On Saturday 23rd November we were thrilled to host our 2024 Community Celebration. It was a chance for our community to gather online, share and celebrate the work that’s taken place over the last year and recognise that work through the UK Wikimedian of the Year awards and celebrate the winners of the Wiki Loves Earth competition.
It was heartening seeing so many of our community at the celebration. There were around 40 community members, attending from all over the UK. With the event being online in the midst of Storm Bert raging, it meant that people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend were able to do so.
We were welcomed by our Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid, who thanked the community for the incredible work they contribute to Wikimedia projects and Open Knowledge. To highlight their impact in 2024 there were 231 instances of a lead / organiser / speaker, of which 147 were non-Wikimedia UK staff, or 63.7%. An incredible contribution from the community.
We then launched into a series of lightning talks delivered by members of the Community about their work this year. These presentations were a (small!) selection to highlight the tremendous work community members have been working on over the last year.
Jason Evans, Open Data Manager and National Wikimedian at the National Library of Wales told us about AI, Placenames and Time Machine experiments at the National Library of Wales.
Dr Kirsty Ross from the University of St Andrews, who is also one of the co-founders of the IDEA network told us about how Scottish Brick History (SBH) and Wikimedia UK. Researchers from the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews collaborated to get a unique dataset about Scotland’s brickworks onto Wikidata, and built web visualisations to showcase the work.
Lucy Moore, a Wikimedian based in Leeds, and who won UK Wikimedian of the year 2022 told us about her Wiki Year!
Nick Sheppard, Open Research Adviser based at the University of Leeds Libraries told us about his journey from his first tentative edit in 2017 (flagged as spam) to becoming a committed advocate for Wikimedia in Universities.
Jonathan Deamer from Liverpool, who describes himself as a Wikimedia hobbyist, told us about attending his first Wikimania in Katowice in Poland this year. He shared with us his highlights from the event and how these have had a tangible impact on his daily editing.
Joanne Forster-Martin, a student at the University of Oxford, and who we met at our recent Train the Trainer weekend told us about the Wiki Women in Red project to uncover the hidden female figures of Jesus College, Oxford.
Adam Harangzo, Wikipedian in Residence at the National Institute for Health and Care Research talked to us about his experience of working with researchers in an impactful way where they contribute to Wikipedia without directly editing it.
UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards
Next, last year’s Wikimedian of the Year, Nick Sheppard, announced the winners of this year’s UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards. Thank you to everyone who made nominations and a huge well done to all the nominees, honorable mentions and the winners highlighted below.
UK Wikimedian of the Year: Fran Allfrey
Partnership of the Year: Glam E Lab (Andrea Walace and Francesca Farmer)
Up and Coming Wikimedian: User: Peregrinate Avellana (Hazel)
Wiki Loves Earth Winners
From one set of winners to another, we showcased the winners of this year’s Wiki Loves Earth. This was the first time we ran the competition in Scotland and the calibre of photos was incredibly high. There were 700 entries in total from Scotland.
Wales came 4th overall in the competition with over 3000 images entered. Judges were so impressed by the quality of the images and commented on how difficult it was to choose winners. Thank you to everyone who was involved in supporting the competition to run this year; from those who contributed images, the judges and everyone involved in all the behind the scenes work that goes into making it happen.
You can see the full list of winners for Wales and Scotland.
Finally Dr Sara Thomas, Programme Manager at WMUK told us about a new opportunity for the community to share their learning through a peer learning programme of events. Please contact her directly at sara.thomas@wikimedia.org.uk if you would like to be involved in sharing your Wiki knowledge, expertise and skills with other community members.
Volunteers can also apply for Project Grants to support their Wiki activities throughout the year. If you’d like to hear about future UK community events and how you can get involved please sign up for our newsletter, or join our membership to help govern the charity.