Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Museums (ID: 21862170)

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Applicant Details

Please provide your main Wikimedia Username.

Medhavigandhi

Please provide the Usernames of people related to this proposal.

User:DesiBoy101

Organization

N/A

Are you a member of any Wikimedia affiliate or group, including informal groups like Wiki Fan Clubs, emerging language communities, not recognized Wikimedia groups etc.? Please list them all.

GLAM-Wiki , Art+Feminism

Grant Proposal

M. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

Wiki Loves Museums

Q. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? (optional)

Local

Q2. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

R. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has.

1. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important.

Today, even as many culture and heritage-enthusiasts visit museums, their photographs mainly rest on platforms like Instagram / Facebook. A survey we undertook on Instagram itself revealed that 65% had never thought about it; 19% did not know the rationale behind uploading to the platform. An opportunity to share your pictures for public good is therefore lost. A rather bigger opportunity for discovering these great pictures is lost too.

Museums on the other hand, being understaffed continue to struggle to find a link to their community through user-generated contributions - but have no way of knowing which collections are loved by the public.

Educators from schools are a large part of our community and they too, are unable to access images unless through GoogleArts & Culture - for their classrooms. In most cases the images cannot be used for printing / classroom work and needs a tech-enabled screen. By putting images on Wiki Commons, we not only help educators with better access but this is especially important for under-resourced classrooms; or for instance, classrooms in a particular region, to access curriculum related collections spread across the country.

We believe that culture belongs to everyone, and everyone has a significant role to play in contributing to cultural heritage too. On the occasion of India's 75th year of Independence, we would like to host this campaign to celebrate the stories of India. Through the collected pictures, we hope to create & improve an interconnected set of Wikipedia articles about objects from the museums that tell these stories - about people, communities, battles, movements, etc.

Many museums in India were established pre-independence; this campaign is also a way to demonstrate & understand public engagement in the postcolonial context, and increase awareness and interest about art, history, traditions and cultural heritage.

2. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

Through this project, we aim to enable GLAMs to connect with their community and demonstrate the benefits of adding collections on WikiCommons. This initiative is planned as a photo documentation & research project with a two-fold aim to map India’s museum collection and involve the citizens in researching cultural heritage content within GLAM institutions & writing articles about them on Wikipedia (English and possibly other languages). We plan to accomplish this using the following approaches:

1. National Level Photo contest on Wikimedia Commons : A photo-contest would encourage our community (members and art/culture enthusiasts) to visit museums in their region & increase their awareness about cultural objects. The contest would also help introduce Wikimedia Commons to museum visitors who currently take pictures but do not upload them to WikiCommons.

Through category pages for each Museum and Region, we will be able to increase the representation of Indian museums on Wiki Commons and source good quality images that can be used to illustrate existing and new Wikipedia articles. The images can also be used widely by researchers, educators publications, etc.

2. Building the THL(TheHeritageLab) Wiki Community

Through a fellowship call open to experienced Wikipedians, as well as new editors who we have trained at our past editathons, we will create and build on cultural content & resources using the sourced images. Wikipedia articles on related themes (historical events, cultural practices, biographies, textiles, music etc) would be improved and expanded. The Fellowship will incorporate values of a Wikimedian-in-Residence, but for a shorter time frame, enabling GLAMs in India to work collaboratively with them.

3. A presentation of pictures & articles, and a report for GLAMs in India that builds a case for adding collections to Wikimedia Commons and explore Wikimedian-in-Residence programs in future.

3. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

Based on the above approaches (Photo Competition, Fellowship & a Presentation-Report), here are the following activities to be undertaken:

1. Photo Contest

The contest would be open to everyone across India, inviting participants to click and upload pictures of museum-collections under themes such as 'People and Portraits', 'Books and Stories', 'Sculptures', 'Arms and Armoury' etc. We will have a dedicated web-page for the same.

Additionally, there would be 10 curated walks held at select partner museums by cultural & heritage specialists who would encourage participants to take pictures and upload them to WikiCommons. The bigger goal is to encourage these Curators and Walk leaders to develop their own independent WikiMuseumMeets (‘WikiLovesMuseums’ Meetup-campaigns) in the future in different cities.

2. Fellowship

Selected Fellows (India only) will spend a stipulated amount of time (3 months) bridging the gap between Wiki and GLAMs through improved content and resource creation. Fellows will spend time in identifying & preparing educational resources around different topics and engage smaller groups to share the resources based on the collected photos : Example : Gaganendrath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore are both in public domain - their works can be used to create, research and write articles, illustrate articles pertaining to the pictures collected; fellows can then present their works online, at schools, etc. Fellows will also be responsible for conducting audio/video interviews with Curators to source information about these objects. This material will additionally be published on Wiki. Fellows will undergo a Wikidata training workshop to add the images collected through the PhotoContest & create an “image grid” in sequence of the historical period the objects belong to. This will also help interlink objects from different museums.

3. An online presentation of pics, articles & a report demonstrating the value of Wiki x GLAM will be published on THL.

4. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign or event? If so, please select the relevant campaign below. If so, please select all the relevant campaigns from the list below. If "other", please state which.

Not applicable

5. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

This is the first time we're working on this project, and hope to turn it into a larger program. For now the two lead volunteers on this program would be:

User:Medhavigandhi (Lead, Volunteer) : founder of The Heritage Lab - a digital platform for exploring India's museums, art & cultural heritage, educational resources and more. Over the past decade she has worked at the intersection of public engagement with culture, social development and education. She strongly advocates open-access to digital cultural heritage & is keen to explore the opportunities it presents for participation and co-creation. Co-founder of THL Open.

