Arts Advocates Required For Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Aotearoa theatre advocate Lisa Maule is part way through a four month Wikipedia Edit-a-thon to increase the visibility of New Zealand arts on the world’s most popular open source information hub after receiving a grant from Wikimedia Foundation.

Lisa fell in love with her mission editing for the encyclopedia giant after a workshop held at The Dowse. “I was inspired to take action after discovering I couldn’t link biographies to major New Zealand arts companies, because the company pages just didn’t exist,” says Lisa. “I created pages for Taki Rua and Pacific Underground and fell in love with the power of celebrating our rich legacy of Aotearoa Performing Arts with the world.”

Wikipedia Edit-a-thons are a meeting point for Wikipedia editor training, collaboration or concentrated effort to create pages, updates or corrections on Wikipedia.

With a target of 20 new Wikipedia articles, in the first two months Lisa and her Edit-a-thon volunteers have created 62 new articles including Kila Kokonut Krew, Oamaru Opera House, choreographer Jack Gray, costume designer Kate Hawley and director Sara Brodie.

“It’s a great start with 62 new articles in the last two months – showing how much we need to cover. We have so much more to do and we’d love more volunteers to join the cause.”

As a final push Lisa is looking for passionate volunteers to help increase the world’s knowledge on New Zealand theatre, dance, opera, circus, access arts, community arts, Pasifika arts, Māori arts, LGBTQIA+ arts, political activism arts, venues or any niche art they’d like to research.

Aotearoa artist biographies are also vital for addition to our visibility, with only 19% of New Zealand arts biographies on women.

“We are looking for dedicated arts advocates with great detective skills and perseverance to join us to research, write, edit or photograph to whakamana and celebrate all our New Zealand arts.”

The next Edit-a-thon is happening 10.30am – 4pm, Saturday 21 August at the Nola Millar Library, Te Whaea, 11 Hutchison Road, Newtown, Wellington. All are welcome with enquiries about joining the Performing Arts Aotearoa Wikiproject to Lisa Maule lisamauleinfo@gmail.com

Wellington Edit-a-thon 21 August details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Wellington/Performing_Arts_Edit-a-thon_2021

NOTES FOR THE EDITOR

· Images: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/if9oskui8b6slq0/AADz_STJErUh8msLEB-daraMa?dl=0

· WikiMedia application framework: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Performing_Arts_Aotearoa_-_Wiki_Project

· Our aims for bio's are: at least 50% of new people are women, 30% are Māori, Pacific Islander or people of colour

· Our aims for organisations / productions are: at least 30% are principally Māori, Pacific Islander or people of colour focused, 10% in the disabilities area

· Outcomes so far: The project goals were to create 20 new Wikipedia articles and to date there have been 62 new articles created. In Wikidata the aims were for 300 new entries and this has also been exceeded with approximately 750 new entries made.

Some new articles examples:

· Kila Kokonut Krew - music and theatre company

· Massive Theatre Company - theatre company

· Oamaru Opera House - venue

· That Bloody Woman - musical production (Did You Know feature on the main page of Wikipedia)

· Wellington City Opera – opera company

· Sara Brodie - director - 2015 Arts Foundation Laureate

· Cathy Livermore - dancer

· Kate Hawley - costume designer, performing arts and film

· Meggan Rollandi - scenographer / designer

· Nisha Madhan - actor

· Julia Croft - actor / director

· Jack Gray - choreographer and director of Atamira Dance Company

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