Whether you’re a seasoned photographer or an enthusiastic beginner, this is your chance to contribute to the Wikimedia Commons community and help document the world’s natural wonders. From lush forests and towering mountains to pristine lakes and vibrant wildlife, your photos can inspire awareness and conservation efforts worldwide.

For the first time, England will be participating in this year’s competition alongside Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

By taking part in Wiki Loves Earth, you can help celebrate and showcase the beauty of the United Kingdom’s varied landscapes and wildlife, have your photos seen and recognised at an international level, contribute to open and free knowledge, and provide a visual document of the changes happening in the natural environment in the UK.

Last year, nearly 5000 images were submitted in the UK, many of which have been used to illustrate articles across all language Wikipedias like this one on the German Wikipedia and this one on the English Wikipedia. 

While many of the places you can photograph will be open to the public, please do check if they are accessible before travelling as some areas may be closed and interacting with wildlife may be discouraged at particular times of the year.

You can submit as many images as you want, and as long as you are the photographer and the photos are uploaded in June and July it doesn’t matter when they were taken. There are prizes at both country and international level for the winners. Judges will determine the winners of the contest by taking into consideration the following criteria (in no particular order):

• Technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective etc.);
• Originality;
• Usefulness of the image for Wikipedia.

If you’re looking for some inspiration or just want to have a visual feast, you can see last year’s winners from Wales here and Scotland here. 

There are prizes available, including £100 for the winning photograph of a place in the UK.

Read more about Wiki Loves Earth 2025 and how to participate in your nation below:

• Wales 
• England
• Scotland 
• Northern Ireland

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Wiki Loves Folklore is an international Wiki competition celebrating Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) across the world – like Wiki Loves Monuments, or Wiki Loves Earth, but for folk culture: festivals, music, food, dances, customs, storytelling, mythology, and seasonal events.  

As someone with a keen interest in all things folklore and intangible cultural heritage, I’m really keen to participate this year. And, as the start of the competition (1st February) coincided with Imbolc, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to capture some images…

In my non-Wiki life I spend a fair bit of time volunteering with other charities, one of which is the Beltane Fire Society in Edinburgh. Most of our year is taken up with working towards the celebration of two of the Celtic quarter days (Beltane and Samhuinn) with large fire festivals, but we sometimes put on smaller, community-focussed events at other points on the wheel of the year, like Yule / winter solstice. This year, the woman currently embodying the role of May Queen led on the organisation of a community storytelling event at the Scottish Storytelling Centre for Imbolc / Imbolg / Brigid’s day, and as part of that, I helped to run a couple of workshops on how to make Brigid’s crosses (in this context, used as protection symbols for house and home) – capturing a few images for Wiki Loves Folklore as I went.

The UK Government is currently consulting on “some of the decisions regarding the first stage of implementing” the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the ratification of which is supported by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Scotland Partnership (which includes long-term Wikimedia UK partners Museums Galleries Scotland).  

Usually, when we talk about digital preservation of (cultural) heritage we’re discussing buildings, or physical artefacts like paintings. ICH can present some interesting challenges – how does an archivist approach a community tradition, or a way of life? One of the key points for me is reflected in the language of the UNESCO convention – the “safeguarding” of ICH, rather than the “preservation” – reflecting the fact that folk practices necessarily change over time, or location, for example. From a Wikimedia point of view, Wiki Loves Folklore is a wonderful opportunity to capture and share the culture of our communities.  

How to take part in Wiki Loves Folklore

You can find the landing page for the competition as a whole on Wikimedia Commons, as well as the individual upload pages for different countries. The competition runs 1st Feb – 31st March.

It’s a really simple process – just click on the “upload” button to upload images through the upload wizard, adding captions, descriptions, categories, and structured data. Remember also to enable email through your account, as this is how the international organisers would contact you if you win a prize!  

Scotland, Wales, and England pages for the international competition.

Ireland page for the competition run by Wikimedia Community Ireland.

To enable us to continue to preserve cultural heritage, you can support our Wikimedia UK’s work with a donation.

The post Celebrating Imbolc with Wiki Loves Folklore appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

Wiki Loves Earth is an annual photography competition themed around the natural world. Wikimedia UK first took part in the competition in 2021 when Wales blazed the way. In 2023 we partnered with Wikimedia Community Group Ireland to support the competition in Northern Ireland for the first time. Since they entered in 2020, the Irish community group have been doing outstanding work running the competition, enabling photographers to add beautiful shots of our natural world to Wikimedia Commons.

A total of 363 photos were submitted to the competition; all of them are openly licensed meaning they are free to use and can illustrate Wikipedia. The competition is a great way to share photos of places that are important to you. The judges elected ten winning photos, which can be viewed here.

