04 September 2013

Wiki Loves Monuments 2013. How to effectively involve citizens in the promotion of Cultural Heritage

A screenshot from the App developed to facilitate participation in the contest

Safdarjung’s Tomb, a garden tomb with a marble mausoleum in New Delhi, India. This photo won the 2012 Wiki Loves Monuments competition. Photo by Pranav Singh, CC BY-SA 3.0

Wiki Loves Monuments is a contest which aims to enrich Wikicommons, the Wikipedia multimedia repository, while boosting and enhancing the active participation of citizen in the promotion of Cultural Heritage. 

Thanks to the participation of enthusiastic amateur photographers who want to contribute actively in heritage promotion, the contest managed to reach very high figures in terms of digital submissions and citizen engagement.

As a matter of fact, Wiki Loves Monuments is a great example on how to promote enthusiasm and participation from citizen in the promotion of their Cultural Heritage, a complex topic also explored last year in one of CreativeCH's workshops.

The 2012 edition counted more than 350.000 entries spread in 33 countries worldwide. More than 15.000 people submitted their own images picturing a vast gamma of cultural heritage spots all over the world.  

This year competition aims to outdo the already impressive figures of 2012's contest. More countries are now available for people who wants to join the contest, and an Android App were specifically developed for this year contest. 
The App, which is freely available on the Play Store, will help contributors to identify, upload and tag the pictures of monuments and cultural heritage in general.

This year's contest will feature even more categories and prizes, such as the Europeana First World War Award.
The list of the participating countries can be found here. 

The deadline for the submissions is 30th September 2013.
For further information about the contest, please refer to the official Wiki Loves Monuments website.

Stefano Sbarbati