User:DesiBoy101 (Co-Lead, Volunteer) : an engineer with a keen interest in Indian arts, culture and heritage. He mainly creates and edits Wiki pages of Indian artists with a focus on Indian women artists. He actively engages with images on Commons to improve the visibility of the GLAM content from India. He has co-created THL Open which is a digital platform that aggregates openly licensed GLAM content related to India from Wikimedia Commons. He usually uses these openly available GLAM images along with open source tools to create his artworks (like GIFs!) as a hobbyist.

We are currently in conversation with one of our earlier editathon-participants to join as a Project Coordinator; We will also be roping in some of our earlier editathon co-organizers such as User:AlishaAWM to lead curated photo-walks

6. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Age (regency), Geography, Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial

6.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

Content Gaps being addressed:

Age (historical content), Geography (increasing representation of Indian heritage), & Cultural Identity of communities represented through objects and art at museums. Examples of content gaps to be addressed include those about people, traditions and history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koli_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidery_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punkah

7. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Culture, heritage or GLAM

8. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities?

Not applicable

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?

We have been working on involving people interested in culture, heritage and the arts, mostly with an academic /professional background in the field and those who are largely unfamiliar with Wikimedia. We have been able to do this mainly through Art+Feminism campaigns since 2017 and most recently the THL Open GLAM photo-upload competition. Through this competition, we hope to attract professional and amateur photographers as well, and those who visit museums. We have been able to keep in touch with our past participants through our email newsletter, and will continue to do so. We especially hope to involve the Walk Leaders in future Museum WikiMeets & enable Curators to make photo-walks for WikiGroups a permanent feature of future exhibitions.

10. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants?

We commit to familiarise our Walk Leaders, and Fellowship participants with the Universal Code of Conduct & Friendly Space Policy at the beginning of our engagement. The Friendly space policies meta-page will also be linked on our Project Website.

11. Please tell us about how you have let your Wikimedia communities know about the planned activities and this proposal. Use this space to describe the processes you carried out to make the community more involved in planning this proposal. Please link the on-wiki community discussion(s) around the proposals.

I have not had an opportunity to discuss this proposal with Wikimedia communities, but have discussed the same with colleagues from the GLAM sector about its feasibility and need.

In private, I have been able to discuss this proposal with experienced Wikipedians who have helped me think of the different resources we can build on.

12. Are you aware of other Rapid Fund proposals in your local group, community, or region that are being submitted and that align with your proposed project?

No

If yes:

12.1 Did you explore the possibility of doing a joint proposal with other leaders in your group?

N/A

12.2 How will this joint proposal allow you to have better results?

N/A

13. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedia partners to implement this proposal? Required.

Yes

13.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

This project will partner with 10 independent Cultural Heritage Expert-Networks to develop thematic knowledge walks at museums and extend participation; we will also be partnering with museums to host signages about the contest and "Add this to Wikimedia Commons" labels. We usually do have Media Partners for museum-wide campaigns and for this too, will be looking at our past-partners (Midday, Radio Mirchi, etc) to help promote the campaign.

14. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of THREE options that most apply.

Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Identify Topics for Impact, Innovate in Free Knowledge, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

15. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

As someone working with GLAMs on digital strategy and advocating open-knowledge, this project will help shed light on:

How open/receptive are GLAMs towards the idea of adding collections to WikiCommons? How likely are GLAMs to work on, host or lead Wiki projects and campaigns? What are the barriers? Do the metrics like views / use of pictures from WikiCommons mean anything to GLAMs? How can this help them in the future? How do GLAMs view projects such as these in terms of their public-engagement or scholarship?

What is the public sentiment towards adding on Wiki-Commons without a prompt? Will they continue to upload? What is exciting or difficult about uploading their pictures to WikiCommons?

How do public-engagement campaigns such as these foster relations between GLAMs and their community?

Understand Wiki tools in the context of digital humanities.

16. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following spaces provided.

Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics	Description	Target
Discovering Cultural Heritage	Feedback from participants to understand the museum-visit culture, and their motivation to return if at all. What were the unexpected discoveries about museums? Feedback from Fellows: the importance of Participatory initiatives such as this and the outcome (case study).	5
GLAMs and Wiki Collaborations : an Analysis	How many GLAMs are willing to establish a relationship with Wiki projects and can commit to programs like Wikimedians in Residence, Editathons, Photowalks, etc. as part of their strategy? If not, what are the barriers - through interviews with GLAM leadership.	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

17. Core quantitative metrics.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target
Number of participants	The no. of participants we expect to participate in the curated photo-walks : 100-150 Other participants : 200 at least from other cities	350
Number of editors
Number of organizers	No. of walk partners / museums who will host targeted walks.	10

Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
Wikimedia Commons	No. of new Museums featured (categories) : at least 15 No. of existing Museum-categories expanded : at least 10 (we definitely expect more, but these are museums that have expressed interest)	25
Wikipedia	No. of articles improved No. of articles created	100
Wikidata	Number of Wikidated items created or improved.	100
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

17.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

18. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support.

We will use the Programs and Events Dashboard but would also like to use the 'Tools for Wiki Loves Photo Competitions'. Would appreciate support on the latter!

Financial Proposal

19. & 19.1 What is the amount you are requesting from Wikimedia Foundation? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

385000 INR

19.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

4951.1 USD

20. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zWOYCwuWL1MF1PKwMCMely7oIVqvGzDkdgky7Mn2gOY/edit?usp=sharing

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

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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).

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