First place goes to a photograph of Tollymore Forest Park by Ryan Mcdonald, featured at the top of this blog. The long exposure on this shot captures the motion of the water as well as autumnal colours of the foliage.

In second place is Cuilcagh Mountain by Carl Meehan. Carl’s photo captures the landscape on a spring day. The mountain is a Special Area of Conservation and has a 2,500-hectare park on its northern slopes.

The Mourne Mountains are an Area of Natural Beauty, and depicted here by our third place photo taken by Conall. This photo juxtaposes the mountains in the background with the coastline in front.

The natural world changes from season to season, but climate change poses a threat to our environment and its durability. Extreme temperatures, drought, or rainfall all disturb the balance that has cultivated these environments and biodiversity. The photos submitted to the competition capture the state of our natural world at a point in time, and remind us what we stand to lose.
We hope to expand the competition across the UK in 2024, bringing more opportunities to appreciate our environment. Until then, you can also explore the entries to the Northern Ireland competition on a map.

The post The winners of Wiki Loves Earth 2023 in Northern Ireland appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

For the second year running, Wales had the second highest number of photos submitted to the Wiki Loves Earth competition. We’re so grateful to and hugely impressed by the entrants, who added over 5000 images of the Welsh National Parks and other protected areas, such as Sites of Scientific Interest. 50 countries took part, and once again Germany took the lead. This year the organising nation, Ukraine, came a close third with 4541 photographs. The list of all countries can be found here.

Before the international judges view the photos, a local panel in each participating country chooses a shortlist. Wales had a truly impressive top 10, which can be viewed here. Congratulations to all of the winners, and here’s a look at the top three:

Out of 5026 images, the top spot was awarded to Rufus Davies, who captured the image featured at the top of this blog. The action shot of two billy goats clashing heads was taken on a cliff face in the Ogwen Valley, located in the Eryri National Park (previously called Snowdonia). Not only is it impressive that Davies managed to get such a great shot, but the colours and composition of the photo are stunning.

The second place goes to Dwalad for their captivating photo of a glassy lake in Cwm Idwal – in the Glyderau range of mountains – of Darwin fame.

The third best photograph from Wales is this image of a grey heron, paused while fishing for small fry in the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley by WelshCarebear.

We were delighted that Northern Ireland also took part in the competition for the fourth year running, which for the first time Wikimedia UK helped organise. Like the Welsh Portal on Commons, the Northern Ireland portal was also bilingual, as we continue to strive for representation of native languages on wiki sites. This year, Northern Ireland’s number of photographs jumped fivefold, from 72 to 363!

Ultimately, the aim of adding photographs to Wikimedia Commons is so they are used and seen. Be it on Wikipedia articles or in another medium entirely, openly licensing images helps the Internet be more informative and useful for all of us. Images from WLE in Wales are among the most frequently added to Wikipedia articles. The numbers are still rising, but 27% of last year’s Welsh photos have been used, and in the few months that this year’s have been up we’re seeing a similar pattern of usage.

Wikipedia has over 335 languages, and the respect to the diversity of languages shown by the Wiki communities globally is excellent and inspirational. This is true of Wikimedia UK (if I may say so), where the conservation of that rich diversity is one of our main columns. The number of Welsh photographers was up from last year from 30 to 52 entrants, submitting over 5000 images for Wales. We have an International Football Team here in Wales, and it’s clear that Welsh photographers feel that WLE is the World Cup of photography competitions!

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This year, in Wiki Loves Earth, editors from all over Wales went out into protected areas such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty etc with cameras clicking in all directions! At the end of the day, for the number of images, Wales received the Silver Medal on the international podium for photographers, out of 36 nations. The judging at the international level now begins.

Last year’s 1,892 photos now look meagre compared to this year’s massive 5,041 images! The 10 best images will now go through to the final, but as far as numbers are concerned, Wales came second out of 36 nations, with Germany first, Kazakhstan third, Brazil fourth, and Russia fifth. Small is beautiful!

To many photographers, taking an aesthetically pleasing image, technically correct, and visually stunning are important. To me, as one of the editors (in my own time, of course), it’s equally important that we have lots of images which illustrate Wikipedia articles and which document all aspects of our natural environment. Quality and quantity!

For the second year running, the National Library of Wales, Menter Mon and Wikimedia UK organised the competition. Within weeks, we had new partners, including the Welsh Government, all three National Parks: Eryri (Snowdonia), Pembrokeshire and the Brecon Beacons as well as the Ramblers. Other existing partners included Natural Resources Wales and Llên Natur, the largest Welsh language nature society. 

