metrics

Indicator	2019/20 end year results	2020/21 end year results
3. Participants	1,709	3,879
4. Newly registered editors	553	515
13. Articles added/improved	394,911	758,787
7. Volunteer hours	9,257	16,172
1. Total audience and reach	1,952	4,235
5. Leading volunteers	243	356
11. Images/media added to Commons	15,280	14,743
12. Images/media added to Wikimedia pages	2,853	8,057 files re-used
12. % uploaded media used in content pages	18.67%	54.64%
14. New articles added	120,334 (112k Wikidata)	65,376
15. Reach of content - image/article views	1,227,127,546.00	Articles: 14,909,938, Images: 1,425,460,086
16. Content diversity - # and % of events where the focus is on underrepresented content	106 (34.86%)	129 out of 257 (50.2%)
17. Language diversity - how many languages have we worked across (annual)	Articles created: 13 (eventmetrics) Articles edited: 55 (eventmetrics) Common uploads 2019/2020 re-used: 53 (PetScan) All Commons uploads re-used: 321 (GLAMorgen	Articles created: 17 (eventmetrics) Articles edited: 80 (eventmetrics) Common uploads 2020-21 re-used: 57 (PetScan) All Commons uploads re-used: 355, incl. 74 wikipedia (GLAMorgen)
18. Geographical reach - % of events outside of London (annual)	80.92% (246 out of 305 events)	71.98% (185 out of 257)

Highlights of programme activity

We are pleased to have delivered a well balanced programme of activities within this programme, including projects focused on the Celtic Knot languages, underrepresented heritage, gender gap, and technology for underrepresented knowledge.

We continued to develop our relationship and programme delivery with our major partners (including working with the British Library, Science Museum, and others on the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Towards a National Collection programme). At the same time, we were able to engage with smaller, nimble organisations who have been responding dynamically to the lockdown context. For example, both Society of Antiquaries Scotland and Humanists UK were able to set up new Wikimedia projects last year, perhaps partly because they host Wikimedians in Residence who can direct them to innovative solutions.

Underrepresented heritage (with a growing focus on decolonisation)

Across this programme area we have been putting an increasing emphasis on decolonisation, focusing on content and communities that have not only been underrepresented on Wikimedia, but also historically deprioritised and misrepresented. The team is building connections with key organisations already active in the field, such as Horniman Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum. We are also deepening existing partnerships to deliver meaningful knowledge equity projects. For example at Edinburgh University we are supporting their engagement with the History Society, who ran a project to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Scotland, Slavery and Black History. The University will also host a ‘Open Data and Knowledge Equity’ internship in 2021.

Some of our work with universities fits under this strategic goal, instead or as well as our second programme - which is more explicitly focused on education - as we are increasingly engaging with initiatives to decolonise curricula. As a highlight of this work, in 2020 we worked with the London College of Communication’s Student Changemakers programme to design and launch a new Decolonising Wikipedia Network. The group is improving and creating articles about practitioners and artists within their fields, working across the university to teach others about Wikipedia and identify areas for improvement.

With an increasing focus on decolonisation in the context of our external partnerships, we are mindful of the need to develop our own understanding of the complexities of this work. Our staff are encouraged to attend relevant training and conferences, and we are building relationships with thought leaders and critical friends in this area.

We’ve made good progress with uploading images from Khalili's collections of Meiji-era Japanese Art, of Spanish Damascened Metalwork and of Aramaic documents (total of 380 images). The Khalili Collections data set on Wikidata now extends to 315 items and totals 3073 statements, which allows us to produce a graph visualisation of the whole data-set.
We’ve funded a project to upload images from British based Punjabi poet Amarjit Chandan’s archive with images from both India and the UK, and creating content around them. 432 images have been uploaded, 10% in use, with ~25000 views.
Mahmal cover, banners and finial banners of red silk, with green and gold-coloured silk appliqués, embroidered in silver and silver-gilt wire over cotton thread padding; finials of copper alloy; contemporary wooden frame. Cairo, Egypt 1867–76. From the Khalili Collections.
Bronze Gilt and Enamelled Casket by Plácido Zuloaga, from the Khalili Collections

Innovation: Within this strand of work, drawing on our internal expertise in archaeology, we have also been exploring the theme of threatened heritage. This often intersects with environmental issues, which is an angle we aim to build on in our upcoming strategy. We recently ran a session to teach researchers about editing Wikipedia within a SXNCH event (a symposium for knowledge exchange and networking on the conservation, management, and future prospects of heritage sites at the intersection of nature and culture). We also delivered a talk to Digital Classics students at University College London as a part of the international consortium SunoikisisDC event.

