Empowering Youth for Cultural Heritage Preservation: GLAM Training & Edit-a-thon in Bandung, Indonesia

“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.“

– Franklin D. Roosevelt –

Since 2022, OpenStreetMap Indonesia (POI) has been collaborating with Wikimedia Indonesia to increase public awareness of Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum (GLAM) objects in Indonesia, especially among youth. Several activities have been conducted, including a University Roadshow in several cities across the country and a Flash Mapping Competition at the end of 2022.

In February 2023, POI and Wikimedia Indonesia organized an in-person training called ‘GLAM Training & Editathon’ in Bandung, a city in Indonesia known for its rich cultural and historical assets. The objective was to increase youth awareness of GLAM objects in Bandung and teach them how to add information about these objects to Wikidata and OpenStreetMap. By doing so, we are hoping that GLAM objects in Bandung can be more well-documented and people can access it online.

One of museum located in Bandung, called ‘Museum Kota Bandung’

There are more than 30 participants joining this training session, and most of them are young people with the age under 25 years old. We managed to involve six different communities in Bandung with this activity, coming from different backgrounds such as university students, local communities, and public as well (see the list of the communities below). 

• RASTER (Remote Sensing Cluster Community)
• MUSLIMIN NEWS, 
• Komunitas Wikimedia Bandung (Wikimedia Bandung Community), 
• Resilience Development Initiative, 
• Transport for Bandung, and 
• Komunitas Cempor Bandung (Camp Entrepreneur Bandung Community)

During the two days session of the trainings, the participants learned how to use Wikidata, starting by creating their own account (if they don’t have one), adding the description for each GLAM objects identified, and upload it into the Wikidata. Furthermore, the participants were also taught how to place GLAM objects on a map using OpenStreetMap. By doing this, it was possible to gain a better understanding of the distribution of GLAM objects in Bandung.

More than 30 participants attended the GLAM Training & Edit-a-thon held at 101 Hotel in Bandung

From this activity, we successfully created amazing statistics produced by 30 participants in just two-day of training sessions: 

• More than 230 items of GLAM objects were added/modified using Wikidata
• More than 3.500 buildings were mapped using OpenStreetMap
• 14 GLAM objects were mapped in OpenStreetMap

This activity carried out by POI and Wikimedia Indonesia was intended to encourage and empower young people to take an active role in preserving historical and cultural heritage assets, particularly those located in their communities. By providing training on Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, we hope to increase the capacity of youth to identify and document GLAM objects in their local area.

Three participants entitled as Top Mappers in this activity, hopefully they can share their knowledge with others in Bandung

In addition to enhancing their knowledge and skills, we also hope that the participants will be able to share their newly acquired knowledge with others. By doing so, they can help to raise awareness about the importance of preserving GLAM objects and how to access the relevant data using Wikidata and OpenStreetMap.

Through this activity, we aim to foster a culture of community engagement and participation in preserving cultural heritage assets, and to encourage more young people to get involved in similar initiatives in the future.