The National Library’s Open Data Manager, Jason Evans said, “The National Library of Wales is thrilled to be able to work with Wikimedia UK to support this fantastic competition for the second year in a row. Once again the standard of photography and the number of entries has been exceptional. It is so important to capture and record the ever-changing beauty of our natural environment and to make that content freely available to all.”

WLE 2022 was a quick snapshot of the rich diversity of one small corner of our global biosphere: a record of flora, fauna and fungi, as they were in the summer of 2022. Future snapshots could be used to show the differences in the biosphere, and the impact of climate change. If Wikipedia could better illustrate this change, we could help negate the effect. So let’s get these images on Wikipedia articles, and make a difference!

The winning image in Wales is by User:Mjw999, featured above. It shows Three Cliffs Bay within the Gower Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in South Wales. Judges Iestyn Hughes and Simon Evans, both prominent local photographers, felt that the image captured the diversity of this beautiful landscape, which includes fresh water streams, a salt marsh and towering limestone cliffs.

In second place this year is User:Naff14 with a well executed shot of a Puffin on Skomer Island, collecting flowers for his nest building.

And in third place, the judges agreed on a more abstract image of a rock on Rhossili Beach on the Gower by User:Suntooth. The judges felt that the image invoked the power of the wind and sea whilst the patterns in the sand echoed the branches of trees.

Also highly commended was the following image of footprints in the sand dunes at Gronant by User:ClwydRuth. The judges were keen to include this image as a way of raising the profile of the important but little known habitats of Gronant Dunes.

The ten best images can be seen here and will now represent Wales in the international competition. Best of luck to all our photographers!

The post Wales moves up to second place in Wiki Loves Earth appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

This year, for the second time, Wales is taking part in the international photography competition ‘Wiki Loves Earth’ organised by the Wikimedia movement. Founded 9 years ago as a focus for nature heritage, the competition aims to raise awareness of protected sites. The Welsh campaign is also organised by Wikimedia UK, the National Library of Wales and WiciMon.

Robin Owain who leads the Wikimedia UK projects across Wales said “This year, our key supporters include the Welsh Government, the Ramblers Association and all three National Parks! We are calling on people across Wales to share their photographs of nature: flora, fauna and fungi!”

This is one of the largest photography competitions in the world focusing on National Parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and all protected areas. Robin explained “The biodiversity and geology of Wales is unique, and this competition allows Welsh photographers to share our protected areas on a world stage. 

Other organisations who will be supporting this exciting competition include Natural Resources Wales, all three National Parks: Eryri (Snowdonia), Pembrokeshire and the Brecon Beacons, Ramblers (Cymru), and both Edward Llwyd and Llên Natur  nature societies.

Examples of past winners can be seen at http://wikilovesearth.org and last year’s Welsh winners can be found here.

Any photographs you have taken in the past can be uploaded during June, with prizes at both country and national level to the winners. Robin added “The competition is open to everyone. We play rugby and football on the world stage, therefore we ask our friends, volunteers and staff to take photographs on that international stage, and at the same time exhibit their photographs of our diverse countryside.”

Read more about Wiki Loves Earth 2022 in Wales here on Wikimedia Commons.

More on Wiki Loves Earth can be found here.

Further information & images press@wikimedia.org.uk

About Wikimedia UK here

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The Mixed Museum is a digital museum and archive that is working to spread knowledge about Black and ethnic minority British history through sharing and preserving the social history of racial mixing in Britain. 

In March 2022 we welcomed two interns from Queen Mary University London to work with the Mixed Museum on articles relating to Irish history, specifically South Asian people in Ireland and Black people in Ireland. This drew on the rich Mixed Museum collections, and enabled us to add a further 200 years of knowledge to Wikipedia. One of the interns is preparing a blogpost for us to talk further about this important work. We are excited to further develop our partnership with the Mixed Museum in the coming year.

Reimagining Lincolnshire is a public history project which aims to bring to light hidden and neglected stories from Lincolnshire, specifically those of people of colour, objects of empire and unheard women’s voices.

It seeks to uncover hidden and neglected stories from Lincolnshire, of those whose contributions to the county, country and internationally have largely been forgotten. It addresses the complexities of empire and slavery, in order to understand key Lincolnshire figures such as Sir Joseph Banks and Sir Isaac Newton in new ways. It offers additional layers of complexity as well, relating to class, gender, sexuality and ableism, for example, that help to reveal the past in a more inclusive, thoughtful and thought-provoking light. We are looking forward to running an Editathon with Reimagining Lincolnshire in October 2022 for Black History Month.

