Grants:Project/Rapid/Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center/Art + Feminism 2020 Editathon

statusfunded

Rapid Grants

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center/Art + Feminism 2020 Editathon

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center seeks funding to host a training/editathon in association with the Art + Feminism campaign on Saturday, March 28. This event will be part of the community programming associated with the exhibition Question Everything! The Women of Black Mountain College.

targetArt + Feminism

start dateMarch 01, 2020

end dateMarch 28, 2020

budget (local currency)$950

budget (USD)$950

grant typeorganization

non-profit statusyes

grantee• Cpfffr

contact(s)• carissa@blackmountaincollege.org• info@blackmountaincollege.org

organization (if applicable)• Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

website (if applicable)• www.blackmountaincollege.org

friendly space expectations

ucc

privacystatement

Create your report

Please see the sample Editathon/Training application before drafting your application.

Project Goal

Choose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.

1. Recruit new editors, particularly at the undergraduate level through partnerships with educational institutions
2. Increase skills for existing editors
3. Increase awareness of gender representation issues in the arts
4. Add or improve content relating to artists of all creative disciplines, especially those with marginalized gender identities

Project Plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:

1. Are you doing one editathon or training or a series of editathons or trainings?

We plan to host one training + editathon in association with the Art + Feminism campaign on Saturday, March 28. This event will be part of the community programming surrounding an exhibition on the women of Black Mountain College, the progressive educational institution that became a haven for interdisciplinary creative practice in Western North Carolina from 1933-1957.

2. How will you let your community know about the event? Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions.

In addition to posting the event on the Outreach Dashboard and posting to the Asheville Wikipedia Meetups page, we will promote the event via social media platforms, our e-newsletter, and listservs to several educational and arts communities. We have spoken with professors teaching relevant courses at Warren Wilson College and the University of North Carolina Asheville, who will encourage their students to attend this event and fold lessons learned into their pedagogy. These include Julie Levin Caro, Warren Wilson College art history department chair, Leisa Rundquist, UNCA art history professor; and Ellen Pearson, UNCA public history professor.

This will be the first of two Women’s History Month editathons in the Asheville, North Carolina region. The second will be hosted in the North Carolina Room of Pack Memorial Library, which also served as the site of a Black History Month editathon in 2019. We are in conversation with librarian Katherine Cutshall about how we can effectively market the events as a two-part Women’s History Month series, cross-pollinating our audiences to increase awareness and momentum.

3. Do you have experienced Wikimedia editors to lead the event?

BMCM+AC’s staff lead on this project (Cpfffr) has previously participated in several editathons, has personal experience as an editor, and has a history of involvement with related digital initiatives in museums, libraries, and archives. Former Regional Ambassador for the Southeastern US and trained Campus Ambassador Kasey Baker (Kayz911) has also committed to co-leading the event.

We feel equipped to give guidance to editors with the participants that are currently committed, and we are reaching out to the North Carolina network of Wikipedians to confirm that other experienced editors who can provide detailed and comprehensive support are available.

4. Do participants have the equipment or skills needed to participate and contribute high quality content? If not, how will you support them?

This editathon will be designed to offer support for participants without prior knowledge of Wikipedia. The event schedule will emphasize recruiting and training new editors, including a class of students at Warren Wilson College who are enrolled in a course on the topic of Black Mountain College, and students of the University of North Carolina Asheville. We will facilitate a variety of low-barrier ways to contribute to Wikipedia; for instance, offering hands-on help, providing resources and fact sheets with citations for simple edits, providing a list of existing articles to be improved (which will be shared beforehand on our project page and event dashboard); and scheduling dedicated time throughout the day for new editor training and demonstrations on a projected screen in the museum’s upper-level gallery.

The research library of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center is home to roughly 1,500 volumes relating to the individuals associated with Black Mountain College and the Bauhaus, as well as artistic trends ranging from the ancient to the contemporary, with a particular emphasis on mid-century modernism. Museum staff will be available to provide research assistance.

