Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/WikiPortraits:2025 Activities

statusNot funded

Wikimedia Community Fund

WikiPortraits: 2025 Activities

Fluxx IDR-GS-2409-17243

start date2025-01-012025-01-01T00:00:00Z

end date2025-12-312025-12-31T00:00:00Z

budget (local currency)118450 USD

grant typeGroup of individuals not registered with an organization

funding regionNA

decision fiscal year2024-25

funding program roundRound 1

organization (if applicable)WikiPortraits

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Applicant information

Organization name or Wikimedia Username for individuals. (required): WikiPortraits

Do you have any approved General Support Fund requests? (required): No, it is my first time applying for a General Support Fund

You are applying as a(n). (required): Group of individuals not registered with an organization

Are your group or organization legally registered in your country? (required): No

Do you have a fiscal sponsor?: Yes

Fiscal organization name.: Writing Downtown

Please provide links to the following documents if they are available

These documentation can be provided in your local language(s), no translations required.

Organizational website
Detailed financial reporting and/or audits
Documentation of the governance structure, board list, governance processes
Documentation of the general assembly decision on your plan

Main proposal

1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required): WikiPortraits: 2025 Activities

2. Do you want to apply for the multi-year base funding for 3 years? (required) (only for returning applicants): N/A

2.1. Provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan? (required)

N/A

3. Proposed start date. (required): 2025-01-01

4. Proposed end date. (required): 2025-12-31

5. Does your organization or group have an Affiliate or Organizational Annual Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required): No

6. Does your affiliate, organization or group have a Strategic Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required): No

7. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required): International (more than one country across continents or regions); WikiPortraits is currently mainly organized from the United States, but we have done WikiPortraits works in several countries, and hope to continue making it more global in 2025. This grant covers photography activities in the United States, Canada, France, Scotland, Sweden, Norway and India. We may also be able to cover literary events in Kenya and Argentina if budget allows.

8. What are your programs, approaches, and strategies? What are the challenges that you are trying to address and how will your strategies support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

The WikiPortraits initiative (website, Commons) addresses a critical gap in the availability of freely-licensed, high-quality photos of notable individuals across Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, with a focus on women and underrepresented groups. It also recruits a new cohort of Wikimedia contributors, with again an emphasis on women and underrepresented groups.

Despite ever increasing access to cameras, photographing notable individuals can be difficult as the best opportunities involve traveling to events where the people are, and can require the need to obtain media credentials. Access to these events can be logistically and financially challenging, and most organizations with access to these events — such as Getty — are commercial enterprises which do not freely license their photographs. Gaining press credentials requires both legitimacy as a media outlet and demonstrating a professional caliber of work.

The WikiPortraits initiative has developed a solid approach that allows Wikimedians to navigate the credentialing process, capture quality biographical images, and deliver them back to Wikimedia Commons for use across multiple projects.

Throughout 2024, we have obtained press credentials to several major international events, including Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Venice Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. We have also photographed at events without press access, including the International Journalism Festival in Perugia Italy; the Cannes Film Festival in France; and Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

In all, so far in 2024, we have shot over 1,000 notable and near-notable individuals, plus another 400 one-day-could-be-notable individuals, for Wikimedia Commons. Our work has been used on pages across over 130 Wikimedia projects (over 100 of which are various language editions of Wikipedia), and generates upwards of 40-50 million image views per month (depending on the surges of movie releases). While the bulk of that is driven by celebrities whose pages generate hundreds of thousands or millions of views per month, we have dozens of photos that generate a few dozen or hundreds of views per month — for example, K Pop star Kevin Woo on Arabic, Kurdish, and Hebrew Wikipedias, among others.

Of the 16 photographers we have recruited, 37.5% are female or non-binary, 62.5% are people of color, and 62.5% are new contributors to Wikimedia.

At most of these events, we bring together experienced photographers as well as photographers-in-training, the latter of which are able to take photos and build rich portfolios to ease obtaining press credentials at future events. Our photographers include both experienced Wikimedians as well as external photographers who are newly introduced to the Wikimedia Commons through joining the WikiPortraits project. Many photographers are willing to contribute to WikiPortraits as volunteers for the opportunity to have their lodging subsidized, the chance to photograph exciting events and people, and the sense of community that WikiPortraits creates.

Our focus at these events is to not only photograph some of the most notable individuals, but to also photograph noteworthy and up-and-coming people from underrepresented communities and regions. For example, at the Cannes Film Festival, we spent most of our focus on photographing the Directors' Fortnight, which includes films from new talent from all around the world, especially the Global South. Having quality biographical photos on Wikipedia is particularly important for these individuals, as it strengthens the completeness of their biographies across the various language Wikipedias and beyond.

