Friends' Newsletter/2016/Issue 02
Interesting times - welcome to your summer newsletter
Hello and welcome to our second Newsletter of the year where we let you know about goings on within the Wikimedia community.
The past week has been a turbulent one for UK and European politics and the uncertainty generated by the vote to leave the EU cast a shadow over our staff and volunteers as they engaged with the global Wikimedia community at Wikimania 2016 Esino Lario in Italy. Withdrawing from the EU is likely to affect scientific funding and the education sector, and lead to higher taxes and further government spending cuts. As we push forward the cause of open knowledge, we will look to deal with the challenges ahead as we understand what they mean for our sector.
Aside from these developments, we have been continuing to prepare for our AGM in Birmingham on July 7, the schedule of which you can find here. This will be a good opportunity to consult with our membership and discuss the new strategic framework and future direction and priorities of Wikimedia UK. If you’re a member, we hope that you can join us.
In the past couple of months, we have had a new Wikimedian in Residence begin work at the Wellcome Library and have participated in a number of successful editathons with Full Fact, Tate Britain and other institutions. Awaken the Dragon!, a writing competition we supported to improve content on Wales, came to an end. The Core Contest competition also ends this week and the winners will be announced shortly.
The EU's Freedom of Panorama consultation ended in June and the European Commission will now consider submissions from the public before it decides on its future policy direction.
We have also continued reaching out to volunteers for their project ideas and attended events to add photographic content to Wikimedia Commons, notably the annual Pride celebrations in London on June 25.
Looking forward, we have an event at the end of July to train Wikipedians to train others in editing best practice, which you can sign up for here. There will also be a meetup for residents and for lecturers and we are working on further partnerships with other institutions which we hope to be able to tell you about soon!
Pride in London – photographer Katy Blackwood on working with Wikimedia UK
My name is Katy Blackwood. I’m a music photographer, fledgling photo-journalist and writer that has been published in print, worked as a professional and, on Saturday, donated her time and photographs to Wikimedia UK in the name of knowledge and free content.
The event was Pride in London, an occasion surely close to the heart of anybody that values equality, inclusivity and solidarity, whether they are LGBT or not. In such a divisive week for the United Kingdom, it brought together an estimated one-million people to celebrate humans of all cultures and sexualities, highlighted by a triumphant parade.
Working with Wikimedia UK, I attended as a member of the media in order to create high-quality photography of the parade and its build-up. These photos, including some by John Lubbock, have now been released under a licence that allows them to be used, for free, by anyone.
The idea of giving away photographs for free is an alien, even abhorrent concept for the vast majority of professional photographers. ‘It’ll be great exposure’ is a phrase that embodies everything that is wrong with the media and arts today, that our work is not worth paying for. Credit doesn’t pay the bills, and thousands of pounds of camera equipment doesn’t pay for itself.
Naturally, I had my doubts about shooting for Wikimedia. The idea came up last year, as a possible opportunity for me to contribute to Wikipedia again for the first time since I was a teenage girl. Lapsed editors such as myself are common, but unlike then, I now have a professional skill – and felt I could contribute by using it.
The idea of specifically shooting at Pride in London was a more recent development. The issues that Pride highlights – discrimination, homophobia, xenophobia and exclusion to name a few – are fought mostly by non-profit groups and activist blogs.
We wanted to create photographs that allow such causes and bloggers to illustrate their content with high-quality visuals, for use under CC BY-SA 4.0, requiring attribution to myself but otherwise free for use as desired.
Beyond the philanthropy, I am also hoping that my work with Wikimedia UK will be an opportunity to show what I can do as a photographer in new environments. It’s a chance for me to build relationships and see my work used widely. For my ambitions in the field of photo-journalism, Wikimedia’s influence is invaluable, and we are hoping to open doors that will allow me to further my career while volunteering.
We’re keen to follow-up our success at Pride in London with coverage of other significant events this summer and beyond into 2017. We’re exploring the possibility of working with the UK Parliament to improve Wikipedia’s photographs of politicians and the political process, and we’re hoping to attend more major events as well.
We are hoping that more photographers will come forward to contribute to these exciting projects. Wikimedia UK has expenses available for travel and accommodation, and is keen to support anyone looking to create high-quality images so long as they are happy to release them under a free licence. Please also reach out to us with suggestions of events and topics that we should cover in the future.
I am, fittingly, proud of my work on Saturday – and I hope you like my photographs too. You can check out just my own photos in this category, and I’d love to hear how you use them (you can reach me at katy@katyblackwood.co.uk). You can also view all of our free-to-use photographs from Pride in London 2016 in this category.
Revised three year strategy following consultation
In May, Wikimedia UK ran a community consultation on our draft new strategic framework for 2016 – 19. Thank you to everyone who responded to this, either on wiki, by email or via the mailing list. I really appreciate volunteers and members taking the time to engage with the strategy and we received some very helpful feedback, much of which has been incorporated into the updated framework.
In particular, there were a number of comments about the draft objectives for the third strategic goal for this period, concerning education and learning. This probably reflected the fact that this is the least well developed area for us in terms of delivery and we are still developing our ideas – alongside the community – for how best to work with education and to support learners. Our education meeting in May was very helpful in highlighting past practice and future ideas in this area – the notes from which are here.
