Wikipedia:Meetup/Black Lunch Table/BLT blackistech2020



A Presentation at Black is Tech 2020

We estimate less than 15% of articles about Black visual artists have images. As a project, Black Lunch Table (BLT) project creates a space to encourage people of color and women to join the Wikimedia movement while also creating spaces for all editors to focus on gaps in coverage on Wikimedia. We mobilize the creation and improvement of a specific set of Wikimedia documents that pertain to the lives and works of Black artists. Outside of Wikipedia the project creates an online searchable oral history archive focused on filling gaps in art historical records.

For this session we will share the work that we are doing for WikiCommons as a user group focused on visibility of black artists as well as the politics of images, especially as it relates to open access licenses, copyright and authorship issues, and global post-colonial issues. The discussion will also relate to the ethics of archives/museum holdings, audio recording, documentary photography, photo contests, social media and crowdsourcing.

Presenters
Heather Hart, BLT co-founder (Heathart (talk)) Eliza Myrie, BLT project manager (Raggachampiongirl(talk))

About The Black Lunch Table
The Black Lunch Table (BLT) is an ongoing project which intends to fill holes in the documentation of contemporary art history. Since 2005 the BLT has taken a variety of forms relating to this most recent iteration, in the form of the Wikimedia project.

Our project creates a space to encourage people of color and women to join the Wikimedia movement while also asking white male editors to focus on gaps in coverage on Wikimedia. We mobilize the creation and improvement of a specific set of Wikimedia documents that pertain to the lives and works of Black artists. At each edit-a-thon we provide a list of suggested artists to add or edit, with particular focus on Black artists who have worked within or are local to the host institution’s community and are currently under-documented on Wikipedia.

More about BLT here.

Agenda

 * Presentation
 * Discussion and action steps
 * Hashtag: #BlackLunchTable
 * Etherpad: BlackLunchTable - live doc

BLT on Wikicommons


Our WikiCommons Photo Initiative (that includes at its core, our pop-up photo studio) has become a highlight of our work. The primary objective of the photo initiative is to quite literally increase the visibility of Black visual artists on Wikimedia. The process is simple: we invite a local Black photographer to host a pop-up portrait studio at our edit-a-thon; we invite local artists on our Wiki list to have their photo taken; the photographer releases all portraits to WikiCommons for use (eventual, if the artist still lacks a page; or immediately if they have one) on the artists’ Wikipedia article.

See our commons portraits here!

DIY Photobooth
We have created a document, targeted to students especially, but available for anyone to utilize. Please share with your own community and take these steps to increase the visibility of Black artists across Wikimedia.





Uploading photos
Additional resources on uploading images to Wiki Commons
 * |Wiki Image Guide
 * Where to find them.
 * Dos and Donts
 * Asking an artist for images.