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

Within Celtic Knot work we have been expanding our work on how Wikdata can feed into Welsh Wikipedia to other language projects, for example Cornish. It struck us that there is a significant appetite for this knowledge and skills exchange during the 2030 strategic discussion for Celtic Knot; something we will work on further in 2021. In a significant development, we also zoomed in on supporting Scots Wiki community - case study below.

Innovation: Building on the successful partnership model of content generation between Llen Natur, Welsh Wikipedia and Wikidata, we are scaling up into six other Celtic languages. This is being discussed with editors of each community, particularly as it involves some automated content generation, so it’s important that editors know what is happening and support the initiative. These new collaborations created the basis for the Wikimedia 2030 strategy Celtic Knot gathering, organised and facilitated by Wikimedia UK. Nominally, editors gathered to discuss the implementation of the global strategy, however the real energy was in exchanging knowledge and ideas to support each other's wiki projects. There is a lot of potential for WMUK to provide space for these - and possibly other - language communities to connect, learn from each other, and collaborate, and we will be exploring this further during 2021.

Gender gap, diverse contributors

This programme continued, remaining one of the key focuses of our partnership work. One innovation to highlight is our partnership with the Fruitmarket Gallery. They developed an event where WMUK supported pre-editathon research with a project grant; this "A Presence in History" event focused on improving coverage of contemporary artists of colour in Scotland on Wikipedia. We don’t normally fund people’s time to enable activities like this to take place, but felt that this is an important area to explore as we work more with knowledge equity; recognising that free time, as well as reference materials, are not equally distributed.

Changes, Challenges and Learning

Changes - Challenges of the pandemic context

Compare to our proposal

Following the initial wave of cancellations in March and April, we started to notice an uptick in partners’ interest in holding online events and exploring new projects and collaborations. This is something that by that point we were also better placed to deliver. Reflecting on the past year, it’s gratifying to note that we have been able to continue to deliver a full programme of (online) activity, with few cancellations. However, we think this is partly because we are now working with a self-selecting cohort of organisations who have been able to remain engaged with open knowledge. Reading interim reports from the current Towards a National Collection Foundation projects, for example, gives a mixed picture, with some organisations being able to continue without disruption (e.g. Science Museum), while others suffering 6+ months of delays because of staff furlough (paid leave) and other uncertainties (e.g. V&A). We are also aware that a few of our residencies in Wales may be affected in 2021.

The financial situation for many organisations continues to be precarious, and content holding organisations are looking to digital content online for models of monetisation. This may mean that they will be less inclined to open content for free. On the other hand we are noticing that organisations across the UK are thinking more about their digital audience, and how this differs from their physical visitors. This reflection on the motivations and needs of a digital audience provides an opportunity to make a case for engaging with Wikimedia, and making collections more accessible and relevant to a wider, online audience. Digital art is increasing in importance, together with digital preservation of that content.

Learning - adapting to the new world

The pandemic continues to be challenging, particularly for organisations without secure longer-term funding and those who rely on earned income. This includes many smaller content-holding organisations who we would ideally like to work with. Increasing inequalities and disparities across the cultural sector has brought more attention to broader questions of inclusion and access, which connects well to our strategic goals. At the same time, we are aware of - and deeply concerned by - the potentially chilling effect of the current ‘culture wars’, with the UK government’s department for culture urging museums to stick to government approved history. Our commitment to knowledge equity remains paramount however, and we will continue to explore with partners how working with Wikimedia UK can support the decolonisation of knowledge.

Future

See our next activity plan

A focus on underrepresented content remains central to our programme, but in 2021 we want to go deeper, working even harder towards knowledge equity. Whilst decolonisation has been a growing theme of our work in the past few years, we are mindful that there is a need to unpack the language and actions around decolonisation, ensuring that we are facilitating participatory and inclusive approaches, and rebalancing whose stories are told. This work will be underpinned by the introduction in 2021 of an equity, diversity and inclusion framework and action plan for the whole organisation, which will cut across our staff, board, volunteers, partners, processes and programme delivery - ensuring that we ourselves reflect the full diversity of our society.