We have started to categorize our WikiPortraits uploads by demographic (see Commons category) to properly document our efforts. Of our ~3,700 photos uploaded so far, over 1,200 have been identified as being of people of BIPOC and/or Global South backgrounds, over 1,300 have been identified as being of females. Of the over 850 photos of WikiPortraits photos currently being used on articles, ~250 are of BIPOC individuals and ~350 are of females (which will grow as many have been recently uploaded and we are still working on uploads from our most recent events). Our photos of BIPOC individuals have been used on articles across Wikimedia projects that received over 6 million views in October 2024, and over 24 million views for females.

We have also started documenting where photos from WikiPortraits and WikiPortraits photographers have been used by third-party news and websites in this spreadsheet, which includes websites and publications from around the world.

Fiscally, our strategy so far has been to request Wikimedia Foundation rapid grants to attend and photograph festivals, awards ceremonies, and conferences. These grants have mostly been used to subsidize housing, with a significant portion of our costs still being out-of-pocket for the photographers. These rapid grants have supported us to experiment and develop this initiative, but we have outgrown the rapid grants system and are ready to scale. As a result, we are ready to apply for a larger General Support Fund grant to cover WikiPortraits throughout 2025.

Our proposed programming consists of the following elements:

Global Festivals Coverage: Covering large, culturally significant global events with a robust team of WikiPortraits photographers where hundreds of notable and near-notable people can be shot in a concentrated period of time. These events are the most cost-effective way to serve the demand from the over 100 wikis that have used WikiPortraits images, ranging from Hausa to Ukrainian to Malagasy. Our emerging model is to bring more experienced photographers together with newer contributors from underrepresented groups so we can cultivate mentorship relationships, especially across Wiki regions. These festivals include Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Toronto International Film Festival, Jaipur Literary Festival, SXSW, and Sundance Film Festival.
WikiPortraits Studio at Cultural Events: Setting up a black box studio in an event space and inviting people to obtain Creative Commons-licensed headshots for Wikimedia Commons, and using this as an opportunity for public engagement around learning about Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Creative Commons. Subjects often include both speakers and notable people, as well as the general public. We have done this before at SXSW 2024 and Sundance 2024 to great visibility and success. Our SXSW studio can be viewed here, and the banners we designed and printed for public engagement can be viewed here.
Our one-page report from WikiPortraits at SXSW 2024, which included a studio similar to the ones we plan to do again at Sundance and SXSW in 2025.
Mid-Sized Events Coverage: Sending smaller teams of two photographers to industry-specific conferences with concentrations of notable people. This includes the Congressional Black Caucus convening, Nobel Prizes for academic, the International Journalism Festival, Grace Hopper Conference, and the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences annual conference. While these photos will not get the same level of views as our red carpet photos, they allow us to systematically improve coverage in specific verticals.
High-Profile One-Day Events: Covering media-intensive events such as the Oscars, Emmys, Met Gala, and Nobel Peace Prize so that there are Creative Commons-licensed photos from these high-profile events that attract worldwide attention. Assuming we can get appropriate media credentials, we would send our top-caliber photographers to cover these events.
Mentoring and Training of New Photographers: Cultivating new contributors to photograph red carpets and studios, edit images and contribute to Wikimedia Commons. WikiPortraits has a stated mission of expanding and diversifying the contributors to Wikimedia, as well as the portraits. In its first year as a project, of WikiPortraits' 17 contributors, 35.29% were female or non-binary, 64.71% were people of color, and 64.71% were new contributors to the movement. We have been in discussion with Wikimedia New York City on how best to do a training event. Our current hypothesis is to recruit newer photographers to cover local events in New York City, such as the New York Film Festival to build their CVs for credentialing in the larger events.
WikiCurious Editathons to Add Photos: Working with local chapters (specifically Wikimedia New York City) to have newbie-friendly editing events to add WikiPortraits photos to the respective pages. Thanks to tools like View it!, which won the Coolest Tool Award at Wikimania 2024, the bar for adding photos has been lowered such that new editors can meaningfully contribute in a time-efficient manner.
Microgrant Subsidies to WikiPortraits contributors to upload their photos: Since the core team of WikiPortraits is limited at this point, we can expand our impact by giving modest grants to experienced photographers in exchange for their uploading photos from events we don't have large enough budgets to cover. For example, these grants can go to freelance photographers who are already credentialed and covering events for other outlets but who are willing to upload some of their works to Wikimedia Commons. We have done this for SXSW and Tribeca Festival and have been looking to do this for Comic-Con San Diego, where the credentialing bar is high.