Additional resources will be provided by the Western Regional Archives/State Archives of North Carolina, the staff and volunteers of which will prepare digital resources and fact sheets (such as providing biographies from archival finding aids, and uploading digitized primary source material to their Flickr page) in order to maximize the information available.

5. How will you engage participants after the event(s)?

Participants will be added to the museum's e-newsletter, which will notify them about events and community programming in the future, including future editathons if this one is a success. To determine impact and interest, participants will also be given a post-event survey, in which they will be asked to rate their previous familiarity with Wiki(p/m)edia, gender representation in public history, and the research resources available at this and other local institutions.

Few editathons have been hosted in the Western North Carolina region. We hope that this event will build momentum and help introduce Wikipedia to a new cross-section of individuals by leveraging and strengthening existing partnerships. New editors will be thanked on their Talk pages after the event, invited to continue editing, and encouraged to add their usernames to Wikipedia:Meetup/Asheville to be notified of upcoming Wiki-related events at BMCM+AC or other organizations in the area. Organizers of this event will monitor this page in order to continue to lend support to participants and events organized by regional partners.

The involvement of educators at Warren Wilson College and UNC Asheville will also help extend the reach of our efforts, by continuing the conversation on digital public history, representation and access in their classrooms.

6. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

This event will be presented as community programming in conjunction with the exhibition Question Everything! The Women of Black Mountain College. This exhibition will celebrate the work and impact of the women associated with Black Mountain College, an experimental learning community that was committed to democratic governance and to the idea that hands-on work and creative exploration are central to the experience of learning.

The exhibition features borrowed works alongside pieces from the BMCM+AC collection by a wide-ranging group of artists including Anni Albers, Suzi Gablik, Ruth Asawa, Jo Sandman, M.C. Richards, and Hazel Larsen Archer. Through artworks, personal accounts and archival film and photographs, Question Everything! details how this new generation went forward with a strong sense of what it meant to be a woman in the 20th century, forging new paths for themselves and those who followed in their footsteps. Additional events that BMCM+AC will host as part of this exhibition include performances, workshops, film screenings, readings, gallery lectures, and panel discussions centered on the topic of women in the arts. Attendees at these events will be informed about the upcoming editathon.

Impact

How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets:

We anticipate at least fifteen students from the partnering educational institutions to attend as participants, with additional participants from the general public. We will consider the event a success if we have reached fifteen new editors and created or improved fifteen articles relating to artists with marginalized gender identities.

1. Number of events: 1
2. Number of participants: 25-30
3. Number of new editors: 15
4. Number of of articles created or improved: 15
5. Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events): n/a

Resources

What resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).

The venue and Wi-Fi will be provided by the event host and organizer, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. We are seeking support to market this event to make it a success; provide food, drinks, and other perks such as prizes to participants; and defray other supplies. Participants will be asked to bring their own laptops; however, in case anyone is unable to do so, we are requesting support for the cost of a few backup laptops which will be rented for the day from a local vendor.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.

• Food and drinks: $600
• Marketing (printing posters, flyers): $50
• Marketing (paid social media): $25
• Wholesale cost of prizes to recognize exceptional contributors/volunteers (five tote bags or t-shirts; five books/exhibition catalogues to be selected by participants from the museum store): $125
• Low cost stickers for participants: $25
• Rental cost of laptops as backups (four laptops @ $25/ea daily from Charlotte Street Computers): $100
• Miscellaneous supplies (printing fact sheets, name tags, providing pencils and paper for notetaking, etc.): $25

Total: $950

Endorsements

Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

• This is a super well-thought out proposal and I'm happy to endorse this, as a co-lead organizer of Art+Feminism--Siankevans (talk) 22:03, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Endorsing on behalf of Art+Feminism. --Kiraface (talk) 22:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
•  Support This sounds like a great event and I support the coverage of this subject Terasaface (talk) 19:34, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Gkuriger (talk) 14:18, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
• I like that this is being done in conjunction with the "Question Everything" exhibition. Jgo1906 (talk) 22:23, 21 January 2020 (UTC)