Case studies

Celtic Knot 2020 and its communities

Celtic Knot conference is an annual conference supporting Wikimedia communities' work with diverse languages. We support it and run the conference in partnership with a partner host at a different location every year, making it accessible to different communities. The first conference was held in Scotland, with subsequent events in Wales and Cornwall, and the intention was to host the 2020 edition in Limerick, Ireland, in July 2020, for the first time in collaboration with another affiliate (Wikimedia Community Ireland). Due to the Covid-19 global health crisis and travel restrictions, an in-person event would have been impractical and unsafe, so we decided early on to keep the date and turn the conference into an online event. Over 100 people registered for the conference, and most of the live streamed talks over the two days of the event had 50 - 60 live participants (in addition to people watching the recordings at a later point). We offered a mix of information/overview talks to inspire and update attendees, and workshops/troubleshooting spaces to help attendees work through barriers they experience on their language wikis. This latter element was key for us to maintain the spirit of the conference, which has always been a capacity building, solutions-oriented space.

As an illustration of the community building force of the conference, in Spring this year we were able to build activities within the Cornish Wikipedia. The Cornish Language Lead from the Cornwall Government, with whom we organised the 2019 conference, got in touch with us with a Wiki training plan in early Q2. This was somewhat inspired by the lockdown and the opportunity it gave for people to develop their Cornish language skills. It also took advantage of the Speak Cornish Week 20 -28 June. We run a series of workshops helping people to get editing on the Cornish Wikipedia, while also facilitating a community discussion around planning a way forward. Celtic Knot 2020 created an opportunity for the Cornish contributors to connect further and continue their wiki efforts; some people learned about the conference via the training we delivered. Further, the statistics of Content Translation usage in Cornish went from almost zero published translations per month for quite some time, to 13 in July - we believe this is linked to Celtic Knot.

In running this event, we involved a member of the Cornish Wikipedia community who shared their experiences of editing and how they got involved. We discovered that Wikipedia had played a role in making Minecraft available in Cornish. The Minecraft community can submit translations of the playing interface; this volunteer took part in the process and when stuck on how to translate a word would look up the English version on Wikipedia and seek out its Cornish counterpart. This shows how having an active Wikipedia can be beneficial to the larger language community in making other resources more accessible.

There’s a lot more that could be said about the Celtic Knot conference 2020, and we welcome people to explore our documentation page which captures our learning - we would be delighted to talk to anyone about this if they want to learn more.

Scots Wiki community

Up until recently, there were only a relatively small number of regular, active editors of sco.wiki. However, as of the end of August, that has most definitely changed. And that’s the best thing that we could have hoped for. We really hope that these new editors will feel moved to stick around, because their long-term support would be transformational for the wiki, and would hopefully have benefits for the wider Scots language community too.

With all the press coverage, a certain amount of immediate interest was inevitable. And the community has worked hard to increase their capacity to help deal with this; nominating and onboarding new Scots-speaking admins, improving on-wiki tools, organising review of articles, discussing spelling and dialect, deflecting vandalism, writing a new notability policy, deleting spam.

We’ve been heartened by the energy and proactive attitude of the existing Scots wiki editing community in dealing with the increased attention and participation in their project. At the same time, it was disappointing to see some of that attention being underpinned by a widespread criticism, and lack of assuming good faith, of the editor upon whom attention fell. That’s not a behaviour we would support, and what we want to focus on here is the positive impact of the story on Scots wiki.

With any minority language Wikipedia, community building is incredibly important; one of the ways this happens is through events like the Celtic Knot conference which Wikimedia UK have organised since 2017. Calls for content to be parachuted into the Wiki are ultimately not the most helpful, not least because a Wiki relies on its community; it needs the ongoing support and oversight of that community to survive. It needs those volunteers who look out for vandalism, who fix spelling mistakes, who create new articles, who review articles, who work on tech infrastructure - all of those kinds of things which it’s easy to take for granted if you spend most of your time on en:wiki. If you want paid editing, and an encyclopedia which remains fixed in one point in time, there are options for that. But that is not Wikipedia.