The Almeley Quakers and Rotherwas Together are local history collectives, dealing with social history and forgotten stories of people and places from their local areas, and in the case of Rotherwas, the lives of women at war. 

Rotherwas Together was formed in 2018 to help to unite all of the groups and individuals who were interested in finding out more about the Rotherwas Munitions Works, the people who worked there and how it shaped the lives, buildings and social history of Hereford. 

ROF Hereford changed the city from the day that land started to be cleared to make way for the site in 1916 through to today. The site and the munitions made there helped the allies to gain victory in both the first and second world war and also changed the lives of thousands of people.  For some, it gave opportunities for a career or the chance to work and live elsewhere but, for others, it led to lifelong health problems and infertility. We were delighted to run a hybrid Editathon for Rotherwas on 14th April 2022.

The Almeley Quakers are interested in uploading material to Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. We have been working together to support the society with Commons training and a workshop on Wikisource, with input from the University of Edinburgh.

Create Place is a leadership programme for mid-career professionals in culture and creative industries, focussed on place-making in heritage and arts. At the end of March, we ran a two hour Wiki workshop for a group of professionals on how to edit and implement Wikimedia Commons into their cultural heritage work. It was a fantastic opportunity to work with create professionals, and we look forward to supporting Create Place with future events.

The Audience Agency are fellow members of our NLHF cohort. They have been working with a group of cultural organisations to help them share their work online and engage new audiences. We ran a Wikithon for Audience Agency affiliates in early February 2022.

Workers Education Association (WEA) – We are working with the WEA to organise a Wikithon in Newcastle, which will coincide with their Routes of Social Change immersive history walks in the North East. This event will look at elements of social history and will run, in person, in June 2022.

How to get involved with Connected Heritage

In 2021 and 2022 we hosted four webinars and one editathon ‘potluck’ – named as such because the participants brought their own topics which we advised on how to best add to or refine on the Wikimedia projects. We’ve followed the same model in 2022, with four very successful webinars and one potluck. When participants sign up, they receive the Connected Heritage resources. SSome organisations decided the webinar was enough for them to start work in their organisations independently. Others are working directly with Wikimedia UK through activities like Wikithons, advocating for open knowledge in their organisations, and uploading and editing collections’ content onto the Wikimedia projects. We aim to work with as many as 20 organisations in this way, with the hope that some partnerships will evolve into longer term collaborations.

You can sign up for our public events on Eventbrite.

The post Connected Heritage partnerships appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

As we begin to look towards 2022, and move towards the end of 2021, we thought it was a good time to reflect on the first three months of the Connected Heritage project at Wikimedia UK.

The projects so far

In August, Leah and I began our posts as Digital Skills Wikimedians. Our first task was to familiarise ourselves with the cultural heritage landscape in England and Wales, and to identify potential participants for our first series of introductory webinars. Many emails, tweets and messages were sent out into the world, and we were lucky to have a great response to our offering.

September was the month of webinar creation: we worked hard to design an hour of content that was welcoming, informative and engaging, and offered an overview of the project and our vision. We rehearsed with some willing Wikimedia UK colleagues and developed the presentation into something we are very proud of!

The webinars started in earnest in October. We were blown away by the enthusiasm from participants, and the wide variety of groups and organisations represented. We ran four webinars, and engaged with new faces from all over the cultural heritage sector.

November has been busy thus far: we ran an additional webinar for evening participants, and our first Wikithon for potential partners who had attended a webinar and were interested in the next step. We are in the preliminary stages of our first partnerships, and broadening our understanding of what our audience is looking for. The Wikithon in particular was a great success, with over 10 new editors trained and engaging with Wikimedia through Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

What next?

We have another webinar running before the year concludes: if you’re thinking ahead to 2022, and wishing you’d attended one earlier, now is the time! The session will run from 2pm on Thursday 2nd December and we’d love to see you there. We’ve had great feedback from participants saying they are feeling more confident, more engaged and positive about Wikimedia and open knowledge.

Thinking further ahead?

If you’re feeling the end of year burnout already, and would rather look towards 2022, we’re one step ahead: we’ve set up four introductory webinars and a Wikithon! Start your 2022 with some Connected Heritage, we’ve got webinar sessions running on 18th January, 2nd February, 17th February and 4th March, and an International Women’s Day Potluck Wikithon on Friday 11th March. You can sign up now via Eventbrite.

I’d like to partner with you – how do I do this?

