Community Hours: 2021 Art+Feminism Funding Opportunities
4:44PM Feb 6, 2021
Speakers:
Ada Lovelace
Melissa Tamani
Keywords:
events
grants
funding
articles
feminism
rapid
activities
chris
people
page
program
link
fund
questions
kinds
folks
community
application
proposal
micro
Whatever is most prominent should be just fine.
I'm turning on the captioning now I'm gonna get that set up right before we start letting people in. Okay. Yeah. Mel. I was telling Chris, we had two signups that happened overnight, that both requested French. But unfortunately, it's, it's, it's too late, kind of, you know, like, to be able to set up a French interpreter. So I did email them both, telling them of course you know they're welcome to attend and send them the calendar invite and everything but just you know unfortunately we weren't able to secure French translator. You know, just a couple hours before the event. I don't know if they're gonna.
If they're gonna come or not.
And, Melissa Do you need co hosting capabilities for today, or I gave
it to her it
all set. Okay.
Yes, because mostly my assign section, it's the agenda, and the brave Space Policy, and I think that's it. So I can I won't be intervening much today. But of course if there's any question I can answer I'm happy to do that.
Yeah, and I think just like any really feel free to jump in wherever well. And I think even if we don't have a large turnout like even if it's just Joanna who shows up today. I think it will be good for us to kind of still go through it because we are going to record it all. And I do think, you know, as as you both are well aware people are often deadline driven. So this might be something that they're watching on, on February 11, as they're preparing their application for the deadline
perfectly all right. Application applications come in as close to the deadline as they want
something I would like to mention, for instance, is that you can use the visual editor. On meta to drive your application but you need to to do something on the Settings section, in order to have the decorator.
This is actually something that will be on Tuesday.
And also, I think it would be great if we could provide details about what kind of things we found through our small through our micro grants, because I know there are people who have questions about what kind of technology. Exactly can be fun, and also are on time, but there were people asking if I mean we provide childcare but if we could also provide care for other kinds of people who are. Yes. I mean, older people, parents, disabled people.
Yeah, I think, yeah, do you want to talk more about that now that section of like what are micro funding provides,
I actually no because I don't think we have an agreement on that. I just want to mention this to you. So, I don't know I think it's okay but I don't know if we,
I think yeah I think it's okay. Yeah, okay, I
think it's, yeah. In that case. Yes, sure. So that's all I had.
Um, do you think we should go ahead and get Joanna in here get started. Yeah, let's do that. Okay, Great.
Hello Joanna
hi Joanna.
Hello.
Welcome.
Thank you. I wasn't camera ready.
You look great.
Hello Anthony.
Hello everyone.
Hi Anthony. Good to see you.
Hello, Chris.
Um, so I think we are going to be a pretty small group today. Here comes somebody else. Oh well, maybe we'll give people a couple more moments to join in.
Hello, Rachel. Hi, how are you.
Good, how are you doing well.
So yeah, I think we're gonna be a pretty small group today. Um, but we are going to record today's session just for everybody to be able to to view as the deadline gets closer. But I can go ahead and start share screen and I think we can probably get started as other people join us and people can join us. Let me hit all the things. All right, so we're now recording. Okay. Hi. Welcome. Again, thank you for
Welcome. Again, thank you for being here today and joining us for our community hours, we're going to talk about the 2021 ar and feminism funding opportunities. I do want to make a note that this session is being recorded on February 6 2021. So if you're viewing this at another year another time that information may no longer be accurate but it's accurate for 2021. I would like you to invite you to introduce yourself in the chat with your name pronouns location, and any Art+Feminism experience or what your connection is to the organization, that would be great. I'll put that in the chat too as a reminder.
