I wanted to give you all a short update about how Wiki Loves Public Art turned out this first year. As you might know, five countries participated, but with the exception of Israel, the focus was on only one or a couple of the major cities in the countries. This was due to a lack of national databases of public works of art. So we saw this year as a tryout to set things in order, and as it turned out, we are very happy with the results!
By the end of the contest, participants photographed nearly 75 percent of all the works of art that were listed! All in all, more than 9,250 images were uploaded as part of the contest by 225 uploaders, of which 57 percent were first time contributors.
In Sweden, where for different reasons we focused on working with museums to photograph their public domain art collections, we had nine museums taking part. We organized five meetups and photo safaris, where a lot of newbies showed up. Many of them did not upload their images in time for the contest, but still appreciated the opportunity to come and talk to us about Wikimedia’s different projects.
The juries in each country are now in the process of selecting the winning pictures. These finalists will then be submitted for consideration by the jury of the international competition. Once the winners have been chosen, we will return with another update.
We have had a lot of fun and we are very happy with the results of what is hopefully the first of many years of Wiki Loves Public Art.
John Andersson
International Coordinator Wiki Loves Public Art
Wikimedia Sverige
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