Commons:Wiki Loves Public Art 2013/International press advisory

Press release 1: before the contest

Read before use:

• You are free to use the following text as a template for your own press release.
• You are free to choose and alter the headline and paragraphs to suit your press release better.
• Make sure you have selected some photos to send out with the press release or have them available when needed.
• Publish at least an email address (preferably also the phone number) of your assigned press contact person at your press release.
• We will update this advisory press release as soon as we have more news about the contest.
  • The press release will be updated at mid-May to tell about the progress of the contest and at the end of the contest.

English text

Headline: The first Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest brings artworks online

Subheading: The contest sets out in May as volunteers take pictures of artworks and upload their photos under a free license so that they can be used for online projects such as Wikipedia

[Stockholm, Sweden -- 24 April 2013] – People in Sweden, Spain, Finland, Israel and Austria are participating in improving online access to artworks as the Wiki Loves Public Art, WLPA, photo contest kicks off in the beginning of May. The goal of the contest is to get as many pictures of public art available under a free license on Wikipedia’s online image database, Wikimedia Commons. The photos can then be seen and used by anyone, anywhere and 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 encyclopaedia.

“We are organizing this contest to increase our common collection of photos of artworks and make them easily accessible to everyone through Wikipedia. This is also a fun way to start contributing for volunteers as they can go and take pictures of their favourite artworks with the chance of winning great prizes”, says the international WLPA coordinator John Andersson.

The Wiki Loves Public Art contest is organized by Wikimedia Sverige, Europeana and volunteers in the Wikimedia chapters and affiliated groups in each of the participating countries.

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.

An International Movement

From the start the contest has focused on being international. The contest builds on the remarkable success of the annual Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest, which take place between 1-30 September every year. Last year with an incredible 15,000 photographers from 33 countries around the world uploading more than 350,000 photos.

“This is the first Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest so we are doing it in a bit smaller scale this year to try out the concept, but of course we hope to be able to arrange WLPA also in the coming years with even more countries and participants. This is all possible through the support of Europeana and the hard work of all the great Wikimedia volunteers", Andersson states.

What makes the contest a little bit more difficult to organise 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 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.

“With WLPA we are also trying to raise awareness of copyright laws and the fact that in some countries national legislation can even make you a criminal for taking photos of publicly owned artworks outdoors, the same artworks you pass on your way to work or school everyday”, 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 there and take photos of the museums' collections that are suitable for the contest.

Media contact for the international WLPA contest: John Andersson
Phone:+46 (0)733965189
Email: john.anderssonwikimedia.se

About Wikimedia Wikimedia is the movement behind Wikipedia, supporting the same goals on realizing a world where all knowledge is freely available for every human being. This is possible through the US-based Wikimedia Foundation and a network of national associations called chapters which co-operate closely with the volunteers on the Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia.

About Wikipedia Wikipedia and the related sites operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 500 million unique visitors per month, making them the 6th most popular web property world-wide. Available in more than 280 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 23 million articles contributed by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

About Europeana Europeana brings together the digitised content of Europe’s galleries, libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual collections. Currently Europeana gives integrated access to 26 million books, films, paintings, museum objects and archival documents from some 2,200 content providers. The content is drawn from every European member state and the interface is in 29 European languages. Europeana receives its main funding from the European Commission. www.europeana.eu

Contact for Europeana:
Geer Oskam,
geer.oskam@kb.nl

List of countries where WLPA is arranged in 2013:

• Austria;
• Israel;
• Finland;
• Spain;
• Sweden.

More information about the contest is found at: www.wikilovespublicart.com.