Annual Report 2021/Story: Establishing The Grand Tour of Wikimedia

Enabling

2021

In this Story we are focusing on how knowledge, resources and experience can be shared within the Wikimedia Movement through a capacity building tour for volunteers and staff. We are laying the foundation for a world-wide program, strengthening the possibility of even more free knowledge.

We talked about the Grand Tour concept at Wikimania 2021.

We strongly believe that meeting and sharing knowledge is the key to growing. This is the foundational idea of the Grand Tour of Wikimedia – an exchange program for volunteers and staff within the Wikimedia movement.

The idea is that a small group of travelers will set out on a journey together, coming from different parts of the world (and the movement) and visiting chapters, user groups and affiliates that will share their methods, material and knowledge. The tour will take place over the course of some weeks, giving enough time to really get in contact with other parts of the Movement. Each traveler will set their own goals for the journey, but each tour will follow the same theme (being GLAM, education, community support, or other). The receiving affiliates will plan the visit with activities such as workshops, study visits, partner meetings or active work in their ongoing projects. The travelers will be active participants in sharing their experiences and knowledge both between themselves and the partners they visit.

Thus far, Wikimedia Sverige, Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Deutschland are on board to receive participants that will sign up for the tour. A number of other affiliates have stated interest to either send or receive participants. We have participated in several meetings to launch the idea and hope to get several applications for participation when we open up for this. Of course, the pandemic has pushed our plans forward to some extent, but our hope is to start the concrete planning during 2022.

As a way of financing the Tour, we have found that there is an Erasmus+ Mobility project for adult education. This goes straight in line with the aims of the project, making it possible for affiliates to apply for funding for the travelers to cover all extra costs. However, the plan is that the receiving countries will fund the Tour for the time period where the travelers stay with them.

Now, a big focus lies ahead on getting more affiliates to join the project and sign up to become hosts and send away travelers for the tours to come. It will be an amazing chance for capacity exchange as well as meeting new and old friends physically again.