Grants:Project/Rapid/Shikeishu/XPOSED 2021/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2021-22 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Shikeishu/XPOSED 2021.
• You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
• You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

We managed to reach all of our four project goals. We recruited new editors within the queer community and the film community of Berlin, but also attracted existing editors in Berlin to editing about queer topics. We are happy about how the two workshops went, participants liked the atmosphere and communicated that they learned a lot. Especially the new editors were proud of having published a Wikipedia article.

As part of the project, we also wrote to several filmmakers whose work was shown at the film festival this year and contacted them about providing portrait photos for Wikimedia Commons. Lots of filmmakers were responsive and also sent us source materials that we could use for their articles. We managed to correct also sensitive information about one filmmaker. We uploaded three portrait photos already to Wikimedia Commons and the festival has given access to Shikeishu to festival photos of the past ten years, from which he can still upload a selection of photos of filmmakers that were present at the festival in previous years.

Through the vast promotion of the workshops through the channels of XPOSED Queer Film Festival, but also through posts about the workshop on different Wiki platforms, we managed to create connections between the queer film and Wikipedia community of Berlin. Last but not least, we are also happy to have contributed content about important queer films and filmmakers that have not been covered by Wikipedia yet, 9 articles (in English, German and Italian) and 3 photos (see event page XPOSED Queer Film Festival 2021). However, we have not managed to fulfill our desired number of participants and number of articles.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
2 events	2 events	Target reached. We went ahead with the planning of the edit-a-thons as planned.
30 participants	8 participants	This target has not been reached unfortunately. See explanation in "Learnings".
20 new editors	4 new editors	This target has not been reached unfortunately. See explanation in "Learnings".
30 created or improved articles	9 created or improved articles (+ some small edits)	Because of the lower number of attendees. See explanation in "Learnings".

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

• What worked well?

That the workshops could take place! The Rapid Grant enabled this basically, as the festival otherwise wouldn't necessarily have had the capacity to support this project.

The cooperation with the film festival was very smooth. Shikeishu is both an experienced Wikipedian and involved in the festival itself, so he could promote the idea easily within the festival team. There was a lot of curiosity and motivation to keep and expand the edit-a-thon format also for future festival editions.

A big and good outcome with edit-a-thons like this with artists and community organisers as the target group is that future project collaborations are made. One participant, involved in the Berlin arts scene, liked the workshop so much that she initiated another edit-a-thon herself to be done in 2022 in Berlin.

The communication with filmmakers was great. Filmmakers were enthusiastic about the project and were happy to provide materials, information and photos.

• What did not work so well?

The small number of people attending is our main failure. We are not exactly sure why this didn't work out as planned, but some reasons we consider:

The venue of the edit-a-thon (BUFA) had a great atmosphere, but was in the end one of the reasons why we couldn't attract more people. Although itself also a small venue where films were shown as parts of the festival, was outside of the Berlin city center and quite far from the main location of the festival (Moviemento). Quite some people registered for the edit-a-thon, but then didn't come.

One of our main target groups was a student group that did a university excursion to the festival, but the size of this group was also smaller this year in the end due to COVID-19.

We asked participants to register for the edit-a-thon in advance because of COVID-19 and fearing that too many people might show up, but this prevented some people from coming. We received very short-notice registrations (as it is usual in the dynamics of a festival with lots of events going on), which were too late for us to respond and send them the location.

The weather was sunny and warm (and it wasn't very much so otherwise in Berlin in August), so people might not have been in the mood for an indoor activity in front of the computer.

• What would you do differently next time?

Have a venue in the city center and close to the main venue of the festival, so people could more easily drop in.

Have no registration via email and keep it rather open, so people can come also relatively spontaneously. (How to still make clear that learning how to edit takes time and commitment though?)

Involve more Wikipedians into the planning and implementation of the edit-a-thon, as setting up the event, communicating about the event with the festival and filmmakers, the Rapid Grant and the workshop itself were an okay workload for one person, but the event could have attracted more people, if more people had been actively involved in the planning and had promoted the event in their circles.

Make it a series of workshops that go on over a longer period of time and can turn into real community building rather than single-time events. I would love to help build a regular queer edit-a-thon series/group in Berlin and there are others that have the same ambition - so maybe the next Rapid Grant that I ask for will just be that.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

• Renting a space: 0 EUR (Was for free/provided by the festival in the end!)
• Advertisement (contribution to booklet costs, social media costs, etc. of XPOSED): 731.01 EUR
• Materials (COVID rapid tests, masks, paper, etc.), drinks and snacks: 207.70 EUR

= 938.71 EUR

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of 561.29 EUR / US$653.51.

Yes, 561.29 EUR. I am completely open to any suggestion - either reimbursing the money or keeping it for a new project to be developed in the next weeks/months.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project? Thank you so much for your support and your willingness to fund projects like this, really appreciate this! Please get back to me about any questions or clarifications. --Shikeishu (talk) 19:41, 12 October 2021 (UTC)