So, thank you for being here. I also want to highlight that we have. If you click closed captioning at the bottom. It links to a live transcript of the session, which you can also click the link that's in your upper left and that will also take you to a page where that will be saved after this talk as well if you would like to look at that for reference. And as mentioned, we are recording this session so thank you for that. Today, myself Hello, Kira Wisniewski my pronouns are she her, the executive director of feminism, and I'm joined today by Melissa Tamani who is the lead co organizer of Art+Feminism and Chris Schilling who's a senior program officer of rapid grants at the Wikimedia Foundation. I also want to thank them both for spending some time here with us today. I do want to acknowledge that Chris has a hard out at 10 to the hour. Just so we're aware of that I think we should be good on time but wanted to highlight that and he does make a little Irish goodbye. And then I also want to highlight that if it's helpful for anyone here that Melissa is fluent in Spanish.
Now I want to pass it over to Mel.
Thanks. Hi everyone, I'm Melissa Tamani I am one of the our bus families and colleagues right now and in the chat I've been organizing our bus fundraising events since 2015. I have some experience with appliance rapid grants. So, I think I can help you a little bit with that. And the agenda for today. First of all, this is going to be a one hour session.
And, first we want to talk about our brave friendly space agreement, which is something that we always do in every presentation. We host. We're going to talk about rapid grants, Chris is going to lead that part and we're also talking about our platform using micro funding. Then we're going to have a space for you to make questions and we are going to close this session with any final thoughts, you have. So, if you go to the next slide Kira, we always start every ARPA feminism event, talking about our safe brave and also friendly Space Policy. And this is basically a reminder that the goal of this session is to create an encouraging to create an encouraging space for collective learning. And this of course requires intentional behavior from all of us, in which we are conscious of the effects of our we do, and of what we say. And we always respect other people's experiences, and of course we recognize that we can do this work without one another. So, this is our, our friendly Space Policy and we hope that you all agree with. And we have a digital version of this policy which you can find on the link there is at the bottom of the slide, and we have this available in Spanish and English right now. So, I'm going to leave a link up here has a really shared the link where you can find the policy.
Thank you, Mel.
So now,
we're actually gonna pass it over to Chris to talk more about the rapid grant grants program. And, yeah, stop sharing screen and send it over to Chris now.
Thanks. Yeah, let me get my screen set up here. Okay.
Is everyone able to see, is everyone able to view the shared screen. Excellent. Okay. So, welcome everyone. My name is Chris Schilling, I'm the Program Officer, managing rapid grants at the Wikimedia Foundation. And I just want to give a brief overview of what the program is and what kind of needs it can it can provide. In the context of art plus feminism events.
So, rapid grants. At its most basic is a program that supports various kinds of activities and programs in the Wikimedia movement, usually with a budget that ranges between around 500 to $2,000 USD. The kinds of events that we are typically funding for the program include things like workshops and a thons contests, photowalks, but we also find a couple of other things here and there like software developments and wikimedians and residents programs. And actually, we're quite open to other other ideas that, you know, might come our way so if there's something outside of the norm of those kinds of activities that you're looking to try out for art plus feminism events this year, please feel free to reach out and we're really happy to work with you on, you know, developing something outside of, sort of, what we, what we are normally funding in the program. So here I am on the start page of our of our program, and just some examples of very common requests. In terms of the kinds of expenses that we tend to see include things like food for, you know, your events expenses for a series of phones like venues and space reimbursement for travel, that is associated with, like getting folks to a physical location for an event, and then prizes for in this case like an online writing contest but also for other types of concepts as well. Grantees in the program can be both individuals as well as current affiliates in the movement ads user groups in chapters and. And yeah, that's that's kind of the the main, I think, overview for the program. Applications are normally do between the first and 15th of the month but art plus feminism being a specific campaign has its own schedule and so we'll be. We'll be accepting applications through February, 11, and we have been accepting applications for the campaign. Since I think January, 11 about so one month exactly the few other pages are just want to introduce you to our the guidelines and criteria page which I'll click into here. So I'm not going to go through everything on this page but I think this is the page that if you are unfamiliar with the