Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/2024 Toronto International Film Festival WikiPortraits Initiative (ID: 22680246)
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Applicant Details
edit- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
xfranksun
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Main Proposal
edit- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
2024 Toronto International Film Festival WikiPortraits Initiative
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2024-09-06 - 2024-10-15
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
International (more than one country across continents or regions) Toronto International Film Festival is in Canada and draws a global talent presence. Our WikiPortraits photos are used in many language Wikis, at least 60 in last count.
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Other (please specify) WikiPortraits
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects prioritize and require using freely-licensed images. This presents a challenge when it comes to photos of notable people, because most published photos of notable people are press images with full copyright and non-permissive licenses. This results in a significant number of biographies with poor quality or no photos. This challenge is quite notable in itself, having been covered by various publications including the New York Times in their 2009 article, "Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos". While that article was written almost a decade ago, the problem persists, so much so that @badwikiphotos is an account on Instagram. The English Wikipedia category, "Wikipedia requested images of people", has over 5,000 articles in it.
An effective way to gather freely-licensed photos of notable figures at-scale is to go to where they are — festivals, awards ceremonies and conferences. Gage Skidmore is particularly notable for publishing freely-licensed photos of celebrities at pop culture conventions and political events. German Wikipedia has been covering the Berlin Film Festival with its Berlinale-Projekt since 2017.
Indeed, our SXSW WikiPortraits Rapid Grant project added photos that were added to over 60 wikis and collectively viewed just under an estimated 10 million views in April 2024. Our early self-financed Sundance 2024 WikiPortraits project adds an additional 500,000 or so views per month, and we took a number of photos of notable journalists at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, including those from the Global South and two Nobel Prize winners.
Toronto International Film Festival is an appealing even to us because of its size, international scope, proximity to New York City, kickoff role in the Oscar awards season and relative ease of media accreditation. There are some things that lead us to believe it may be our best “bang for our buck” of the major film festivals.
With this grant request, we will be subsidizing a group of experienced photographers and uploaders to attend the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024, WikiPortraits will attempt to help them obtain press credentials, sometimes in partnership with media organizations, with a letter from the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia New York City.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
For this project, we will be doing two main things:
First, we will help photographers obtain press credentials for Toronto International Film Festival 2024 so they can take photos of individuals with films in the festival. This includes directors, actors and other staff.
Secondly, because there are a number of industry panels, we can send individuals to take photos of notable executives who may not have celebrity status, but have pages on Wikipedia.
In addition, we will explore coordinating with Wikimedia Canada to do a film-specific edit training if we can find a venue and potentially partner with TIFF officially or semi-officially, if there is interest.
If there is sufficient demand and surplus WikiPortraits photography labor time and a venue, we may also take photos of people who do not have Wikipedia pages as a courtesy. This was highly successful at SXSW where we took photos of over 300 individuals, many of whom learned about Wikimedia Commons in our house. In addition to creating freely licensed photographs of people, this gives us an opportunity to do Wikipedia outreach with the broader public.
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
Kevin Payravi (User:SuperHamster): Kevin has contributed to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites since 2007, and is currently a co-organizer of WikiConference North America and Wiki Loves Monuments in the United States. He also serves on the Board of Wikimedia DC. Jennifer 8. Lee (en:User:Jenny8lee): Jenny is a co-founder of WikiPortraits, an adviser to the Wikimedia NYC, a founder of WikiCred project, film producer, and an adviser to SXSW Interactive. She has been to the Cannes Film Festival 8 times. She is a volunteer for this project, but will help coordinate the logistics and the press credentials. Andrew Lih (([[User:Fuzhedo)): Lih is 2021 Wikimedia Laureate, an internationally-renowned Wikipedia expert, author, professor, GLAMs activist, and long-time Wikimedia contributor, including on Wikicommons photography. Frank Sun (User:Xfranksun): Frank has been an professional photographer and a WikiPortraits contributor since the creation of the project. His portraits from Cannes include Greta Herwig, Lily Gladstone, Chris Hemsworth, among others. Jay Dixit (User:Jaydixit)): Jay is an experienced photographer who has contributed to WikiPortraits from SXSW, Sundance and International Journalism Festival.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
There are two main target populations for this project:
Notable individuals who have Wikipedia articles, particularly ones lacking a photo or need a better photo taken. If we get press credentials, we will be able to cover the red carpet and the press conferences, which have notable numbers of celebrities from around the world given Toronto’s global reach. As a result, this project can help us obtain portraits of notable individuals from backgrounds that are commonly under-represented on Wikipedia, as well as individuals who are rising in their respective industries. Editors of individual biography pages across all languages who are looking for photos of the subjects. Our WikiPortraits SXSW photos were used across over 60 wikis with an estimated 4 million monthly views across all of them. These include ruwiki, hewiki, rowiki, nowiki, ukwiki, elwiki, viwiki, dewiki, itwiki, svwiki, kowiki, zhwiki, jawiki, arwiki, arzwiki among many others. A WikiPortraits photo of Meryl Streep was pulled into Farsi wiki.