9. What categories are your main programs and related activities under? Please select all that apply. (required)


Category	Yes/No
Education	No
Culture, heritage or GLAM	Yes
Gender and diversity	Yes
Community support and engagement	Yes
Participation in campaigns and contests	No
Public policy advocacy	No
Other	No

Culture, heritage or GLAM

9.2. Select all your programs and activities for Culture, heritage or GLAM. (required): Introducing new approaches to underrepresented culture and heritage, e.g. decolonising or reparative work; oral and visual knowledge; outreach to communities of origin, indigenous and first nations self-determination, Partnering with institutions, professional associations, and allied organizations to raise awareness of open culture, ethical sharing, and related issues; Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Gender and diversity

9.3. Select all your programs and activities for Gender and diversity.: Bringing in women and/or gender diverse participants and editors, Focusing on creating content about women and/or gender diverse groups, including biographies, intersectional topic areas and/or adding images, Focusing on knowledge equity by bringing in contributors from underrepresented communities, Fomenting female leadership within the movement (either staff, members or boards); Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Community support and engagement

9.4. Select all your programs and activities for Community support and engagement.: Off-wiki training of community members, Supporting community members' participation in events and conferences, Offering micro-funding and other financial support to community members , Offering non financial support and services to community members (equipment, space, books, etc.); Other programs and activities if any: N/A
10. Please include a link to or upload a timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. (required): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:WikiPortraits/2025_Timeline

11. Describe your team. (required)

Our grantees are Kevin Payravi and Andrew Lih.

Kevin Payravi (User:SuperHamster) is a software engineer from Dallas, Texas, USA, and has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2007. He serves on the Board of Wikimedia DC and as an organizer for the Ohio Wikimedians User Group. He co-founded WikiPortraits in 2024 and has photographed numerous events for the project, including Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Each year, he also helps organize WikiConference North America and Wiki Loves Monuments in the United States.

Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado) is the 2021 Wikimedia Laureate, an internationally-renowned Wikipedia expert, author, professor, GLAMs activist, and long-time Wikimedia contributor. In 2023, Lih co-founded the WikiPortraits initiative. He is a long-time avid contributor of professional portrait photographs to Wikimedia Commons, accounting for more than 5 million monthly views. He has photographed high-impact events for Commons, such as the Pulitzer Prize awards, the National Book Festival, and the Hay Festival of Books. Some of his most widely used headshots on Wikipedia include Meghan Markle, Charlize Theron, Kendrick Lamar, Ronan Farrow, Lisa Su, and Priyanka Chopra.

Other WikiPortraits team members are listed at wikiportraits.org/our-team. These include additional co-founders Jennifer 8. Lee and Frank Schulenburg, and several other photographers.

12. Will you be working with any internal (Wikimedia) or external partners? Describe the characteristics of these partnerships and bring a few examples of the most significant partnerships. (required)

WikiPortraits has been fortunate to collaborate with several Wikimedia affiliates and contributors from various parts of the world. We worked with Wikimedia Canada to obtain credentials to the Toronto International Film Festival, Wikimedia Sverige for Nobel Prize connections, and Wikimedia Deutschland to obtain credentials for the Venice Film Festival. At Wikimania 2024, we met and connected with photographers from several other affiliates that we hope to work with in the future.

In 2025, we absolutely plan to continue and expand our work with affiliates, starting with Wikimedia NYC and AfroCrowd, with which we have the strongest relationships.

Initial discussions, pending resources, are the following:

Photography training sessions with Wikimedia NYC and AfroCrowd.
Photo editathons with Wikimedia NYC and Wikimedia DC.
Photo studio events with AfroCrowd, where they host a social gathering to invite notable people in their community.
Conference coverage with AfroCrowd of large events such as the Congressional Black Caucus conference and the Essence Festival of Culture.

Long term, our goal is to work with Wikimedia affiliates and contributors across the globe to build a network of photographers who can cover events in their own regions. This approach will allow us to increase the scale of the project. Ideally, WikiPortraits at a top-level will focus on covering the most notable international events; we would then support affiliates and individuals around the world who want to photograph regional events. Our support can come in the form of developing and sharing best practices; trainings; helping obtain press credentials; and brand.

13. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select all that apply. (required): Improve User Experience, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Innovate in Free Knowledge

Metrics

Wikimedia Metrics

14. Please select and fill out Wikimedia Metrics for your proposal. (recommended)

14.1. Number of participants, editors, and organizers.

All metrics provided are optional, please fill them out if they are aligned with your programs and activities.