program, and maybe this is your first time preparing an application. I would recommend just taking some time to look through the page here because it will provide some guidance around what kinds of things we fund in the program. And so, there's some very basic general guidelines around things that we fund. There's a lot of cases for compensation that we fund for the program, but we're not able to fund, all kinds of compensated roles that could potentially be involved with an activity. There are certain expenses around facilities or equipment or materials that we fund. If you happen to be doing a software project or digitization project it's more technical in nature. There are expenses associated with those that we funds and can provide some support for, I think, specific to this year. I think a key one, a key place to look is if you are thinking about doing your event in online, or remote capacity, I think one thing I'll bring. I'd like to bring everyone's attention to is that we are able to fund things like subscription services
for video conferencing or webinars or other kinds of online communication that you may require for running your activities. We also can provide support for data that you or your participants might need to access an events, understanding the fact that data cost can be quite expensive. In many parts of the world for private data use. And then, if you want to do any kind of like, kind of wider marketing or messaging outside of, you know, routine sorts of social media posts. We will, or are able to provide some support around that as well. So, just to just to conclude, I think this page here, just recommend that you take a careful look through the content on this page just because it provides a fairly comprehensive overview of, of not just their eligibility criteria for the program, but the sorts of things that you can you can request funding for in a good amount of detail. The last thing I want to actually there's two more things I want to go through so that the next thing is the application page, which will be brief. So, in this tab here apply for a grant. This is where you will go to just prepare your application. And on this page we have a number of templates prepared for different kinds of events that you might be running. So, we have an application for editing. Once for contests, once for photo walks, and so on and so forth. And a good question that came up recently is, if you're running an event that happens to incorporate multiple kinds of activities. What do you do with that like what kind of application should you prepare. I would suggest one of two things. One is, you could just prepare a application under other if you have one that doesn't clearly fit under a single one of these templates. Or, if, if, maybe one of your events is maybe more prominent or maybe occupying more time in the, in the, in the grant activities as a whole. You can just simply go with that so if you haven't edited a thought, that's taking up most of the time, but maybe you just have one workshop or one photo walk, maybe associated with that, then you can just do nothing just note that you will be doing a photo walk in addition to the Edit of tons for those events. The last thing I want to just spend a little bit of time on is the risk assessment tool related to kind of COVID-19 and pandemic related risks with events. One thing that you'll be asked in filling out your rapid grant proposal is whether your event will be taking place in person at like a physical location, or whether it's remote. If it is remote then actually you don't need to worry about this tool or filling out this assessment tool since it's not necessary. But if you do plan to have a gathering a physical gathering of some kind. We do ask that applicants, fill out this fill out this form or go through these steps with this assessment tool on this page here. I'll link this into chat. If I can navigate back to it. Actually, it appears my chat window has disappeared, so I will link it after I finished sharing my screen here. But in any case, if you are running a physical gathering as a part of your activities. There's a number of steps that we asked you to take here. And just a couple of notes here is that in this form or in this assessment process. You'll be asked to fill out a questionnaire, where you'll be asked to report on your own kind of local risk of spread using some regulatory like agencies that we have linked in that tool for you to check on you know kind of what the overall risk of spread is in that region, as well as local like what controls that you might be able to help provide to help mitigate or reduce risk of transmission associated with those events, based on that assessment tool. We will like the tool provides an overall level of risk for your events, and we use that to make a determination of whether an activity is fundable or not. Basically it follows a cutter color coding scheme where, if the results of your responses to this to surveys are in a green or yellow zone. Then, that is eligible for funding. But if it's if it's in an orange red or Maroon zone. Then we can't fund it just because the risk at that point becomes too high. If you do have questions as you're filling out the assessment form, please feel free to reach out to myself or others that are noted on the page here for the assessment tool and we'll be happy to provide guidance or support around, completing the tour questions you might have about it.
