Grants:Project/Rapid/Trinity/Art+Feminism 2020
Please see the sample Editathon/Training application before drafting your application.
Project Goal
[edit]Choose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.
- Recruit new editors. We are especially interested in creating new editors among faculty, students, and staff of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ communities on campus and within the broader Hartford community.
- Develop community ties through Wikipedia editing around shared topics of interest. Our college community wants to create deeper relationships with community partners around issues of diversity, representation, and the arts. Currently, our college offers community engagement courses that pair students with non-profits such as the library and museum with whom we’ll be collaborating. To travel to these institutions from campus, students walk or ride public transit through a city full of monuments to elite white men, mostly dating to the nineteenth century. This public art shapes ideas of who has agency, representation, and why. We want to bring together members of our community under the shared goal of creating greater representation in the arts through Wikipedia editing.
- Add or improve content on women and non-binary individuals, and relevant institutions, ideas, and events.
- We will conduct two training sessions before each of our events, and we hope to integrate these edit-a-thons into spring courses. Working with community partners, we also hope to establish edit-a-thons as an ongoing means of collaboration with our broader Hartford community.
Project Plan
[edit]Activities
[edit]Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:
1. Are you doing one editathon or training or a series of editathons or trainings?
We are planning two 3-hour editathon events – one in February and one in March – each with an optional 1-hour training session. Our editathon in February will focus on black art+activism, while our March event will focus on women and gender non-conforming artists. The primary goal of each event is to recruit new editors on campus and in the Hartford area, and to add and improve upon existing content.
2. How will you let your community know about the event? Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions.
We will work with campus partners and community organizations to plan and promote both events. Our campus partners include the college’s communications department, alumni relations, and student organizations. We will also work with faculty to integrate the edit-a-thon into spring courses.
Our off-campus partners include the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Hartford public library, and a local feminist queer art collective.
We will also coordinate with the library communications working group and the library student advisory board to market the events via the library’s social media channels (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook) and newsletter, flyers and posters, e-mail, and word of mouth. We will also post announcements to local library listservs such as the NELA discussion list and CSL Conntech.
3. Do you have experienced Wikimedia editors to lead the event?
Our team includes four experienced editors, two of whom will lead the event. (Editors include jethomes2, mahoney86, Angeleawolf, chappell ). Our planning group also includes three staff members who don’t edit but offer excellent organization and support. Two librarians have made important connections with faculty and student groups who will serve as important community partners on campus, in addition to the local art museums, feminist queer art collective, and public library.
4. Do participants have the equipment or skills needed to participate and contribute high quality content? If not, how will you support them?
We will host the events in our library in a computer lab and digital scholarship studio. This will allow members of the campus and broader community to participate without having to own or bring a laptop. Our publicity efforts will include the creation of a page on our site that lists the details of the events and links to planning documentation created by Art+Feminism which will allow participants to practice before attending either one of our optional training events, or the events themselves. The page will also list suggested names and organizations of Connecticut artists and organizations that would benefit from Wikipedia editing should anyone need inspiration. A librarian on our staff will also compile a list of books for use during the events that she will list on the page as well.
5. How will you engage participants after the event(s)?
Our group organizers will send new editors a survey after the event to get feedback and encourage further editing. We will ask how they heard about the event(s), if they had edited Wikipedia previously, to describe their experience with editing during the event, to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction and resources we provide, and to suggest further resources or support we might offer in the future. We will also encourage editors to sign up for a Facebook group prior to the events where participants can talk, ask questions, share feedback, and continue to communicate with us after the event. Our team will reach out to our campus partners to organize future editathons based on their feedback and interests to continue building on the skills they develop in these first events. We know, for example, that the Wadsworth Athenaeum will be hosting an exhibit on modern women artists in the fall and they have asked us to organize an editathon in the museum as part of the exhibit after learning about this event through our initial offer to collaborate this March.
6. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?
Impact
[edit]How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets:
- Number of events: 2
- Number of participants: 30 total
- Number of new editors: 20
- Number of of articles created or improved: 50
- Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events): 10
Resources
[edit]What resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).
We have 5 experienced editors who will attend both events, along with 4 librarians to assist with locating resources, and 2 instructional technologists to troubleshoot any problems with network connection or computer access. We will be using spaces, computers, and wifi freely available to us in the library.
What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.
- 1. Food and drink = $493.62 x 2 events = $987.24 2. Miscellaneous supplies and raffle prizes = $140.85 (T-Shirts, Mugs, Stickers, Buttons)
Total = 1128.09 USD
Endorsements
[edit]Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!
