Grants:Project/Rapid/Jewish Museum Edit-a-thon/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Jewish Museum Edit-a-thon.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

The Jewish Museum successfully hosted our first edit-a-thon, increasing visibility of and scholarship on women artists in the collection through community engagement. As this was our first edit-a-thon, participation was not as high as we anticipated, but those who attended were enthusiastic about our goals and many were editors who visiting the Museum for the first time or Museum constituents who were new to Wikipedia editing. We hope that this will be an annual event and that attendance, and therefore the amount of edits, will increase each year.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1 event	1 event
75 participants	50 participants
25 new editors	30 new editors
25 articles created or improved	100 articles created or improved

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

Complimentary programming related to the event goals and the Jewish Museum's new collection exhibition worked very well and was a highlight for many attendees. Artists Joan Semmel and Arlene Shechet joined guests for an hour long talk in the Museum's galleries discussing their work on display and their careers as women artists. This was a meaningful way to kick off the event and opened up a conversation about the representation of women artists in museums.

What did not work so well?

Though all attendees were enthusiastic and engaged in the program, the majority were first time editors and brand new to the concept of Wikipedia editing. Therefore, it took much longer than expected to get everyone set up and comfortable with the platform and we had to focus on making small edits or adding credits to existing articles or stubs.

What would you do differently next time?

The Jewish Museums plans to host an edit-a-thon next year and we hope to run the program for entire day, rather than 4 hours as we did this year. This will allow for more substantial training and editing time and increased attendance overall for people that may not be able to make it to a specific few hours in the afternoon.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

The entire grant award of $1,350 was spent on the 2018 Jewish Museum Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. The total cost for the event was $1,417.54 and the remaining expenses were covered by the Museum's public programs budget.

Food and drink = $772.96
Local travel costs for presenters/artists = $44.58
Miscellaneous supplies, printing costs, photography = $600

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No, all grant funds were spent.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Photographs by Sara Wass

The Jewish Museum, 2018 Wikipedia Edit-a-thon