I think that's, I think that'll be all for my overview happy to take questions, of course, when we get to the q&a portion of the, of the call. But, but yeah. Looking forward to seeing your proposals and providing support for applicants for our plus feminism events this year.
Great, thanks so much Chris. Um. Next Mel and I are going to talk a little bit about the arm feminism micro funding. So, these are more on a rolling application and they are much smaller than the rapid grants, they're up to $250 us. and so I also want to highlight right now and I'll put this in the chat as well, is that we do have a quick guide, about RFM ism funding, which outlines and links to a lot of things that Chris was talking about with rapid grants, as well as with the micro funding. And so, what the micro funding is good for what you can use micro funding for is for the cost of childcare refreshments internet connectivity or other technology. And so thanks to a grant from Wikimedia Foundation we're able to offer limited stipends that are up to $250,000, or 250,000, that's not correct. $250 to defray the cost of internet access, and so those are for organizers and regions with internet connectivity challenges, and other technologies to support your virtual event so to go a little bit deeper into that we are using a lot of the framing that Chris highlighted that the rapid grants is as well. And so, for instance, if you know for your event, you just really need a zoom membership. Then, probably a micro funding is more applicable for you than a rapid grant, because just have like, where the cost, the costs are there. Then the micro funding from arm feminism. We can also do an example of a creative way that another collective used around funding here in terms of refreshments because we realized that many of our organizers are not meeting in person is. There's a collective in Poland, where they use the micro funding to help attendees pay for takeout, so they're like kind of all meeting at a certain time for their editor THON and everybody ordered takeout so everybody had the snacks that they needed to participate in the edit a THON. And I think I just took over the part that Matt was going to talk about. So Mel I don't know if you want to, of course, sorry, and invite you in to talk a little more here.
No, it's okay.
Something I would like to add is that we have historically funded, the cost of childcare, but you can also use this for. If you have any other people that you are taking care of, for instance, your parents. People with health problems. You could use also these funds to fund a service for taking care of this person for you in today we are going to be editing Wikipedia. So it's not just for childcare.
And
yes, I think that's, that's what I would add right now.
Yeah. So, and I think that really the thinking behind the RM feminism micro funding is kind of like, for those costs that are smaller or less than what a rapid grant might need. And also we really think about it with like a lens of accessibility to because we think things like, child care or, you know, just general care for your loved ones, food and refreshments internet connectivity, these are all things, centered around access, and so we try to always center accessibility and community in our work and so that's really kind of the lens in which we think about this micro funding. So if you have questions about that. I'm sure there are things we aren't thinking about and like what could help make your event be more accessible in that way. So please, of course, reach out and we can we can talk about it. So the steps to apply for micro funding are three easy steps. So you want to make your dashboard for your events. And if your ads I'll drop that in the chat right now just kind of just so those links are readily there, you want to make a dashboard for your event. And then you want to submit your event to the art event feminism event calendar. This is so your event shows up on the art and feminism website which we relaunched at the end of last year hopefully you've had a chance to check it out. And then the last thing is to complete the funding application. So those are kind of the three steps to apply for the micro funding with art and feminism. And then as I mentioned earlier, it is a rolling deadline. So, unlike rapid grants, which the deadline is February 11 which is coming up the micro funding is available throughout the year. And this is kind of a high level disbursement and priority deadline that you can use as a guide. But really, You can, if your event isn't happening until later in the year you don't necessarily have to apply now the way that the mike or the rapid grants is set up is that the thought that most of the events happen in the month of March, and so that's why we've worked that out with the foundation for rapid grants to be happening like that period now some of the funding would be in theory in place by the time the majority of the events are happening. And then I just want to highlight before we open up to q&a. We do have a couple of additional resources on our website specifically around these ideas of community care because I don't know if hopefully you've read our community care statement and I'll drop that in the chat as well, but really we're asking our organizers to think about what is the safest for the most vulnerable people in your community. So, if you're thinking about for instance yes that museum that you typically work with may be open. Because of local government but is that really what's safest for everybody who might be coming to your event that includes like, perhaps, elderly folks, or people who are immunocompromised. We really want our organizers to be thinking about what's safest for those most vulnerable and in thinking like, in that those things we've tried to create some more resources and tools for holding virtual events. So we've created a virtual meeting Guide, which is currently available in English and French, and we're working on getting a Spanish translation of it right now. And then we also have a couple walkthroughs just like a screen captures of how organizers might use some virtual tools, we know of course there's a zillion tutorials on how to use zoom, but like our zoom tutorial is focused a little bit on how an art and feminism organizer might use zoom and the same as stream yard I'm not sure if anybody's seen the Wikipedia weekly YouTube sessions, but they've been using this tool stream yard, which is also a pretty neat broadcasting tool. So I just wanted to highlight those as well. And I'll stop sharing screen now. And what questions are there, we'd love to answer them, or try to.