If we take individual portrait style photos (in addition to the red carpet photos), we capture contact information through a release form powered by Harbour, and can follow-up with information about the results of this project. For individuals with Wikipedia articles, we can inform them if and when their biography has been updated with their new portrait.
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
Given that WikiPortraits’ SXSW 2024 photos were added on 60 different language wikis, with a collective estimated 7-10 million monthly views, we feel there is strong community demand for what WikiPortraits is adding.
WikiPortraits has a presence on the Wikimedia Commons, at Commons:WikiPortraits. We have also created a meta page to catalog related efforts called Wiki Covers Events and to share best practices. Among notable related efforts are the German Berlinale-Projekt.
Wiki Covers Events + the WikiPortraits initiative has also been discussed within the GLAM Global Telegram group, which has over 200 community members.
We also attended Wikimedia Hackathon in Tallinn, Estonia where we developed a gallery viewer and talked with other people around the world who are engaging in similar photo projects.
Our origin story, for background: the WikiPortraits idea was originally the brainchild of Andrew Lih, a past Wikimedian Laureate, who presented on a Wikimedia panel at SXSW 2023 with WMF CEO Maryana Iskander. Andrew has done similar self-funded photography efforts and book festivals and comicons and saw the potential of SXSW for doing that on a larger scale. He has socialized this WikiPortraits idea in the GLAM Telegram group, as well as on Meta Wiki. Jenny also discussed the idea at 2024 Wikimania in Singapore with Frank Schulenberg, who is the secretary of the Commons Photographers Users Group. He was so enthused that he decided to self-finance a trip to the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, and obtained an assignment letter from Nadee Gunasena at the WMF, which was submitted to the Sundance Film Festival press office by Jennifer. This then built our led to our SXSW 2024 WikiPortraits project, has had its photos incorporated into 57 different wikis.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Culture, heritage or GLAM
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Improve User Experience
Learning and metrics
edit- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
This project, in conjunction with our work at Sundance, SXSW, Cannes and potentially Edinburgh Fringe, helps to build a repeatable and scalable template for experienced Wikimedia Commons photographers to get press credentials at well-established internationally significant cultural events. Toronto is also a good festival, because of the relative proximity to New York City and Washington DC, where we can recruit people into WikiPortraits because of the volume of photos and the cost. Each individual photographer is less “high stakes” since we can spread the work around multiple people and help them build a WikiPortraits portfolio.
We also would like to see if the Toronto International Film Festival would be receptive to an official session about Wikipedia and film.
Our intent with this, compared to our previous projects, is to continue to elevate the Wikipedia presence at global-level events such as Toronto, Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, given that the Germans have covered the Berlin Film Festival since 2017. We are trying to establish a track record so that our photographers can be credentialed for Cannes and Venice film festivals in the future.
Historically, volunteer Wikimedian photographers are not plugged into the media infrastructure that is built around credentials. Given the support of letters from senior leadership at the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia Canada, we hope that the press office decision makers of these global caliber events will become more receptive to having Wikimedia photographers participate, as it only serves to amplify the cultural impact of their events across the many language wikis.
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 150 | 150 targets, at least 75 have Wikipedia pages in need a good photo |
| Number of editors | 5 | We have 4-5 photographers, 2-3 data upload people.
In addition, our SXSW WikiPortraits photos were added to 60 wikis. So we expect similar numbers for Toronto if we get major celebrities. |
| Number of organizers | 9 | 3 on the ground organizers at Cannes: Frank Sun, Jenny Lee and Kevin Payravi
2 remote organizers: Andrew Lih and Frank Schulenburg (who help with credentialing letters) 4 additional photographers who will be organizing amongst themselves |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 75 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 300 |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
300+ photos of people uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, which will be used in different language wikis
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
We would utilize a tool like BaGLAMa to measure how many pageviews our portraits receive over time through their inclusion on Wikipedia articles and other Wikimedia projects. This is how we know our SXSW 2024 and Sundance 2024 photos are collectively viewed 7-10 million times per month.
Financial proposal
edit- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11eIq7s3jeeQQCv5b8V_J6t4AGr6t5TfzEziMnAUJoW0/edit
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
5000 USD
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
5000 USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback
editPlease add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).