Grants:Project/Tamil Wikimedia-Noolaham Foundation/Multimedia Documentation of Traditional Trades and Crafts of Eastern, Northern and Up-Country Sri Lanka/Timeline


Monthly updates edit

Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.

Month 1 - July 2017 edit

This first phase of the project involved surveying/mapping out the crafts and trades of East, North and Upcountry. Towards this end, four meetings were held June 17, July 8, July 29 and August 5, 2017. The crafts and trades identified through the discussion are list here. We are also reviewing templates from handicrafts.nic.in to base our own templates: Short Form, Long Form.

Communications edit

East edit

Prasad and Thulanch as well as Sivakumar located in East participated in the meetings. Prasad and Sivakumar are planning to engage a local college in the project and hold a workshop there. We are also planning some initial ground work in the East.

Upcountry edit

Two of these meetings (July 8, Aug 5) focused on Upcountry. Thamilini was visiting the Upcountry (remote central hill country region of Sri Lanka) in early August. She connected with activists and civil organizations in the region in the fields of documentation/education/cultural preservation. Six interested participants from Upcountry participated in the Aug 5 skype call: https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/6v1g We are palnning to hold a workshop in Upcountry in late August or early September.

We have modified the scope of content of the project in Upcountry somewhat to include other topics areas such as folklore, culture, local geography/places, etc. We felt that as one of the of the focus of this project is outreach, the adjustment of content scope was necessary.

Resource Development edit

Collaboration edit

We reached out to Information Technology Education and Entrepreneurship Foundation (ITEE Foundation), and they have provided Creative Commons licensed educational resources (DVDs) that can be distributed via planned outreach workshops and events.

Request for help edit

  • We are using skype phone calls to connect to people in remote regions as they do not have access to Skype or reliable Internet. We would be interested to know if Wikimedia provides any phone facilities for meetings.
  • A lot of people in Upcountry and other places simply do not have access to computers. Thus, we are interested in resources related to training people to contribute via mobile Wikimedia platforms.

Month 2 - Aug 2017 edit

 
 
 

Upcountry Workshop Planning edit

In the month of August, most of our activities focused on the first ever Wikipedia - Noolaham Workshop organized in the Upcountry on Aug 28, 2017. A planning meeting was held on Aug 5, 2017. The local coordination (place, travel and stay arrangements, food, social-media etc) was undertaken by volunteers from Upcountry.

We had reach out to local education department officers. Also, we had significant interest through local contacts. However, we had to limit the number of participants due to lack of availability of computers.

Wikipedia - Noolaham Upcountry Workshop edit

The event was of successful. 36 participants from various remote locations participated in the workshop. The focus of the event was a hands-on introduction to Wikipedia and to the project. A long term Tamil Wikipedia contributor Sivakumar led the Wikipedia related sessions. An oral history of a local folk artist was recorded at the event. A detail report on the workshop by P.Vijayakanthan can be found here: http://www.namathumalayagam.com/2017/08/blog-post_31.html?m=1

Senthil from SERVE Foundation provided a session on digital educational resources. These are developed to supplement Sri Lankan curriculum. The session was well received as there is a shortage of teachers for technical subjects in the Upcountry. In addition, we are in discussion with Senthil to release these resources under CC-BY-SA.

The total cost of the budget was 42873.00 Sri Lankan Rupees or around USD 280.20. The budget can be found here: https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/6vp8.

Followup - Field Work - Eastern Workshop Planning edit

There was a followup meeting held Sep 9. Several new contributors from Upcountry joined the discussion. A detailed summary of the discussions will be shared soon. The local team is self-organizing to expand the coverage of topics related to Upcountry. Also, field documentation and related wiki work are being planned.

In addition, some preliminary planning for workshops and field work in the Eastern province was done.

Month 3 - Sep 2017 edit

Prasadbatti undertook a pilot field work in Arayampathy, Eastern Sri Lanka to document coconut coir based crafts. Photographs and video recordings were created. Lack of equipment and lack of access to high speed Internet connection were major issues encountered. Additional planning is needed prior to field visits to maximize the use of equipment and volunteer contribution. In addition, we have to develop protocols to document social issues that often come up through these documentations.

