The Wiki Loves Africa competition is back with the Tanzania launch event happening on Friday 2nd December at #BuniHub located at the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) Building, ground floor from 4:00pm to 6:00pm.
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Cape Town, 28th November 2016 – Music and dance are the very beat of this vibrant continent. It is therefore fitting that for the third Wiki Loves Africa media competition, the focus will be on Music and Dance.
Wiki Loves Africa (www.wikilovesafrica.net) encourages participants to contribute media – photographs, video or sound files – to illustrate a theme chosen by Wikipedia volunteers across Africa. The theme changes each year to cover a universal, visually rich and culturally specific topic (for example, markets, rites of passage, festivals, public art, cuisine, natural history, urbanity, daily life, notable persons, etc). For 2016, the Wikipedia community chose Music and Dance. In a further celebration of music from across Africa, the project is asking musicians to donate a track to the Wiki Loves Africa Playlist.
Over the last two years, the contest has been very photographically biased. Dance and music are not only very visual, but also perfect for video and sound. This year we are expecting more videos and sound files to be submitted. Since 2014, the contest has seen the contribution of 13,624 photographs to Wikimedia Commons for potential use on Wikipedia. In the first year, under the theme Cuisine, 873 people contributed 6,116 photographs. Cultural fashion and adornment was the theme for the next year, 2015, which saw 722 people contribute over 7,500 photographs.
The competition runs from the 1st December 2016 to the 31st January 2017 and entries are welcome from anywhere on the continent and beyond. Specific actions, including training, photowalks and upload events, are held in focus countries by national organisers. This year, the ten focus countries are Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe. All entries to Wiki Loves Africa will be directly uploaded to Wikimedia
Commons (the digital repository of the Wikimedia projects) with the intention of being used to illustrate relevant existing articles or as a basis to begin new articles on Wikipedia and other project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The teams will also be working with existing photographic groups to encourage their members to use their photographic skills, learn about licensing and contributing media to Wikipedia, and win prizes.
The main prizes for the competition are:
● 1st Prize: US$600
● 2nd Prize: US$400
● 3rd Prize: US$200
● Community Prize: US$200
● The Awesome Prize: US$400
In addition, each winner will also receive a year’s subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan, and a portable power pack. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes will be selected by a jury of international Wikipedians and professional photographers. The Community Prize is chosen by the Wikipedia Community from the Jury’s short list. The Awesome Prize will be awarded for outstanding media contribution to the project, and will be chosen by the two organisers.
For the Wiki Loves Africa Playlist, the teams will partner with music and cultural organisations like Music in Africa (www.musicinafrica.net) and Goethe-Instituts (www.goethe-institut.de) in each focus country to encourage the contribution of photographs, sound files and videos to Wikipedia during the competition. Musicians will be encouraged to release an example of their work under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence to be part of the Wiki Loves Africa Playlist.
Wiki Loves Africa is activated by the Wikimedia community that created Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, and built the free media archive Wikimedia Commons. The competition was conceptualised by Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood as a fun and engaging way to rebalance the lack of visual representations and relevant content that exists about Africa on Wikipedia. The competition is supported by Ynternet.org. It is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and local partners in individual countries. The images donated are available for use on the internet and beyond, under the Creative Commons license CC BY SA 4.0.
Useful links:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa
http://www.wikilovesafrica.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wikilovesafrica
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wikilovesafrica