Um, hi. So Rachel here. Um, I guess, one, one question I have is could you apply for a rapid grant, and then later in the year also apply for art and feminism micro funding, or is there a limit on how many times an organization can apply for funding.
So I'll let Kira handle the case of like if you apply for rapid grant first and then an art plus feminism grant. But on the if it's the other way around. If you apply for an arc plus feminism micro grant first and then rapid grant totally fine. No, no issues with that, we, we, like, encourage folks to take advantage of both programs.
Yeah, I would say we have the same two we kind of, you know, I the way I kind of think about it is like we're all on the same team, like we all are just trying to have the our setup our organizers as best we can for success. So, yeah, we're all on the same team here.
Yeah, and I think like some good cases there are like, if, if, you know, if you're hitting the funding limit for rapid grants and and there's there are other needs that that you have not been able to meet through the budget limits or rapid grants that that can be like one example of a case, you know, to apply for for like an art placentas grant, but another one that Kira brought up earlier and Melissa you as well, is if you're if your funding is only like is minimal. And only like it's just a few things that are relatively inexpensive, the micro grants from Arpels feminism I think are more ideal for like programs to support those needs. Great, thank
you.
Diana.
Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah,
I have a question about venues, actually. So, I'm planning on organizing an artless feminism edits at all, in Oslo, Norway, in partnership with a library, but the library is usually not open on Saturdays. And so there is this issue that they need to, obviously, to in order to open the library on Saturdays. They need to pay their employee and security. And I was wondering whether that would fall into the venue possibilities of funding, or if that's completely ultimate.
So the. So the idea is like they're like the staff who would need to be there to like, maintain the space need to be paid essentially and that would need to come from an external funding source it sounds like. Right. Um, yeah, I think that is something that could be supported through rapid grants, I mean, I think the concern for me is like if the compensation that is required is is quite high, it might it might occupy quite a large amounts of the budget. So I would, depending on the length of time and the like the associated compensation for that, it might be difficult for you to get other kinds of like you know budgetary needs satisfied by rapid grants alone. So that's the only thing I would caution in that case but if that is, if that is something you want to use the grant to support. Sure, yeah, that that could be considered a venue cost.
Okay. Yes, thank you.
I know everyone wants our customer grant before and grapple wrapping grant grants team. Please walk me through the process. And always reviewed about the grants, but it was always helpful to hear from God rapid gain steam. So, about the microphone being a Nina, has invited me to apply for it so I have given it a credit. It might cover some other expensive expenses needed for our activity and I'm just here to receive some sales suggestions I might find useful for the PVT will be helping you. And the guy Besides, giving me the information Lucas also helped me during the planning of this activity. So, another thing is, I would like to ask some suggestions, like the techniques on how to engage some of my participants. Other things, I might include during the post event participation so because during my previous project, after we had an editor, on some editors. They ended up just being participants for the doctoral program so I would like to engage them somewhere for the post activities. That's,
that's a great question Mel I'm wondering if you have some suggestions based on your experience from editing or organizing other events.
