I attended the printmaking festival Printopia in Auckland, New Zealand, on 2–4 May 2025 as a Wikipedian in Residence. This was an opportunity to test "Wikifying a Conference", a project with DrThneed supported by WMF Rapid Fund grant 22969643. You can read my blog post on why conferences need a Wikipedian. While I was at the print fair, DrThneed was assisting remotely with our list of printmakers.
Organiser Ina Arraoui kindly allocated a desk at Printopia for a Wikipedian, and publicised the Wikipedia presence in the preconference mailing list two weeks before the event.
Google Sheet created of printmakers speaking or running workshops at the event, as well as other notable NZ printmakers. This uses the Wikipedia and Wikidata tools to, for any person in Wikidata, populate the sheet with common properties like image, VIAF, and occupation, and a view count and quality estimate for any article that might exist about them. The sheet immediately shows who needs a photo taken and where articles need creatio or improvement.
Eighteen of the printmakers did not exist in Wikidata and needed a basic item created.
Greg Stone's band at openingPlanning meeting with DrThneed, who shared her improved version of the Google Sheet, including working ORES and article version lookup.
Set up table with photo corner, which fortuitously had a velvet curtain backdrop, and tested photography and lighting setup.
Explained copyright and the importance of open licensing images to the event photographers Cora Delahunty and Matthew Hutchinson.
Printopia A5 handoutCreated and printed an A5 flyer "Why is Wikipedia at Printopia?" to hand out.
Photographed the 1830 Albion press in use, realising there was no decent photo on the Wikipedia article.
Sorted names and dates for Printopia-supplied publicity photos for upload; these were taken in 2024 by the event photographer Tatiana Harper (and copyright belongs to Printopia), and an addiitional photo was taken by organiser Ina Arraoui
Photographed Willow Whitham, who □ needs artwork release for photo background
Talked to Waikato printmakers about recently-deceased Ruth Davey, who has had a book written about her which is out of print (and photos unlikely to be forthcoming)
Created Wikidata items and checked for missing identifiers using spreadsheet (FindNZ artists, Te Papa, Auckland Art Gallery) (DrThneed)
Interviewed and photographed Whanganui artist Sue Cooke (✓ Needs Wikidata □ Needs artwork release for photo background)
Interviewed and photographed Northland artist Paora Tiatoa (✓ Needs Wikidata □ Needs artwork release for photo background)
Interviewed and photographed Auckland artist Jessie Kanji (website) who ✓ needs Wikidata and □ needs to supply her own photo (none of mine were any good)
Interviewed and photographed Auckland poet and artist Makyla Curtis who ✓ needs Wikidata and ✓ needs artwork release for photo background
Photographed workshops by Graham Hall, Romina Ortega Mella, Hamish Oakley-Brown and Kim Newall, and Judy Gordon
Created a new Commons category, Drypoint printing. There is no mention of Tetrapak printing on the Drypoint article, so scope to create a new section there.
Uploaded Printopia publicity photos, created Printopia (Q134316570) and generated permissions email for Ina to forward
Added structured data to new Wikimedia Commons images of people. Created a Wikidata item for the Morpeth Canaday Art Award and linked to Molly Morpeth and Belinda Griffiths, and noted that list of all award winners should be added to Wikidata (DrThneed)
Interviewed and photographed Whanganui artist Joanna Fieldes (website) who ✓ needs Wikidata and ✓ needs artwork release for photo background
Interviewed Whanganui artist Virginia Guy who ✓ needs Wikidata and □ needs to send photos for uploading
Interviewed and photographed Whangarei artist Hamish Oakley-Brown who □ needs an artwork release for photo background
Interviewed and photographed Auckland artist James S. Watson who ✓ needs Wikidata; he also tutors at Auckland art workshop Toi Ora, which needs ✓ needs Wikidata (It turns out to have a Wikipedia article), and won a NZ Paint and Printmaking Award which needs ✓ Wikidata too, as does the Waikato Society of Arts that confers it
Interviewed and photographed Auckland artist Sophia Jenny (website) who ✓ needs Wikidata
Note: showing people an artist article like Marilyn Rea-Menzies, complete with gallery of artworks, was very useful in demonstrating the importance of releasing a sample of their work under an open licence
Photographed workshops by Gabrielle Belz, Ryan O'Malley, and Eduardo Sanchez Ojeda (including pics of each of them)
Attended Graham Hall talk and got one (not great) photo of him; □ follow up for more info for Wikipedia and more photos
Created Wikidata items for all speakers, workshop leaders, and printmakers interviewed (DrThneed)
Uploaded photos of the printmakers Sophia Jenny, James S. Watson, Hamish Oakley-Brown, Sally-Ann Davies, Joanna Fieldes, Makyla Curtis, Willow Whitham, Paora Tiatoa, Sue Cooke, Graham Hall, Gabrielle Belz, Ryan O'Malley, and Eduardo Sanchez Ojeda, adding images to appropriate Wikidata items and improving Wikidata as needed
Sent out image-clearance emails to Graham Hall, Hamish Oakley-Brown, Joanna Fieldes, Makyla Curtis, Ryan O'Malley, Sue Cooke, and Willow Whitham
Tracked progress of VTR permissions process every day; one permissions email was sent from a personal rather than a work address and had to be resent, one VTR volunteer misread the permission as applying to the photo rather than the art depicted in the photo, and two artists took days to forward the image-clearance email.
Update A month after Printopia: only 9 of 23 images sent for clearing through VTR have been cleared. Some permissions I know have been sent, because I was CC'd, but are not yet noted as received. Some were probably never sent through by the artists. Others are still sitting in the processing queue; after sitting there for 30 days without being processed (presumably due to lack of volunteers), one admin began deleting them. This show the problems with getting copyright licences cleared indirectly—and unavoidably in this case, becuse the photos included depictions of copyrighted artworks.
