Wiki Loves Public Art – a photo contest bringing art online

With half way through the Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest – taking place during May 2013 – volunteers in Austria, Finland, Israel, Spain and Sweden have taken over 5,000 pictures of a total of 1,385 public artworks! All of these photos are uploaded under a free license, so that they can be used for example in online projects such as Wikipedia.

The goal of the Wiki Loves Public Art, WLPA contest is to get as many pictures of public art available under a free license on Wikipedia’s online database, Wikimedia Commons. The 5,000 so far uploaded photos can then be seen and used by anyone, anywhere. At the same time the world’s sixth largest website, Wikipedia, will see a boost in its art coverage as photos in the contest can be added to illustrate articles in the online encyclopedia. The contest is organized by Wikimedia Sverige, Europeana and volunteers in the Wikimedia chapters and affiliated groups in each of the participating countries.

“We are doing this to increase our common collection of photos of artworks and to make them easily accessible to everyone through Wikipedia. This is also a fun way to start contributing for volunteers”, says the international WLPA coordinator John Andersson.

What has made the contest a bit challenging to organize is that most countries lack a national database of their artworks. In addition the countries participating in the contest have a diverse set of copyright laws, so that the public artworks that can be photographed and uploaded online for the contest differ between countries. For example, in Finland the contest focuses on outdoor sculptures, whose creator has been dead for 70 years or more. In Spain and Austria on the other hand any public artwork can be photographed.

“This has also made a difference in the amount of artworks photographed in different local contests. From Barcelona we have over 4,000 pictures, whereas from countries with stricter copyright laws we understandably have fewer contributions”, states John Andersson.

To make it easier for people to find the artworks suited for the contest volunteers in national Wikimedia chapters have put together lists on Wikipedia with information about the outdoor artworks. In some countries the focus has however been on working with the national art museums so that people can go and take photos of the museums' collections that are suitable for the contest.

The photos uploaded for the contest will first be judged nationally, after which the ten best pictures from each country will be sent to the international jury. The prizes for the three internationally best pictures – which will be announced in July – are travel gift certificates for 500 euros, 300 euros and 200 euros and on top of that Europeana has sponsored high quality prints of the winning pictures that will be sent to the winners.

Contact the international WLPA coordinator if you have any further inquiries:

John Andersson, Wikimedia Sverige

Phone: +46 (0)733965189
Email: john.anderssonwikimedia.se

For additional Information, see the international website of the contest at www.wikilovespublicart.com.

Images

You can find the logotype for the contest on: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikilovespublicart_4.svg 

Wikimedia Sverige's logotype: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Sverige_logo.svg

Europeana's logotype: http://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/about/comms-tools/logos