Ahead of International Women’s Day, people came together at the Surrey Art Gallery at an event with the goal of reversing the erasure of female, gender-diverse, and racialized artists.
Organizers say our understanding of history is largely dictated by what gets written down. And disproportionately, the work and accomplishments of women and gender-diverse people fall by the wayside.
That’s something the Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon is working to address — by updating the digital canon to reflect the contributions of overlooked artists.
“One of the challenges of Wikipedia is it largely just represents dominant voices,” said Zool Suleman, executive director of the Rungh Cultural Society.
“What you’ll find is there are blank spots in the history of Canadian art. So you’re going along thinking that there was no Asian photographer ever in Canada, or there was no black photographer, or Indigenous filmmaker, or dance artist, or writer, or choreographer, and I think what we’re trying to do is fill in those blank spots so that we have a fuller picture.”
Locals spent the afternoon learning how to create and update Wikipedia pages from curator Alanna Edwards. The work was as simple as signing up, heading to the edit pages for individual artists, and getting down to business.
Then, like magic, the articles have been updated to better reflect the artists’ achievements.
Participant Gunmeet Grewal says he chose to work on Taslim Samji’s article because he felt a personal connection to her story.
“I just felt like South Asian voices in general are not that much existent online, so it’s important for us to highlight those voices, especially Wikipedia, being the fourth largest online resource for people to look at when they search stuff,” Grewal said.
Participant Sirat Gill is in Grade 10. She says she was motivated by the desire to make sure that the cultural significance of women’s work is given the credit it deserves.
“It’s to help them get, like, recognition, and I feel like that’s very important, because they’ve contributed a lot,” she said. “So far, I’ve edited 29 articles on Wikipedia.”
The annual event has contributed a lot, accounting for half a million words and 6 million pageviews since it started in 2019.
Edwards points to the importance of doing this work.
“Oftentimes, histories are not written about us,” said Edwards.
“So it’s nice to write our own histories and have it on the world’s largest encyclopedia.”