Several people raised a concern that by talking about cultural heritage in our outcomes we would be excluding other areas of knowledge, such as science. This was not the intention of myself or the trustees so I have changed the wording of this planned outcome. I have also clarified some of the objectives around advocacy.
There was a hope expressed that WMUK would do more than ‘seek to engage’ volunteers, and that volunteering could be mentioned specifically around developing partnerships and speaking at events. Whilst I feel that the centrality of volunteers does come through in the strategic framework, particularly in our values and operating principles – which remain relatively unchanged from the previous five year organisational strategy – I have updated the strategy to make this implicit intention more explicit.
The new, revised strategic framework was formally approved by the board at their meeting on 10th June. Following this decision, I am now working on the three year business plan, which provides more context for the strategy as well as details of planned priorities and programmes for the three year period, and internal resources including staffing and funding and financial forecasts. The wiki will be updated soon but in the meantime, the revised framework is here.
Thanks again for your interest and your thoughtful responses to the consultation.
Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
Supporting our community to create open content: we want your ideas!
As the summer rolls around, there are so many important cultural events which the Wikimedia community can engage with and create content about. The European Football Championships start this week, and the Olympics aren’t far away either. The festival season is already beginning, and there are hundreds of other cultural events taking place across the UK and the world, from religious ceremonies to elections, the London Comic Con, Pride, or any other kind of commemoration or anniversary events.
Wikimedia UK is hoping to support people who want to cover any notable events to create high quality images available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. We have grant funding available for photographers who know how to take great photographs which could be used across Wikimedia projects. We would also be interested to support people who would like to add other content besides photographs. If you are going to particular events, we also may be able to liaise with the organisers to get you accreditation.
You can have a look at some of the featured images Wikimedia UK has helped to create in previous years here.
We normally give project grants up to £250 for expenses. You can refer to the grants application process to get an idea of the kind of projects we support. Projects which address diversity gaps would be of particular interest, or activities which link to our current partnerships with other institutions.
We want to reach out to volunteers and the wider wikimedia community, to support your work and help you to do more. We want to know about your talents and see if we can promote your work in support of Wikimedia projects, so if you have ideas for events you would like to go to and CC content you could produce there, please get in touch with us!
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See London events list.
Visit England events.
Global events.
Anniversary and events calendar.
English Heritage events.
This blog is also available in French, Spanish and Russian on the Wikimedia Foundation blog.
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June 5th was World Environment Day, the United Nations’ designated day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment.
Many of us know the world faces unprecedented pressure from human activities. The United Nations Environment Programme Global Environment Outlook reports:
The state of global biodiversity is continuing to decline, with substantial and ongoing losses of populations, species and habitats. For instance, vertebrate populations have declined on average by 30 per cent since 1970, and up to two-thirds of species in some taxa are now threatened with extinction.
Education is key to reversing this decline, to find sustainable solutions to the problems we all face and to learn to live sustainably with the rest of the natural world.
Sustainable environmental action hinges on the education of all citizens, from the earliest age, in sustainable development…..No single country, however powerful, can resolve the challenges of our common environment. (Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO)
UNESCO created the Man and the Biosphere Programme “to establish a scientific basis for the improvement of relationships between people and their environments”. Biosphere Reserves are areas of terrestrial and coastal/marine ecosystems or a combination thereof, which are internationally recognized within the framework of UNESCO’s Programme on Man and the Biosphere (MAB). Each Biosphere Reserve promotes solutions reconciling the conservation of biodiversity with its sustainable use. Today there are 669 biosphere reserves in 120 countries belonging to a World Network of Biosphere Reserves, all offering us opportunities to explore how to live sustainably.
Wikipedia is where 500 million of us go to understand complex subjects like climate change, biodiversity and sustainability, and give us information about the world around us. It can also foster our appreciation, wonder and empathy with the rest of the natural world through photographs,.
Everyone can contribute to Wikipedia, it gives us the opportunity to share what we know and what we see, in 2015 one trillion photos were created, more than all previous years combined. More people have phones with cameras than ever before and mobile internet is becoming a major education tool for the developing and developed countries.
UNESCO and Wiki Loves Earth have partnered to create Wiki Loves Earth Biosphere Reserves, a competition to create photographs free for everyone to use and to enrich Wikipedia. 10 winning images will be shared on the UNESCO website and social media and will be entered into the Wiki Loves Earth international competition. Wiki Loves Earth competitions around the world havecreated over 180,000 images of protected natural sites.
If you don’t have access to a Biosphere Reserve you can still be involved by promoting the project, adding the photographs to Wikipedia and using them to teach people about the environment.
To help more people to learn about biosphere reserves, UNESCO have made the official descriptions available under a Creative Commons license, which Wikipedia volunteers will use to create missing articles.
UNESCO’s mandate is to build peace in the minds of men and women. Biosphere Reserves are the places where we discover ways to live in harmony with the environment. Wikipedia is where we inspire and teach each other how.
Wiki Loves Earth Biosphere Reserves will run from today until 30 June.
Wiki Loves Earth Biosphere Reserves is created in collaboration by the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme, Wikimedia volunteers (special thanks to Navino Evans, Mykola Kozlenko and Romaine), John Cummings (Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO), and Wikimedia Ukraine.
John Cummings, Wikimedian-in-Residence at UNESCO