I think that's a challenge, or our platform isn't event organizers have, in general, because the people we generally engage with doesn't have much time to contribute on Wikipedia and so this is something that the internet is doing during March as a way to contribute to these bigger movements, so I think we should be conscious of that. and also try to share resources with people about how to contribute. How to continue contributing in light ways for instance, uploading images correcting articles. Something I've done recently is to try to organize a sort of clinic, events, which is basically me reserving an hour. During the week just to speak with the participants and to see how things were after the event, if they have trouble with their articles, if they're found new sources. So that's a space for informal chatting about Wikipedia. And I, I think that people who are really interested in knowing more about this, generally attends, and also something with try have tried is to give some prizes for the editors who contribute with more articles with more photographs or for the editors who create the best articles that can motivate people a lot, and we're gonna leave the prices we give our books or a certain amount of money for people to buy books. I don't know if I answer your question, Anthony but that's what I've tried and it worked in different levels.
Yes, that's very helpful. Thank you, Manisha. Well, Chris
I wonder if you have any examples from maybe other projects that you've seen that you could maybe share.
Yeah, I have a few thoughts on this. A couple of a couple of projects I've seen in the last year or two, have really focused on actually a bit less on like the contest model of programming but more on actually building out like rich multimedia content on, not necessarily a large number of, like, articles or large number of pages, but really trying to focus on building like like a small number of high quality articles using, you know, outreach outreach to if it's a biography outreach to that person to, you know, perhaps set up some time to like do an interview or to, you know, to sit down with him to say like hey we would like to, you know, help, help build more content about you know about your expertise or your or your history or your contributions in this particular discipline. You know, could we arrange something like, you know, to get a picture of you to add to your photo or to add to your article that that that you would agree to. And so, if you or your community have identified, you know particular people, you know, particularly women in your community who, you know, maybe don't have an article, or perhaps maybe have an article but it's quite limited, like maybe just a few sentences. Maybe there's things you can do to, you know, reach out to the person to say like hey we we were made, were our communities interested in kind of building a better you know better, a better overview of your work and and you know what what what information kind of exists out there about you right now. And so, you know, would you be willing to meet with us for help, we might be able to work on that together. And so, like, it's sort of been in a few grants I've seen an interest in kind of building out a smaller number of like really high quality articles, rather than it being kind of like trying to build lots of like a broader set of articles so that and along with that like I'd mentioned like sometimes I've seen in a few cases. Yeah, the introduction of multimedia content so like someone gathering like a short clip of the person saying, you know, my name is so and so and I'm, you know, and this is what I do and that can be like an audio clip, you can incorporate into an article page that can just give your article like a bit more richness and accessibility to reader wanting to understand more about this, this person. So I've seen a couple of projects like that. Some summon rapid summon other and other grant programs as well. And that is something that I think is really kind of neat, take on how to yeah how to bridge the gender gap and then that way. So, those sorts of like more narrow focus kinds of projects I think can be interesting if there are particular people that you and your community have identified that you want to that you want to kind of focus on.
Chris jurina has asked in the chat if there's a link to that type of engagement if you could point to that as an example.
Sure Joanna I will, I will, I will rummage through my grants and and provide some examples of that. I think whose knowledge, like they're, they're kind of some of their programs, I think have adopted this sort of model, particularly with, with regard to kind of documenting pictures and gathering pictures of particular individuals who aren't depicted on our projects. So I'll, I'll, I'll find some specific programs have them have them kind of yeah reporting on or documenting that activity for your reference.
Think you
also something you could do is to create a Facebook group or a telegram group and invite people to join. So he's on this contact with them, and can share news about wiki about the gender gap on Wikipedia. That can also work.
