From August to December 2021, the Art+Feminism leadership team (Mohammed Sadat Abdulai, Amber Berson, Melissa Tamani, Kira Wisniewski, Nina Yeboah) took an organizational pause on all regularly scheduled programmatic activities to prioritize creating internal anti-oppression policies and mechanisms. This, in a way, became our programming.
The leadership team became deeply engaged in this work by: participating in ongoing meetings, readings and discussions, working through past trauma, examining how white supremacy/Anglo Saxon practices perpetuate in our everyday work culture (such as sense of urgency and centering/over-representing U.S. culture), and creating operational definitions of concepts like equity and racism.
We specifically focused on developing an anti-racism policy to be implemented across the organization and inform new work culture practices rooted in restorative justice. We do not want to have just words on a page, but rather move Art+Feminism toward a cultural shift with established policies and protocols that help the organization be more consistent with its values. We also envision regular org-wide trainings in the future to help us all be in alignment with this work.
This is important and hard work that takes time.
As a team, we believe that we are a stronger organization now that we have the anti-racism policy and equity statement in place. We are committed to continuing on this trajectory as these two protocols are the first steps to sustainable change. We hope that you are able to take a moment to review both the new policy and statement below (available currently in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese) and are as enthusiastic as we are to carry out the mission of Art+Feminism together.
Recent research from Isabelle Langrock and Sandra González-Bailón at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania evaluates the work of Art+Feminism and another feminist edit-a-thon, 500 Women Scientists, in closing Wikipedia’s gender gap. They look at over 11,000 Wikipedia biographies, and find that while women’s pages are usually shorter and less frequently viewed than men’s biographies in the same professional categories, pages that are edited by Users associated with the edit-a-thons are, on average, longer and viewed more. This work shows that these feminist edit-a-thons are indeed working to close information gaps related to gender, feminism, and in the case of Art+Feminism events, the arts, beginning with Wikipedia.
However, Langrock and Gonzalez-Bailon have also identified structural areas where gender bias persists despite the work of these interventions. Pages edited by these feminist edit-a-thon attendees are linked to at much lower rates than other biographies on Wikipedia, keeping the information contained on these pages on the edges of Wikipedia’s knowledge network. For example, if you keep clicking links on Wikipedia pages, you are much less likely to end up on a biography of a woman artist than a male artist. Links are a vital way for connecting information across Wikipedia and this inequality can have ripple effects across the wider Internet. Access the article here.
During Wikimania 2022, our team of regional leaders were recognized during the Wikimedians of the Year Ceremony. Below, please read the announcement from the Wikimedia Foundation and celebrate with us!
“Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects are made possible by hundreds of thousands of volunteers from around the world. Known as Wikimedians, we are united by a shared vision of a world in which knowledge is available to everyone, everywhere. Each year, Wikimedians who have made outstanding contributions to this cause are recognized through the Wikimedian of the Year awards! This special recognition dates back to 2011. In a first-time partnership with the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee, this year’s Wikimedian of the Year celebration also spotlighted affiliates whose invaluable contributions to the movement help it grow in content and contributors.”
We’re so excited to celebrate with you that Art+Feminism has been recognized for the 2022 Wikimedia Affiliate Spotlight – Partnerships! This award recognizes how important the role of community organizing is within the Wikimedia movement.
This award truly belongs to these ambassadors and network organizers of Art+Feminism during this year: Alison Baitz, Anthony B Diaz, Paula Dominguez Font, Medhavi Gandhi, Richard Knipel, Amanda Meeks, Jessie Mi, Jaison Oliver, Athina Petsou, Sophie Reverdy, Sadik Shahadu, Sofia Stancioff, Dominique Eliane Yao, and Zita Ursula Zage.
With recognition for the Art+Feminism Leadership team: Nina Yeboah, Melissa Tamani, Amber Berson, and Mohammed Sadat Abduali. And our board, Sarah Gonzales, Nana Osei-Kofi, and Kerrie Cotten Williams.
Art+Feminism is pleased to share that we are part of the Ford Foundation’s New Media Leadership Cohort! The Ford Foundation recently shared:
Last June, The Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression (CFE) team joined Ford’s digital technology program area, Technology & Society, to invite a group of creative organizations to form an exploration called New Media Leadership.
All of the organizations are addressing important issues at the intersection of technology, equity, and justice. Through financial support and advancement, this 18-month program has created space for leaders to build relationships and focus on organizational structure, capitalization, and conditions and challenges facing the field. Let’s meet the cohort!
Afrotectopia is a social institution creating at the intersections of art, design, technology, Black culture, and activism to cultivate spaces for Black radical imagination
Art + Feminism works to build a community of activists committed to closing information gaps related to gender, feminism, and the arts, beginning with Wikipedia
BUFU is a project-based collective of queer femme artists exploring the solidarity between Black and Asian discourse
CRUX is a visionary worker-cooperative studio at the intersection of Black storytelling and immersive technology
Movers & Shakers is led by a trio of African American artists who focus on edtech and activism, using augmented reality to write Black and Brown narratives into American curricula
Powrplnt is a network of artists, a gallery space, and internet lounge that promotes digital arts education and access for all
Processing Foundation promotes software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within tech-related fields to empower people to make creative works with code
School for Poetic Computation is an artist-run school, residency, and research group that explores crossovers between code, design, hardware, and theory to celebrate artistic intervention
According to our metrics, in 2022 we had over 1500 participants at 120 events hosted in 27 different languages. Thanks to this community, we’ve given one more step towards closing the information gaps related to gender, feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia.