Month 4, 5 - Oct - Nov 2017 edit

 
Trinco Workshop, Nov 26, 2017
 
Trinco Workshop, Nov 26, 2017

Trinco Workshop edit

First ever Wikipedia workshop was held in the Sri Lanka’s Eastern province’s capital Trincomalee on November 26. Twenty nine people, including researchers, students, professionals and people interested in crafts and cultural documentation attended the workshop. Four volunteers traveled long distance to help conduct this workshop. A core group has been identified for further training and involvement. Thushi from Trinco has joined our regular calls.

First Detail Documentation - Coir Work edit

 
Image uploaded to Wikicommons via the Coir Work Field Documentation

Based on field work by led by Prasanth we are developing the first detail coverage. The selected craft is coir work (தும்புத் தொழில்). Video editing, transfering, and uploading has challenges, but that is being worked out.

Equipment and Training Needs in the Upcountry edit

Upcountry has team told us that they need equipment (camera, hard drives) to conduct field documentation. In addition, they need wiki training. We are working on getting the equipment and providing the training.

WhatsApp Group & Discussions edit

We have created a WhatsApp group https://chat.whatsapp.com/9l83SOFJLB5L5mjO11XWMq for this project to co-ordinate and discuss this project. Many people do not make use of email or wiki, thus the WhatsApp has emerged as a focal point for discussions. The content of the discussions get shared in the wiki and email as well. Meetings are documented here: https://ta.wikipedia.org/s/6x6k

Template, Categorization, Campaign edit

Month 7, 8 9 - Jan - March 2018 edit

 
Batticaloa Workshop, March 23, 2018
 
Batticaloa Workshop, March 23, 2018
 
Batticaloa Workshop, March 23, 2018

Through the outreach work, we have formed solid teams in the Upcountry, East and North. We focused on field work during this phase.

Field Works edit

Field Works works were carried out by teams in East, North and Upcountry. Photos, oral histories and videos were created. The following crafts have been covered in detail. Details can be found here.

  • Papyrus Works - East - (Oral Histories)
  • Weaving & Spinning - East
  • Pottery - North, East
  • Bamboo Works - Upcountry, East, North
  • Coconut Shell Works - North
  • Palmyra Works - North
  • Musical Instruments - Upcountry

Batticaloa Workshop edit

Prasad, Sivakumar and Thulanchana led the organizing of workshop in Batticaloa, East, Sri Lanka. More than 30 participants, including students, teachers, writers and media people took part in the training. Following the event, we were happy to have been joined by a team of University students in the field work. The students showed tremendous enthusiasm for Wikipedia and documentation.

Processing, Documentary edit

Though these field works we have generated hundreds of photographs and more than 20 - 30 hours of documentary footage, including oral histories. We had plan to upload materials for processing via North Eastern University facilities, but due to strike there, this has been delayed.

We plan to focus on uploading and processing of the works we have collected. Thamilini is editing coir related media into a documentary. Another team is planning to develop Bamboo works related works into a documentary.


Is your final report due but you need more time?



Extension request edit

New end date edit

June 30, 2019

Rationale edit

We are on track with respect to output, outreach, capacity building and sustainability. We use the budget with careful consideration and accountability.

Our project is taking longer than originally planned. This is due to longer than expected time it took to do the outreach and team building work. Also, issues related to lower internet availability in the regions where we work has impacted our workflow.

We would like to request an extension of the project duration to June 2019. We feel this would allow us to effectively involve the teams for the long term as well as execute the next phases of this project.

We would be happy to provide any additional info or answer any questions.

Extension request approved - new end date of June 30, 2019 edit

I am approving your extension request for a new end date of June 30, 2019. As we discussed in our check-in today, please be sure to monitor your resources and energy to make sure you plan to have the stamina to finish your project. I would prefer to have you do less and follow it all the way through, than to do more and find yourselves running out of stamina to finish it. Generally, it takes a more time to process video documentation than to take the videos in the first place, so be sure to plan for the full workflow. It sounds like you are thinking carefully about this already, but I just wanted to offer a word of caution since I myself have sometimes bitten off more than I could chew and then regretted it, if you know that English idiom). If you find that you need to scale back to your original scope at some point, just let me know. I look forward to seeing the final conclusions of this project! --Marti (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 1 September 2018 (UTC)