Participants, editors, and organizers
Metrics name	Target	Description
Number of all participants	500	The 500 figure includes our photographers, as well as the WikiPortraits Studio subjects at SXSW and Sundance (these are individuals and film crews who visit us to receive a freely-licensed headshot, and we use the opportunity to introduce and educate them about Wikimedia Commons and free licensing).
Number of all editors	100	WikiPortraits directly onboards photographers to Wikimedia, to upload their photos to the Commons and teach them how to use those photos across Wikidata, Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia projects. Editors not directly associated with WikiPortraits also engage with and utilize our uploaded photos, as our works have been added to over 100 Wikipedias.
Number of new editors	30
Number of retained editors	30
Number of all organizers	8	We have a team of ~8 Wikimedians involved in the logistics, administration, and planning of WikiPortraits activities. Our team consists of new Wikimedians we've onboarded into the movement, and we plan to bring on more in 2025.
Number of new organizers	3

14.2. Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects. (recommended)

Contributions to Wikimedia projects
Wikimedia project	Created	Edited or improved
Wikipedia	100	1000
Wikimedia Commons	4000
Wikidata	200	200
Wiktionary
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions / Abstract Wikipedia

Description for Wikimedia projects contributions metrics. (optional)

So far in 2024, wthe WikiPortraits initiative has uploaded over 3,500 high-quality photographs of people to the Commons (note, this includes multiple photographs of the same people). With more events and support in 2025, we expect to upload at least 4,000 photos in 2025. This is a conservative estimate given that some of the events we plan to attend depend on funding, photographer support, and being approved for credentialing -- but if all goes well, we should surpass 4,000 photos.

Also in 2024, our WikiPortraits photos have been used on over 3,800 pages across Wikimedia so far, most of which are various language versions of Wikipedia. In 2025, we expect similar numbers, aiming to improve at least 3,500 Wikipedia articles across languages.

We also aim to create at least 100 Wikipedia articles, primarily biographies. Many of our covered events include photographing individuals who are up-and-coming in their industry, notable enough for Wikipedia but without anyone having created with biography yet. When we come across these individuals, we aim to create their articles (and of course illustrate them with our photos).

As part of our work, we also create and edit Wikidata items for the individuals we photograph. While this isn't a primary focus of our grant, it is a secondary outcome and we estimate WikiPortraits will spur the creation of 200 biographical Wikidata items and improve another 200 with quality photos. This actually is labor intensive, so we have not figured this process out.

Other Metrics

15. Do you have other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required): No


Other Metrics	Description	Target
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

Budget

16. Will you have any other revenue sources when implementing this proposal (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required): Yes

16.1. List other revenue sources. (required)

Currently, we have no other revenue sources for 2025 WikiPortraits photography activities.

However, in November we did receive a 17,500CHF grant from Wikimedia Switzerland to create a Commons gallery tools that can be used to showcase photos from WikiPortraits and other GLAM projects. Note that our current grant proposal had only a modest tech budget built in ($2,500) for scripting. We kept this modest as we have been informed by the Wikimedia Foundation that it is not currently funding community technology projects, though our understanding was some administrative type tools were fine.

The WMCH-funded WikiPortraits gallery tool is addressing the issue that we do currently have a good way to send links of our best work for media credentialing offices or publicists to showcase and explain what we do. At this point the GLAMorgan tool with the stats are the best "round up" of what we do.

In addition, we will seek small donations and in-kind contributions to support WikiPortraits from "friends of WikiPortraits." We may even do some sponsored WikiPortraits Studio events for organizations and companies to earn extra funding.

16.2. Approximately how much revenue will you have from other sources in your local currency? (required): 20000

17. Your local currency. (required): USD

18. What is the total requested amount in your local currency? (required): 118450 USD

Multi-year funding request summary
Year	Amount (local currency)
Year 1	N/A USD
Year 2	N/A USD
Year 3	N/A USD

19. Does this proposal include compensation for staff or contractors? (required): Yes

19.1. How many paid staff members do you plan to have? (required)

Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms.

3

19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total? (required)

Include the total FTE of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include their FTEs with the terms separately.

None

19.3. Describe any staff or contractor changes compared to the current year / ongoing General Support Fund if any. (required only for returning grantees): N/A

20. Please provide an overview of your overall budget categories in your local currency. The budget breakdown should include only the amount requested with this General Support Fund (required).


Budget category	Amount in local currency
Staff and contractor costs	18500 USD
Operational costs	12500 USD
Programmatic costs	87450 USD

21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/138ggclUsWYfx4nUhwmLG1G7G1YraF1V152tq-gp4dKg/edit?usp=sharing

Additional information

22. In this optional space you can add any other additional information about your proposal or organization that you think can help us when reviewing your proposal. (optional)

Our grant budget is structured project by project, with cross-event overhead costs listed at the bottom, to make it easier for reviewers to parse, and easier to chop off bits for potential rapid grants, etc. Note that the main organizer time is done in-kind as volunteers (and this is reflected in the budget with $0 line items).

For our budget, we have provided two figures. The $76,950 figure is our "core budget", which would support our core event coverage, but limit our capacity to train new people and support additional events. The larger $118,450 figure reflects a more ambitious budget to really push WikiPortraits forward, with funding for more events, supporting subgranting for more nimble coverage, training new editors, and hosting edit-a-thons involving WikiPortraits and Commons photos. Our budget is designed to be "modular" (given it is largely per-event), so we can effectively work with whatever funding we receive.

By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

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