Macrogrants/TaPRA

Reason for archiving this grant: Both organisations recognised that the project grant would not be taken forward. The delays in setting the project up in 2014-15 meant that it was not practical any more to follow up with it in 2015-16.

Objective

The Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA) exists to facilitate research through and into theatre and performance. It is based on collegiality with a formal structure that intends to advance informal, productive and dynamic research networks. TaPRA is currently planning to organise and share the association's archival materials on Commons and WikiSources, as appropriate, and seeks WMUK's assistance in doing this in a way that is mutually beneficial to TaPRA members and the global Wikimedia movement. This project is led by Dr Kate Dorney, TaPRA Research & Development Officer, who is also Curator of Modern and Contemporary Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum and co-editor of the journal Studies in Theatre & Performance.

Goals

1. Release as many TaPRA archival documents and media files as possible under a CC-BY-SA license.
2. Enable TaPRA members to contribute as many TaPRA-related documents and media files to Commons and WikiSource, as well as any other appropriate Wikimedia projects.
3. Train TaPRA members in creating and editing Wikipedia articles on theatre and performance, as well as contribute other theatre and performance materials, as appropriate, to Commons, WikiSource, and any other Wikimedia projects.
4. Create an awareness of knowledge sharing through Wikimedia projects among TaPRA members.
5. Explore ways to develop a long-term working relationship between TaPRA and WMUK.

Resources

• TaPRA is allocating £1,500 to this project and is seeking matching funding from WMUK to extend/double the number of hours/days during which we can employ a person (most likely a theatre and performance postgraduate researcher) to coordinate the retrieval and organisation of all TaPRA archival materials, which are currently scattered across different institutions, including University of Manchester, University of Glasgow, University of Kent, Central School of Speech and Drama - University of London, University of Birmingham, University of Leeds, Plymouth University, and University of South Wales. Providing that this application is successful, the person employed for this project will work on a fixed term contractual basis, providing the equivalent of 30 eight-hour days delivered as per their availability. Postgraduate or early postdoc researchers are normally paid about £100 per day for research on theatre and performance projects.
• WMUK's Education Organiser has expressed an interest in organising at least two training sessions for TaPRA members to enable the goals listed above over a period of 2-3 months.
• TaPRA's Documenting Performance Working Group is made up of a number of academics and postgraduate researchers involved in digital curation and archival preservation of theatre and performance materials. Members of this working group are associated directly with archival structures such as the Digital Curation Centre at the University of Glasgow, Digital Dance Archives at the University of Coventry, the Media & Memory Research Initiative at the University of Hull, and the Theatre Collection at Bristol University. This working group will be the prime environment within which TaPRA will be developing this project.

Constraints

2014 marks the 10th anniversary of TaPRA and it is therefore desirable to have as many TaPRA archival materials released well ahead of the 10th anniversary conference, which is scheduled to take place at Royal Holloway University of London in September 2014.

Outcomes

1. A number of new Wikimedians among TaPRA members is expected. It's hard to determine an actual number at this stage.
2. A substantial amount of archival materials will be released by TaPRA under a CC-BY-SA license, in effect making TaPRA's entire archive freely available online. TaPRA's goal is to release its entire collection of abstracts, speaker bios, conference programmes, and related media files created since the association was established in 2004; all these materials will find a good home on Commons and WikiSource, while the more notable elements in the collection may also provide excellent source materials for Wikipedia articles.
3. An open resource for future scholars that documents changes in theatre and performance research practice, focus and interaction with practitioners.
4. Other indirect outcomes are also likely, especially in terms of producing new Wikipedia editors in the area of theatre and performance.

Risks

1. Conflict of interest and/or self-promotion issues may initially get in the way with regards to contributions on Wikipedia, but an appropriate workshop addressing this directly as early as possible will certainly ensure that the appropriate guidelines are followed.
2. TaPRA's archival materials are currently scattered across several higher education institutions. Contributions to Wikimedia projects are contingent on the ability to collect the bulk of these materials in good time ahead of full engagement with Wikimedia.

Questions

In terms of the archive materials, I struggle to see this as a Commons, Wikisource or Wikipedia project, though I understand the associated promotion of a minority of the archive materials for use on these projects. Recent speaker biographies or conference programmes would be deleted on Commons as out of scope, regardless of licence, as Commons does not exist to preserve nor make permanently available images of simple texts (see Commons:Commons:SCOPE#Excluded_educational_content. Similarly it is hard to imagine that conference information or prepared texts about speakers would be easily usable on Wikipedia without clear issues of promotion. By what has been described, the documents could be released on a CC-BY-SA licence at archive.org, this project fits the mission of the Internet Archive with no consequential support costs for Wikimedia, and Wikimedia volunteers are used to taking what they need from that source. Perhaps the proposal could be re-framed with archive.org considered, as this fits its mission rather better than Wikimedia's? --Fæ (talk) 16:41, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

That's a good point. Some of the archival materials may indeed be more suited for archive.org, which incidentally suffered from a fire at its main building last night [1]. This should be taken into consideration but I'd also want to ensure that the other 4 goals are not diminished through this. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 17:02, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Under Goal 2, if there are to be archive materials suitable for direct use on Wikisource or Commons, it would be useful to explain what types of materials they are likely to be, possibly uploading a couple as exemplars would be an idea. For example part of the archives might be some high quality recent portrait photographs of educational value or potentially of people that might become subjects for future Encyclopaedia articles or of immediate value illustrating existing articles. --Fæ (talk) 17:16, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, many thanks for these comments. We aren't yet in a position to provide samples of archival material because these are still to be collected as part of the 10th anniversary project funded directly through TaPRA. Even if some of these materials turn out not to be suitable for Wikimedia repositories, we are very confident that our members will want to contribute further resources that will certainly be of broader interest to the theatre and performance collections within Wikimedia projects. --Kdorney (talk) 15:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your application. With no objection from the Grants Committee, we have provisionally approved this grant application. For the funds to be released, we will require the following:

• Ten examples of the material or type of material suitable for Wikimedia projects that will be released
• An realistic estimate of the number of new editors you are targeting to recruit
• A suggestion of the two possible joint events Wikimedia UK and TaPRA can host together
• A sketch timetable for the project

At the completion of the grant, we will also require a report into what has been achieved, any lessons learned, impact of the project etc. More details of what we'll be looking for will be communicated closer to the time. We look forward to a successful project! Regards -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 11:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

• The application above says they seek "matching funding from WMUK to extend/double the number of hours/days during which we can employ a person (most likely a theatre and performance postgraduate researcher) to coordinate the retrieval and organisation of all TaPRA archival materials". We should consider the grant on the merits of that alone, not bringing in the training sessions etc, which in any case it seems Tony would be organizing. So I agree we need more on the first and last points, but not the middle two. As I've said by email, so far I'm not seeing benefits commensurate with the funding here. Johnbod (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2013 (UTC)