The relationship between a chapter and a language Wikipedia is one of support, not of dictatorship. In practice, what that’s meant is a whole load of activity if not behind the scenes, then in the wings. User:Cobra3000 set up a two-day editathon at the end of August, for which we ran online training sessions (we’ve been doing a lot of that recently), set up a Dashboard to track activity, helped to set up an on-wiki event page, and created and uploaded some sco.wiki specific how-to videos to Commons, which was shared during training, and in the off-wiki locations where activity was being organised - Cobra3000’s Scots Language Discord server, and the new Scots Wikipedia Editors Facebook group, which is now at over 100 members. We’ve been active in both of the latter, answering questions, promoting the training, and answering wiki-specific questions where possible. For the editathon, we also were sure to include a range of activities for non- or lower-proficiency Scots speakers, of whom there were many who were interested in helping out. Michael Dempster of the Scots Language Centre has been very involved, including making an 8-hour introduction to Scots course available for free on YouTube. The editathon produced some quite incredible stats; they include high-volume AWB tasks, but even so, I was excited to see the enthusiasm and care that the community has for the Wiki.

We’ve also been talking to the Scots Language Centre about how we might engage the wider Scots community with Wikimedia in the future, and this will hopefully build on some existing projects which had to be shelved due to COVID.

The second editathon was held at the end of September, focussing on places, and we hope that they become a regular event - the next is planned for November. Now that we’ve done with the initial firefighting period, and we are encouraged by what’s happening on wiki, it’s time to dig in for the long term.

Programme 2: Developing Digital Literacy

Strategic goal: Work with partners to develop digital, data and information literacy through Wikimedia

Background and Theory of Change (TOC)

Long term outcome: People in the UK are able to understand and effectively engage with open knowledge, creating high levels of information literacy which underpins civil society and democratic processes.	Assumptions: Information literacy is a key prerequisite for democratic participation People aren’t able to successfully engage with open knowledge without support; effort is needed to build the UK society’s digital literacy Data literacy will be key to future successful democratic participation
Theory of change: Access to high quality, neutral information based on reliable sources helps to create a shared understanding of the world, and is important to the creation of a tolerant and democratic society. However, this is being undermined by increasingly 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.	Where is our intervention: Wikipedia is a rich example of how knowledge is captured, and how it should be consumed responsibly. It’s an excellent tool for building a range of digital literacies.
Strategic objectives: Develop and deliver Wikimedia-based activities that develop digital literacy in schools Support the higher education sector’s engagement with Wikimedia as a digital literacy tool Facilitate Wikimedia-based digital, data and information literacy projects with other partners Create content and resources for learners and educators focused on digital literacies Advocate for the inclusion of Wikimedia in curriculum, syllabus and course development Collaborate with the civil society sector and other partners to combat misinformation	Why us We are taking advantage of the education sector’s ‘suspicion’ towards Wikipedia to open a key conversation about information integrity, and digital literacy ‘Wikipedia in the classroom’ model offers a solid, tested model of engagement in this field
Activities: Data and information literacy projects in collaboration with formal education sector partners such as schools and universities Advocating to government and relevant bodies for the inclusion of Wikimedia in curriculum and syllabus development Case studies with key partners	Evidence that it’s working + Who are we reaching (Metrics) Content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects Number of articles created Newly registered editors Volunteer hours Total number of participants Number of leading volunteers Number of courses we work with (annual) Improved skills and confidence (annual) Inclusion in courses and curricula (annual)

In the UK, as in other parts of the world, societal fragmentation is increasing, driven by media and political polarisation, and fuelled by misinformation and disinformation. Wikimedia can play an important role in combatting these issues, and in developing the information and media literacy skills that are fundamental to a well functioning civil society. Wikimedia UK believes that engaging with the Wikimedia projects – particularly through becoming a contributor – enables learners to understand, navigate and critically evaluate information as well as develop an appreciation for the role and importance of open education. Using Wikimedia in the curriculum can teach students key skills in information literacy, collaboration, writing, editing, information synthesis, source evaluation and data science.

Resonance with the global strategy

This programme strand also maps broadly to Recommendation 8: Topics for Impact, however the movement strategy initiative regarding misinformation (8.36) is focused on the threat to our projects, rather than on equipping young people with the skills and knowledge to recognise misinformation.