Location: Berlin, Germany
Organizer: WomenEdit Berlin and Who writes his_tory?
Despite the current global pandemic, Art+Feminism organizers continue to nurture community and help put more marginalized artists on Wikipedia. This is part of our ongoing effort to highlight some events that happened before COVID-19 stopped in-person events, as well as events that have pivoted to meet online in the coming weeks. Daniela Brugger, Regional Ambassador for Europe writers of the even in February the following.
The Berlinale Art+Feminism Edit-a-thon took place in Berlin during the Berlinale Film festival from 21st until 23rd of February 2020. It was the time just before the pandemic in Europe started and telling about it now seems like a story from another period in life. It was organized in collaboration with WomenEdit Berlin and Who writes his_tory? and was a follow up event of a network meeting, our collective Who writes his_tory? initiated in Hamburg in autumn 2019. For the Berlinale Edit-a-thon in Berlin we gathered womxn from different parts of Germany and Switzerland to get to know each other better, which is a helpful thing: to know your community (also helpful for future online support). It was a great mix of knowledge, experience and enthusiasm present as we gathered around 35-40 newbies and really experienced users at one spot and got online support by at least another 5 users. The different generations had a common interest in film and feminism. But the more people gather the more divergency there is, as one thing I realised is, that the notion of intersectional feminism and therefore intersectional language is not yet as standardly known as I would love to see this in future. This year the focus was more on initiating and gathering and of course writing about the movies, its content and their femxle casts, directors and producers. But for future Edit-a-thons I intend offering workshops or inputs on gender neutral language use within Wikipedia and intersectional feminism. It was really inspiring to go to movies during the Edit-a-thon and attend panels organised by ProQuote Film, who gathered different activists and filmmakers, all engaging for more visibility and fundings for womxn in film.
Summed up I see it as a great and motivating Edit-a-thon from which a working group has emerged aiming to keep in touch with a wider German-speaking network. We also started a mailing list for online support throughout the year as the bigger aim is to fight the generic masculinum which is still standard in the German Wikipedia.
Link to dashboard: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Berlinale_Berlin/ArtAndFeminism_2020_(Februar_2020)/home
A special thanks goes to WomenEdit Berlin and user Grizma who really made this happen.