Final report

Program story

2020 was to be a lively year for BLT though not for the anticipated reasons, setting out with big event, team, and nonprofit goals. For our program story, we would are sharing the link to our Vimeo page as well as our still growing Wikicommons category “Black Lunch Table portraits. Multiple crises affected our plans, no one was unaffected of course, and through it, we are pleased to have been able to still work towards our goals of growing the project and meeting our goal of engaging additional publics and providing the skills and resources for new and experienced editors to create, update, and improve Wikipedia articles pertaining to the lives and works of Black artists.

After the arrival of COVID-19 and the requisite restrictions, our programming and its goals were also altered. We made two important changes focusing more directly on artists and experts to lead the programs and helping educators bring and adapt Wiki/curricula. One positive outcome of this period is that it has allowed us to begin to grow a new archive, first accessible live and then asynchronously for our community with recorded videos and zooms. All of our events are available online here. https://vimeo.com/blacklunchtable

We were forced to innovate within our programming and rethink how we remained in contact with our community. There were hard lessons and our aim was to operate with as much empathy with ourselves and one another as possible. Social distance really limited one of our key initiatives, the BLT Photobooth which allows our user group to focus on getting not only articles on underrepresented Black artists on Wikipedia but actually visualizing Black artists on Wikicommons by hiring professional photographers to take photos or artists at our events. Without physical gatherings at events, there would be no photo booth. At the close of the year, seeing that this pandemic will rage on long into the future, BLT partnered with photographer Andrea Cauthen to host an online Zoom photobooth and see if we could also adapt this format. Happily, with some adjustments, we did find success and look forward to hosting virtual photobooths alongside our online edit-a-thons. We hope this opens additional avenues of access, geographic and otherwise, for more Black artists to be visualized on Wikicommons.

Programs Impact

BLT Branded Online Events

With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, stay-at-home orders, and protest in the streets, we as artists continue to look at creatively bridging gaps and the heavy digital moment that began in 2020 will continue into 2021. While being mindful of the many ethical, ideological, and practical challenges bound up in this online shift we wanted to find ways to be supportive of already precariously positioned artists and workers, while also providing those who may find new opportunities to engage with Wikipedia a path to doing so.

The grouping of programs below happens variously across Wikipedia, social media platforms, Google meet/Zoom, and aggregation sites, like Vimeo or IGTV, that function as asynchronous resources for our community.

BLT: Bacon + Lettuce + Tomato: BLT has always sought to provide a space for communion, affirmation, and discourse and has been the reason for our roundtable series. We recognize the extraordinary need for community spaces and see value in conversation as a space for catharsis and movement, of communication and resource. Meet virtual neighbors! Bring a bag brunch to your computer, take that short commute to your couch. Noon, EST.

BLT: Live on IG Live: Artists are central to all facets of BLT. As exhibitions and freelance work are canceled due to the virus, what we can do to support the continuation of the archive we depend on is ask and compensate artists as they share and commune with us through a series of online “talks”. Find them on IG Live @blacklunchtable.

BLT: Topic Focus and Online Edit-a-thons: Join us for online Wikipedia editing and assistance. Help record history as it unfolds by updating related Wikipedia articles, editing know-how is not necessary. In addition to regular editing together, Topic Focus sessions will feature experts on WikiEDU, editing on mobile devices, Wikidata, and Spanish language editing. All skill levels are welcome! Noon, EST.

BLT CONTESTS: BLT BINGO is a monthly contest series that celebrates the work of artists by working to increase information about them on Wikimedia platforms and increasing editor's fluency with all the Wiki platforms. New cards and prizes are released each month.

This particular group of programs was amended/created in response to the cessation of in-person edit-a-thons. We created four types of online programming to engage and maintain community and editorship. They maintain many of the goals we set out with and make necessary amendments for the global pandemic.

BLT remains dedicated to creating a space to encourage people of color and women to join the Wikimedia movement and encouraging all editors to focus on gaps in coverage on Wikimedia. Our programming maintained an editorship, supported bringing WikiEDU into the classroom, compensated workers and artists for their time, and brought awareness to the project generally.

