oin Iziko Museums for a virtual edit-a-thon to celebrate LGBTQIA+ pride month.
As spaces of heritage, museums are an important social conduit for educating people about societal issues, stimulating active citizenship, and acting as catalysts for social change. Now, more than ever before, museums can offer a sense of community; through our exhibitions, research, educational and public programmes, and special projects – Iziko casts an eye on the resilience of the human spirit, and comes to be a space where we feel connected to each other. After all, Our Museums are Your Museums.
That being said, this Pride Month (October 2020) the Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG) is hosting a virtual Wikipedia edit-a-thon initiative to edit and create Wikipedia articles profiling the work of artists and cultural practitioners and organisations in the LGBTQIA+ community. This virtual editathon joins the existing global initiatives which engage with the under-representation of queer artists and cultural practitioners on Wikipedia and encourage editorship for African queer communities beyond the ISANG’s walls and collections; the outcome of the initiative will be both the creation of new articles and the updating or editing of existing articles on the online encyclopaedia of queer artists, cultural practitioners and organisations in South Africa and on the continent.
This project is hosted in partnership with Wikimedia South Africa, and will run from 10h00 until 13h00 on Saturday, 17 October 2020 via Zoom.
You can learn more and register here.
For more information please contact:
Tšhegofatšo Mabaso
Iziko South African National Gallery
Phone: +27 21 467 7234
E-Mail: tmabaso@iziko.org.za
ENDS
About Iziko Museums of South Africa
Iziko Museums of South Africa operates 11 national museums in Cape Town. It is one of the premier cultural institutions in South Africa. The museums house natural history, social history and art collections in magnificent, historic buildings which in themselves are national treasures.
IZIKO is an isiXhosa word, meaning ‘hearth’, traditionally and symbolically the social centre of the home; a place associated with warmth, kinship and ancestral spirits. Here food is prepared and shared, stories are told and knowledge is passed from one generation to the next.
About Wikimedia South Africa
Wikimedia South Africa (ZA) is a non-profit membership driven organisation that exists to support and represent Wikimedia project volunteer editors and open knowledge advocates. Wikimedia ZA is the South African chapter of the global Wikimedia movement, and officially recognised as such by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia South Africa Chapter aims to support a vibrant multilingual and multicultural content community that generates and disseminates content that is used and understood by the local and global community; in doing so to facilitate contributions to the commons of African knowledge; to promote free access to knowledge in all South African languages in order to support development; to collect and disseminate information about, but not exclusive to, South Africa; and to contribute to the creation of free and open knowledge in South Africa.
