GLAM/Newsletter/September 2016/Contents/Belgium report
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Wiki Loves Monuments in Belgium & Luxembourg
Wiki Loves Monuments
In September we organised for the 5th time Wiki Loves Monuments in Belgium and Luxembourg. Since 2011 the photo contest was organised four times on a row, we skipped 2015 to have a break and to organise Wiki Loves Art. During September we organised four photo walks, held in Ghent, Mechelen, Antwerp, and Liège. The contest has led to the great result of 3007 photos being uploaded in total, 2988 photos of monuments from Belgium, 13 photos of monuments from Luxembourg, and 6 other photos of subjects that are not a monument. In total 121 people participated in the contest, 116 in Belgium and 7 in Luxembourg. Now the jury is judging the photos to determine a winner and on 25 November we organise the prize ceremony in Brussels.
The relatively low number of uploads in Luxembourg is not new, but also illustrates the situation that all monuments from Luxembourg already have a photo on Wikipedia. In Belgium the situation is different and depends on the region. In Belgium the monuments are not registered by the federal government, but by the three regional heritage organisations of the three regional governments. In Wallonia we estimate that about 80-90% of the monuments already have a photo. The same for the Brussels Capital Region. Different is the situation in Flanders. The Flemish Government has registered much more monuments in comparison to the other two regions, and it depends very much on the situation if there has been a local photographer active or not, if the listed monuments have mostly a photo or not.
We have relative small community in Belgium, and organising Wiki Loves Monuments takes a huge amount of time in comparison to the results and the difficulty to get the last remaining monuments on photo. Therefore the current Wiki Loves Monuments organisers think that it will be better if we do not organise the contest in the coming years, but to focus on finding alternative ways to get the remaining monuments on photo. Still other community members can organise Wiki Loves Monuments in the coming years. We are interested in learning from other countries what activities they organise there locally to get the remaining monuments on photo, and like to hear your suggestions.
Wiki Loves Monuments is a great project and made it possible for us to grow and gain experience in organising projects together as a community, and also helped for the founding of Wikimedia Belgium. Besides getting photos of monuments uploaded and Wikipedia enriched with lists of monuments and photos, we would recommend for any country or area to organise Wiki Loves Monuments, if you want to grow your experience, build a community and having fun together.
Results 2016:
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Hi! In Ukraine, we also have done WLM. Great results and huge work done with lists. But what's GLAMorous about that? No mentions on cultural institutions that have shared their resources in your report. Just want to get your point and may be inspiration to include information on Ukrainian contest next time.--AnnaKhrobolova (WMUA) (talk) 18:39, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, Romaine, show us GLAMour of WLM
-- Ата (talk) 08:25, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
- @AnnaKhrobolova (WMUA) & Ата: Wiki Loves Monuments is a project that could not exist without organisations that already had done the work by assigning monument status to the objects and creating lists of monuments. Those organisations are not a GLAM in its pure form, but are collaborations for what this newsletter is intended. Wiki Loves Monuments in general is sponsored every year by GLAMs, like in the form of prizes for the winners or with the venue of the ceremony. Even if nothing is done with a GLAM directly by a local contest this year, it is all right to tell this story in this newsletter, as it has multiple links with collaborations. In this case we do have a collaboration with organisations for the prizes, for the prize ceremony, and we are working on the follow up for coming years with partner organisations. Also a collaboration is coming up with another organisation, but too early yet. As those are not yet fully crystallised, this has to be described in later reports. We also are interested in what other Wikimedia affiliates do in this situation, what kind of projects they set up or how they work together with partner organisations. Romaine (talk) 23:23, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