How was this year's Art+Feminism?
For the ninth year of Art+Feminism, the leadership team urged event organizers to center community care within the context of COVID-19. Thus, we encouraged to organize virtually as a way to minimize risks for those who are most vulnerable. We’re happy that our call was heard and most of the events this year either happened virtually or had virtual components.
Here are some highlights about this years’ events and organizers:
Events all year round: Since 2019, Art+Feminism’s do-it-yourself spirit has been bolstered by help from our microfunds and support from our regional ambassador network. This has allowed events to be organized any time during the year. This past year, the first event was hosted in September 2021 in Texas, and the most recent one was hosted in September in Kenya.
Beyond the edit-a-thon: We all love the excitement and community spirit during edit-a-thons, and this year our communities expanded this work and displayed their creativity in different types of activities, such as talks, workshops, fanzines, and artistic public interventions. The topics of talks and workshops included inclusive language, digital activism, the right to access information, and specific artistic production.
Earth Day Celebration in the Philippines Art and Feminism x Wiki For Human RightsFocus beyond the arts: Art+Feminism has become an umbrella campaign to edit within topics that are most relevant to each community. Our campaign now transcends the arts and includes fields such as architecture, engineering, politics, leadership and governance, technology, education and sports. Some niche topics inside the arts were art and democracy, Black theater, music, design and writing.
Making Connections: More communities are organizing transregional events at interconnected venues, with presence in virtual components.
Other wikiprojects: We are seeing more organizers exploring projects such as Wikidata and WikiQuote, and not just Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. It’s also very common that Art+Feminism events are starting points for the creation of content in new language versions of Wikipedia.
We recognize, with an ongoing global pandemic, that individual capacity has varied within our community and that the pandemic disproportionately affects the communities we’re most invested in. We understand the precarity of labor in this moment especially and the real, off-wiki priorities of our community. If you’re reading this, we value you as being part of our community.
Art+Feminism is pleased to announce three new pieces hosted on Wikimedia Commons as part of the Call to Action Art Commission program by artists Gucora Andu (Kenya), Aditi Abhijit Kulkarni (India), and Thamires Fortunato Martins (Brazil).
Art+Feminism team members and Co-curators Zita Ursula Zage, Medhavi Ghandi, and Juliana Monteiro selected these three artists out of 85 applications to create original pieces of work that visualize Art+Feminism, based on its values. The work will be used by the global Art+Feminism community in future Art+Feminism campaigns.
In our most recent open call, we celebrated the Global South, exclusively inviting applications from artists located in regions where the curators of the call reside: African countries, Brazil, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Each commission came with a 2000$ (USD) artist fee.
Call to Action art commissioning program was established by Art+Feminism in 2017. Its goal is to both highlight the work of contemporary artists and to expand the body of images available that represent the project, helping to spread the word about the campaign and also the artists.
Create succession plans towards regional leadership with intentionally created pathways for increased engagement (within existing networks and in new ones) is one of the internal strategies of our strategic plan. Thus, starting in September 2021, Amber Berson, Mohammed Sadat and Melissa Tamani initiated a process of analysis and evaluation of this role with a view to opening a call for new members.
The actions taken included:
Analysis and evaluation of the role
Redesign of the role based on lessons learned.
Design of a call for new members
The principles of the call were to conduct it internally, calling the regional ambassadors active at that time and in previous years, and giving priority to candidates from outside the United States. In this way, we sought to generate paths for growth in the involvement of these leaders, as well as to balance the U.S. presence at the leadership level in staff and board.
For the evaluation of the applications we received advice from Joyell Arbella on anti-racist hiring techniques and we called for an additional person to join the committee with us. We received 4 applications, from which Juliana Monteiro (former Regional Ambassador to Lusophone communities) and Medhavi Gandhi (Regional Ambassador for South Asia) were selected. They have started their 2 years tenure in September 2022. Their main objective is to help the staff to think about the project from a broad perspective, bringing new ideas and projects that can expand the action of A+F.
According to the strategic plan we finalized in April 2021, and aligning with the Movement Strategy 2030, our guiding question remains “How do we make Art+Feminism a fully global organization in an equitable and accessible way?” We see equity as a responsibility to ourselves and our community and are specifically beginning with addressing racial and ethnic equity.
We were recently notified of the approval of our first multi-year funding proposal by the Wikimedia Foundation. As mentioned in our proposal submission, our plan to meet our organizational goals and overcome the challenges we face includes:
a) recruiting board members from regions other than North America
b) building the infrastructure to sustain and nurture our community in an increasingly equitable and ethical way
c) renewing our mechanisms to create new leadership
2023 will mark 10 years of A+F. For us, this will be a milestone for reflection, evaluation and celebration. We believe that thanks to all the previous work, our community is at a healthy stage in terms of leadership, capabilities, and definition and practice of shared principles. However, we would like to invite other user groups and Wikimedians around the world who work towards equity in knowledge, to share their views and perspectives on the meaning of this milestone with us.
Gucora andu. Internalized Misogyny
Aditi Kulkarni. Ladies Dabba.
Thamires Fortunato. Todo o mar em mim goblogbo oku ninu mi.
