Art+Feminism User Group/Planning/StrategicPlan2017-2018

Introduction

This plan documents the strategic priorities and objectives for the 2018 cycle of the Art + Feminism initiative. This is included in the Art+Feminism Simple APG for 2017-2018. The main grant page is here.

Mission

Since its inception in 2014, Art + Feminism has invited people of all gender expressions to increase the coverage of cis and trans women on Wikipedia; contributing and amending meaningful content to the encyclopedia every year for the past four years. Our mission is representation. Art + Feminism is about making Wikipedia better, as a tool for open access to reliable information, but it doesn’t end there. It’s about dismantling systems of thought that ignore the presence and input of cis and trans women in the room the world over and erase their place in history entirely. This year alone, more than 2700 participants in 42 countries created or improved nearly 6000 articles during the month of March when our events are held simultaneously around the world. Next year will mark year 5 of our initiative. To grow our reach and develop a stronger sense of activism in our communities, we'e developed this strategic plan for the 2018 cycle of Art + Feminism.

Challenges

• We want to extend our reach in marginalized communities. It can be difficult connecting organizers in historically disenfranchised communities with experienced Wikipedians.

• There is an education gap. Communities of new organizers and editors are eager to participate but need accessible resources that contextualize guidelines like notability.

• New editors don’t have a point of reference for the cultural norms of the Wikipedian community. Our work draws thousands of organizers and editors and we recognize a path to ensuring their success is preemptively initiating conversations about Wikipedia and its culture.

Solutions

To address the challenges noted above, we'll do the following:

1. Build and implement a Fall 2017/Winter 2018 campaign that a) utilizes more accessible materials geared specifically towards new organizers and editors, b) streamline training presentations that currently exist on our YouTube channel c) develop two resource kits for institutional partners and editors that are representative of the diverse communities we are seeking to reach. These kits will help participants gain understanding of Wikipedia and the impact of information activism.
2. Implement a strategy for advanced targeted marketing in countries with less representation to draw interest in organizing months in advance of the 2018 cycle .
3. Leverage the engagement of our online communities, currently at 10,000+ followers across Twitter and Facebook, to further refine our messaging and emphasize the critical importance of information activism and representation in the historical canon.
4. Target outreach in communities that center women in tech, librarians, POC, secondary school administrators, and queer and trans people to increase awareness of our work and to amplify participation.

How We Achieve Our Goals

In order to achieve these goals, the plan will:

1. Implement a digital marketing strategy to increase overall community engagement and to target growth of events in Africa, Asia, and Europe. This would include defining in advance who will take the reigns for organizing nodes regionally in those areas.
2. Develop a timeline for the year that (1)  refines our communication pipeline (2) defines frequency and focus of content for online community, (3) details training schedule leading up to our events, and (4) seeks out and closes communication gaps in the email pipeline.  
3. Outline a clear set of guidelines for accountability to the goals we’ve set around our reach abroad and our reach domestically in LGBTQ communities and communities of color.

These are our goals. This plan divides strategic goals into four categories:

• Building Community + Curating Messaging
• Training + Education
• Public Activism + Accountability
• Expanding Our Reach in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe

Building Community + Curating Messaging

Build an inclusive, collaborative community focused on providing resources for institutional partners, librarians, new editors and administrators.

• institutional partnership We have found great success developing strong partnerships with museums and universities. Our next phase of outreach will seek to reach communities historically excluded from higher institutions. Our Fall 2017/Winter 2018 campaign will launch our call for participation in September with targeted messaging to community organizations collaborating with marginalized communities living at the intersection of communities of color and LGBTQ identity. Our campaign will achieve the following objectives:

• a digital campaign inviting pledges for 2018 events, our campaign will be launched in two phases. The first phase will engage institutional partners who will pledge to host events focused on the communities with which they collaborate in March 2018. The second phase will engage new editors using digital platforms to teach them about the campaign and to walk them through editing on Wikipedia for the first time.
• monthly twitter chats and Facebook videos, a calendar of online events will be shared with online community and be used to further conversation around librarianship, representation in media, and information activism. This will enable us to refine partnerships with organizations by using our platforms to cross-promote our 2018 campaign.
• A+F podcast 'End Rant', End Rant is a podcast focused on the intersection of art, feminism, and the internet. We've started this podcast to provide the greater community with a more accurate sense of who we are as people and why our initiative exists.