One. One quick thing I just want to make a side point about here is that, in rapid grants we are typically requesting grantees to report on certain metrics like like number of pages created number of participants number of new participants or new editors. I. What we do ask for that information I just want to be clear that it's not necessarily the, the goal for grant T, like, it's not necessarily our expectation as grant funders that folks needs to report like very high numbers for these because sometimes that's not the most important thing. Like if your goal is not to like it like I had said before with some of these projects that have a more narrow focus. If the goal is to develop a really high quality article, and that like and that, you know, typically, you know, takes quite a lot of effort on its own even just for one or two articles. That's fine, and not not not like completely unproblematic, the goal is not always to report like really high end metrics per se. It's just to report on kind of how how you are, how you felt you were able to meet your goals or not because sometimes that that happens to certainly in the past year with the pandemic folks around the movement have experienced all sorts of disruption around their activities and, yeah, just want to clarify here that like. While it is true that many contests and other thoughts do kind of take a, you know, let's let's you know prepare as many articles and build as much new Khan as we can. That's not always like the that's not always the, the necessary approach to take if it doesn't fit within your goals as a community or grantee.
Yeah, I really appreciate you saying that Chris, because I think that really matches the values with art and feminism two, I think as an organization, we really experience, exponential growth in the beginning of the origins of art and feminism and we've kind of taken impart the pandemic as a time to pause and just really kind of reflect and focus more on this community building parts of it, as well as, not just being so numbers focused, actually. Now I think that the event that you organized last year was as kind of a great example of this where you did a very small group and focused on writing quality articles, I wonder if you would like to share a little bit about that.
Oh, yes, we are the beginning we also used to plan making really big events having 30 people involved or 30 participants, but that not that does not necessarily mean meant that the articles were high quality. So what we've done over the years, is to create eight articles, every year. Our office feminism event. So after, after five years we have a significant amount of good articles. So, it has been a sort of long term project. And yes, that also means that you need to be very careful about what kind of people you engage in driven, you want people who are really committed to driving. For instance, to enter this world as Chris said is not an easy task, necessarily, it can be quite demanding to create a good article so
I'm actually we did, we featured on our website. A melded really lovely write up about the event in Lima last year and so I just put that in the chat as well.
Do you folks have other questions.
Yeah, it's Rachel here again, I do. So we're actually talking with. Sorry I work for the Museum of Contemporary photography in Chicago and we have a current exhibition that is centered around. Female fertility, and the fertility rates and the lack of rights around the world but also in the United States, a lot of it deals with lack of access to abortions and restrictions to abortions. So we're talking with Alexandra on Tuesday, about this little bit more. But we were wondering if a grant would best to putting together like a panel discussion, or an event in March and not necessarily in a fan right away. Although I'm really open to exploring the sun, especially because I think, you know, we, there's such a need to build out pages on women identifying artists who work with fertility and abortion rights and things like that. As a society, it's something that like really nobody, nobody talks about in the open, and artists are who deal with this matter or who have this work, aren't really celebrated and exhibitions in this way. So I was wondering what that would look like if we could, if we had to do an add on or if we could also build events, use use these grants for events that bring awareness to the community.
I could take that one query to start if you'd like. So Rachel. Yes, like, it is not necessary to run an edit a THON, like with an event, many people do, but it's not like a required component for events, nor is like having a, nor is having like an activity where folks are contributing to Wikimedia projects directly. It is common, but it's not. Not necessary per se. I think what would be important though in that kind of proposal is to understand sort of what the intersection is between those activities and and and the Wikimedia movement, or or the communities kind of relationship or connections Wikimedia movement in some way. Rapid grants is designed to support kind of open, open and free knowledge, and much of that is typically centralized and the work that happens on Wikimedia projects in some way, but it's not necessarily that every event that we find is, you know, a, you know, people sitting down their computers and like writing out articles as such. So I think it would just be helpful in your proposal to kind of explain what you see that connection being and how folks will be able to orient themselves to to the movement in some way, as a, as a consequence, or as a, as an outcome from from the panel discussion or its associated events. Great,
that's really helpful. Thank you, Chris. Sure.