In short, let’s talk. We have a meeting calendar set up here, and you can book in for a slot to chat with us about your questions regarding your organisational needs and aims. Or you can email us at connectedheritage@wikimedia.org.uk. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

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UK based Punjabi writer and photographer, Amarjit Chandan opened up images from his archive. Aside from images photographed by him, the archive includes images from his father, Gopal Singh Chandan, a full-time photographer and other public domain images. 

Amarjit Chandan has a Wikipedia account of his own and has tried himself adding images to Commons in the past years. Punjabi Wikimedians User Group approached him to see what help he needed, also asking if he’d be interested in releasing further content. 

Punjabi Wikimedians User Group collaborated with Wikimedia UK to execute this project. As the collection had a connection to both affiliates, it felt like a great opportunity to collaborate. Amarjit Chandan was more than glad to give his photographs but he needed support to create multilingual Metadata regarding the photographs, handling the captions and helping with the upload. Multilingual metadata was important to include as it helps the Punjabi community to search and access the data easily. User:Gurdeepdali who is an independent photographer worked as an online Wikimedian-in-Residence for the project.

As of 19 June 2021, a total of 471 images have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and at least 54 distinct images (11 % of the total images) are being used across languages and projects with the maximum images being used on Punjabi Wikipedia followed by English Wikipedia and Wikidata. More photos followed. 

Aside from helping illustrate articles on Punjabi personalities on Punjabi and English Wikipedias, the images help capture lives of Punjabis across three continents. Chandan was born in Kenya where his father was a political activist as well. He moved to India at the age of eleven in 1957 and eventually migrated to the UK in 1980.

In 2020, both collaborators were excited to start work on it then in 2020, but the pandemic, COVID-19, meant we couldn’t run in-person events that were planned for this. We still went ahead with the wiki content work, and Punjabi Wikimedians are currently planning to organise an online editathon to add more photographs to relevant Wikipedia articles. You can get in touch with gillteshu@gmail.com or sonichotian@gmail.com for any future plans, and we welcome any multilingual editors who can help add the images to articles in various languages.

If you’re interested in how you can get started with your own cultural heritage project as part of a GLAM organisation, we’ve got a series of free webinars for any cultural heritage professionals. There’s just two more webinars in 2021, on the 9th November and the 2nd of December, sign up here.

The post UK based Punjabi artist opens up his archive appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

This year Wales took part in the international photography competition ‘Wiki Loves Earth’ organised by the Wikimedia movement. Founded 9 years ago as a focus for nature heritage, the competition raises awareness of protected species and sites globally. 

Wikimedia UK and the National Library of Wales coordinated the WikiLovesEarth, Wales, a project, which saw 1,888 new images uploaded to Commons from National Parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Sites of Outstanding Natural Beauty and other protected areas in Wales. This was done in partnership with a number of large organizations including Natural Resources Wales, Pembrokeshire and Snowdonia National Park, the Welsh Mountaineering Club, Edward Llwyd nature society, WiciMon and others.

Iestyn Hughes, one of the judges from Wales said, “It was a pleasure to see such an enthusiastic response to this competition from so many photographers. The top ten images edged ahead in a field of some two thousand entries, and display both excellent technical quality and empathy with their subject matter.”

Our second Judge, Wildlife Photographer and Author Jean Nappier, said “The standard of the images was very high especially the wildlife images of the seabirds”

With 1,888 images taken, Wales is in the 7th position (out of 33 competing countries, just in front of Sweden, Italy and Spain); the percentage of images used on Wikipedia, to date, is also one of the highest in the competition, at 17%, with 38 uploaders (photographers) competing. The number of uploaders registered after the competition start was slightly lower than the norm, at 68%. In the last couple of months, the 323 images used on Wikipedia articles have been viewed 1.3 million times!

Jason Evans, National Wikimedian said that “The National Library of Wales was thrilled to co-host this years Wiki Loves Earth Wales contest, along with our partners Wikimedia UK as part of our wide and varied digital outreach programme. The level of engagement and the standard of photography was fantastic to see and the winning images are a testament to our rich and diverse natural environment.”

The winning photo from Wales is of a protected species, a brown hare, by Alun Williams, himself a very keen ornithologist and naturalist, and a member of Llen Natur. Wikimedia UK has worked closely with Llen Natur over the last 6 years. Williams, who also took the photo which came 2nd, is a retired headteacher from Llanrwst.

Robin Owain, Wikimedia UK Manager (Wales) was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the images saying “the quality is surprisingly good and helps us record of the state of play for some of the protected species in Wales. Working on a global level in this way we can highlight our concerns about the effect of global warming, and celebrate the work done to preserve these species and habitats with our partners.”

You can view the 10 wonderful Welsh winning images here.

WLE Wales Website on Commons here.

View the stats from the competition here.

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