Training + Education

Respond to common misconceptions around notability, working with experienced Wikipedians, use of the Dashboard, and the autonomy that organizers have to be creative in the ways they organize and lead their own events. Our work in this area will produce the following deliverables:

• online workshops, provide training in English and Spanish that introduce potential partners to Art+Feminism, event hosting, and editing on the platform.
• training videos, share training videos on Facebook that address common misconceptions of Wikipedia and what it means to be an editor on the platform.

• sustainable community, build a private Facebook community dedicated to new organizers and editors that will serve as a brave space for cis and trans women learning to edit on the platform.
• leveraging additional opportunities to answer the question 'how does it work?'. presenting a simple linear visual on our website and Facebook page that outlines essential steps to hosting an edit-a-thon.

Public Activism + Accountability

We're further defining our values to our community. We recognize that growth in communities abroad and in the U.S. will also require us to further emphasize our principles and why we are committed to this work.

• launching our Instagram business account, instagram is a platform of influencers. we can use the platform to attract new editors and organizers to our initiative. a business account will permit us to track our engagement and reach on the platform and put us in a better position to engage with active users on Instagram who are not on Facebook or Twitter.
• developing measurable outcomes for the expansion of our work in marginalized communities, these outcomes will be defined by our partnerships with institutions and targeted engagement on our online communities.
• defining our partnership with user groups like AfroCrowd + Black Lunch Table, we want to leverage the power of our audience to provide support to the awareness and reach of user groups focused on expanding the canon of knowledge in disenfranchised communities. It's imperative we communicate our collaboration with these groups to our community so they have a full awareness of additional communities they can...

Expanding Our Reach

Our focus for expanding our campaign into new communities of editors and organizers focuses on our reach abroad and our targeted outreach in marginalized communities specifically Black and brown communities and queer communities and cis and trans women. Our steps to further develop our community outreach is detailed below.

Pursuing Growth in Latin America

• digital strategy for reaching new editors and organizers in target areas abroad, this year we launched our first digital campaign in Spanish and it proved successful with potential organizers contacting us directly with questions about hosting events in Central America and other Latinx countries. We want to repeat this work by developing digital campaigns focused on specific countries in Latin America. The goal is to drive engagement with ambassadors working in our target regions and to provide more tangible evidence of our commitment to the sustainable growth of our initiative outside the United States.

• translation of organizer quick guides. This year we translated our guide for organizers into Spanish and offered digital training sessions in the language as well. Our goal is to pursue funding that will enable us to to develop partnerships with organizers representing one-two additional language groups both to translate our organizing materials and to ensure translations serve the needs of the communities we’re seeking to target.

Diversifying Our Community in North America

• pledges For 2018 events. Our EDIT 2018 campaign seeks to invite existing node organizers and new organizers to pledge to host events for the 2018 cycle of our campaign. This campaign will be rolled out across our social media channels beginning October 22. The campaign will also encompass targeted outreach to organizations that work specifically within Black and brown communities and queer communities of various gender identities. Examples of potential partnerships include the AIDS Foundation Chicago, Howard Brown Health, Howard University, and Morehouse College.
• targeted digital strategy. Across all of digital platforms, we've gained a community of over 10,000 followers. This year we intend to approach our digital strategy with increased intention. We seek to close the awareness gap of our campaign in vulnerable communities of potential editors and organizers utilizing a digital strategy that speaks to the value of information activism and representation among communities of Black and brown people and queer communities who may not be aware that editing on Wikipedia is even a possibility. We recently launched our page on Instagram and have begun laying the foundation for our digital strategies for 2018. This strategy will play a pivotal role in our targeted outreach for next year.

Moving Forward

Next year will mark the fifth year of our campaign. As organizers, we have proven ourselves successful in understanding our targeted audiences and in developing plans for long-term growth that have gained us substantial success in communities domestically and abroad. You can find listed resources we've developed for our community here in our annual plan. Diversity is critical to the growth and sustainability of the Wikimedia movement but we recognize that just addressing diversity is not enough to developing full, intersectional communities of new organizers and editors that feel welcomed and needed. Outreach to communities of women, communities of color, and communities of LGBTQ people has to be done in the right way. Through years of trial and error, we have found that right way and our commitment to addressing the gender gap on Wikipedia has earned us the trust and confidence of thousands of A+F participants around the world. Our approach is not about numbers, it's centered on quality. Our methodology is about investing in building strong relationships with communities that have been historically ignored and erased from the canon of history. We have an approach that works and have been refining and documenting that approach for over four years. Our unique set of experiences and expertise as educators, curators, artists, and strategists has equated to the successful growth and development of our organization, but there is still much work to be done. We're ready for year 5.