And yeah I think overall like a panel discussion like on the subject matter i think is would be quite valuable, it's a complex topic, and certainly has a sufficient number of facets to it that merits like, you know, more than just to say like a single a single presentation as such.
That's very true. That's great.
And I'm glad to hear that you're going to be talking to Alexandra this following week. Any other questions Rachel Do you have more because I know you're new, you know if you ask us your questions. No,
I think I think you all you all did a really great job covering my two base questions and then I think on Tuesday, we'll bounce some ideas off of Alexandra, have some more to flesh out and see what our best options are great.
One other quick comment I can make is just to give folks an idea of our general kind of ethos and approach to like grant making in rapid grants as well as some of our other programs to is that we really try to work hard to work with applicants to develop successful applications it's it's it's rare that we find ourselves needing to reject a proposal unless like very fundamental needs aren't met, but like if there's an issue or concern with the budget or like certain like descriptions in in the proposal, like, well, we'll just talk to you about them and say like hey we could use some clarity around this point, or, you know, we, we, you know, let's talk about your budget because we have some we have some needs around these particular items, and we'll work with you to make those revisions, it's but it's not the case that we like receive a proposal and just reject it outright unless it's like flagrantly, like, unless it's like really flagrant problems with it. But, but yeah, like, certainly for art plus feminism events, my, my experience working with grantees and applicants in the program has been one where we sit down, you know, to do some, you know, communication basically around the proposal through email or in a call to work on you with your proposal so if there's concerns that, you know, this is a new program I'm not familiar with. I'm not familiar with it, I want to get it right. It's okay if the proposal isn't perfect, that's not a problem, and we want to work with you to make it to help you make it as successful as you can be.
Yeah, and I think that, that, thank you for saying that Chris because I think it just, it goes back to like what we were saying earlier in this discussion too is that we're really just all on the same team like the reason why any of these programs exist is because we really want to set up our event organizers for as much success as possible. And so the this, the systems that we have in place are really just to like kind of keep things organized, we're not trying to do any kind of bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. So, we're and we're also, we're all people behind these systems too, so feel free to talk to us, we're happy to talk to you. Talk these out because, again, we just, we have the same common goal of having successful events.
Alright. Well, if you have other questions again. You know how to reach us. We're happy to feel them. I want to thank Chris again and Melissa again and all of you for, for joining us this morning or afternoon or evening wherever you are in the world, and we will have this again will be recorded so if you want to re revisit it you definitely can as well as the notes are also going to be available so folks can take a look, either yourself if you want to revisit anything or also other people who might be viewing this for the same for the first time. So I hope that everybody has a great rest of their Saturday, and thank you again for joining us today.
I had just one other quick thing to say sorry sorry said Rachel. Rachel I didn't I didn't mention this, but I'm also based in Chicago. So if you if you do end up finding yourself, you know, applying for rapid grant. Be happy to swing by the event if it's okay by you.
Oh absolutely, yeah
you know why I'm Chris Can you put your or Jeez, um, you know, if you go to mo si p.org, or we can connect offline, but if you feel safe in person we have socially distant safe tours and things like that but I would love to give you a tour of the exhibition.
Sure, that would be lovely. Thank you. It's very kind of good offer. Also just put my email address here in chat in case folks need to reach out to me. I know some of you have it already. But in case, in case it's necessary for you to reach out to me there. Or if you have questions about rapid grants broadly.
Our email is rapidgrants@wikimedia.org.
And I also just dropping this as well the art and feminism email. The best one to reach us is just the general one, which is just info@artandfeminism.org, but you could also reach me directly, which would be kira@artandfeminism.org. So thank you again everyone, have a great rest of your weekend, and we look forward to hearing and learning more all about your events.
