Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 in Malta/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2022-03 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/Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 in Malta.
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? The project was relatively successful, although not all targets were fully met. On the whole, engagement was somewhat lower than expected and lower than the previous edition of WLM in Malta, however, the quality and relevance of the photos submitted was nonetheless high. Testament to this is the fact that 60% of all photos submitted are now being used in Wikipedia articles, indicating that they either addressed subjects that lacked images in Wikimedia Commons, or else that they improved upon existing images. It is also encouraging to note that the number of newcomers to the contest remains high, with 65% of participants being newly-registered Wikimedia accounts. Nonetheless, engaging with participants who have taken part in previous editions remains an ongoing challenge, with a relatively low rate of return participation in this year's edition of WLM.

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
60 participants	37 participants	Engagement was slightly lower than expected and lower than some previous editions. Nonetheless, 65% of participants had never participated before and registered a Wikimedia account after the start of the contest, indicating that the project was successful in terms of reaching potential new audiences.
1,000 photos submitted	282 photos submitted	The total number of photos submitted was lower than expected and lower than the previous year's edition. We are not sure why this happened but now that we've run WLM for some years we know that some years are better than others.
75 photos used in Wikimedia projects	169 photos used in Wikimedia projects	The number of photos used in Wikipedia articles is significantly higher than anticipated. This indicates that a relatively large proportion of the photos submitted are valuable in terms of providing new knowledge to articles about their subjects and related content.

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?

Our ongoing partnerships with public institutions such as Spazju Kreattiv (Malta's National Centre for Creativity) continued to grow with the addition of the Valletta Design Cluster, which helped promote the contest and held a small exhibition of the winning entries. Although the COVID-19 situation remains challenging for these institutions, their ongoing engagement with Wiki Loves Monuments and other Wiki-related activities extremely encouraging and important to us.

What did not work so well?

As explained earlier, the rate of engagement with this year's edition of WLM was not as high as we would have liked it to be. This is not helped by the ongoing COVID-19 situation, since restrictions prevented us from holding in-person events such as an exhibition during the month of September (which we regularly held prior to the onset of the pandemic).

What would you do differently next time?

We would like to continue to expand our list of monuments and make access to this list more simple through the use of Wikidata, as this would enable us to map out the diversity, range and location of the various monuments across the Maltese islands in a more user-friendy manner.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

Items	Sub-items	Amount (in Euro)	Total
Promotion	Printed material	200	241
Promotion	Online promotion	41	241
Prizes (in the form of books and/or photographic equipment i.e. not cash awards)	First prize	250	1,124.83
	Second prize	150
	Third prize	100
	4th-10th prize & prize for maximum contributor	175
	Gifts for judges	299.83
	Printing & framing of top three entries	150
Total			1,365.83

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds? We have a total of €59.17 remaining from this grant.

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of 59.17 EUR were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Community Malta Simple Annual Plan 2023.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?