We continue to mention metrics reporting and the ways in which we are able to frame our successes through certain numerical values alone. Traditional quantitative outcomes do not account for an entire connected network of events and community that deepens and makes possible the work we do on Wikipedia. For these newer programs we found that these were some atypical but useful numerics that we will apply in 2021 and our year-end totals for 2020 here:

Number of views on BLT: Live videos: 1499
Number of institutional partnerships: 14
Number of contest participants: 73
Number of artists/experts compensated: 18

One of the adjustments that we have made for the coming 2021 year, which we honestly anticipate will remain online, (the logic of which is supported by things like Wikimania 2021 moving to an entirely virtual event), is removing one of our branded events BLT:BLT and limiting the total number of BLT: Live events. This allows our team to better advertise events we are hosting and also bringing our signature BLT Photobooth online.

One of the things that many stateside seem to be experiencing is various shapes of pandemic fatigue. Online-ness is a vehicle for being together but it is also for many the burden of working. Anecdotally, people are tired of being online for everything so we have streamlined what has been successful and to some degree offers people a way to engage on their own schedules, in ways that work for them and continue to support awareness of BLT's work.

Black Lunch Table In-person Events

The core activity of the BLT Wikimedians user group has always been edit-a-thons. It allows BLT as a user group to work together to increase the information and participation about and by our community. It also allows us to invite all editors to focus on the knowledge gap that exists around the lives and works of Black artists on the platform.

This work is bolstered by our regional proxies who are Wikimedians based outside of the New York/northeast and Chicago/Northern midwest areas. Regional proxies help establish or expand editorship and BLT’s goals in their own community. At this point we host both new and legacy proxies, deepening the connections made in previous years and continuing outreach.

Recognizing that Wikipedia is not the only platform that lacks information about the lives of Black artists the BLT Photobooth increases images of Black artists on Wikicommons. We host photographers and artists local to an event and upload the images taken during the event, thereby increasing the actual visibility of Black artists on Wikicommons.

These three kinds of events as a set of puzzle pieces underline and complete an approach to our central goal of engagement and awareness. In 2021, if possible, we will return to modified in-person edit-a-thons and photobooths. The metrics here reflect a modest expectation for that possibility.

Black Lunch Table Edit-a-thons

Black Lunch Table Photobooths

Black Lunch Table Proxy Engagements

Black Lunch Table's central focus on Wikipedia has been and will continue to be training editors, especially people of color and women, so that they may participate in the Movement and also asks white male editors to focus on gaps in coverage on Wikimedia. After introducing editors to the Movement BLT focuses on the creation and improvement of a specific set of Wikimedia documents that pertain to the lives and works of Black artists. In order to do this, we need to offer editors and community members an opportunity to engage in this work and learn. Edit-a-thons, Proxy events, and Photobooths are the vehicle by which this work happens.

The move online did require some re-thinking but we have been able to shift to an entirely online edit-a-thon format. How to best share information with varying size groups on Zoom, etc. has been a learning experience and continually events with partner institutions have been the most successful for us. We are heavily focusing on trying to increase our outreach and attendance at our BLT events, the monthly online meetup for instance, by using on-Wiki tools to make existing editors aware of events and social media.

Mentioned briefly above, our BLT Photobooth, which pairs a photographer with a local event to take portraits for Wikicommons uploads, was very off the table from the outset of the pandemic. Happily by year-end, BLT did a test run of a"virtual" photobooth, scheduling artists with a photographer over Zoom and working together during a short session to capture an upload worthy portrait. With the expectation of remaining online, we want to use this opportunity to expand the BLT Photobooth project to artists who we may not ever be able to meet physically or to those who could not normally access our in-person events.

Spending update Final

Total amount of Simple APG funds spent during the grant period:

$91,102.60 USD/Local currency, with a deficit of $138.32 covered by independent fundraising and fees.

Grant Metrics Reporting Final

Metrics, targets, and results: grants metrics worksheet here.

A note on 2020 metrics. Like everyone, we were forced to shift how our programming and what our programming was in the past year. BLT has been vocal about implementing new ways to measure the metrics of the engagement and impact of our work. This is something we will be focusing on in 2021, in part through team members focused on it,i.e. our digital specialist. With that said, we have entered our metrics as instructed but wish they could better capture nuances in our programming and work. We are looking forward to qualifications beyond aggregated numbers that tell Black Lunch Table’s narrative.