Education/News/November 2020/Photographics and free culture training in Cameroon and Switzerland

Photographics and free culture training in Cameroon and Switzerland


Author: Florence Devouard (Anthere)

Contributor : Athanasios Priftis



Social Media channels or hashtags:

  • Hashtag : #NosJardins

Summary: Nos Jardins is an international project launched in Q4 of 2020. Its main goal is to train civil society actors, with an emphasis on professionals and amateur photographers to increase their skills in both photography and free culture, notably copyleft and free licenses.
Nos Jardins is also a wider partnership between various organisations in Switzerland and Cameroon, providing networking opportunities to its participants.
Trainings and other project activities will be provided in French, with a mix of online and in-person activities. The validation of the training process will include the trainees' participation to wikipedia related photographic contests for practical activities (Wiki Loves Africa and Wiki Loves Earth).
The project activities include the organisation of two photo exhibitions in both countries aiming to provide visibility to the wikimedia ecosystem and the wikimedia projects.

Nos Jardins flyer (in French)

Nos Jardins means Our gardens in French :)

We aim to provide 4 training modules during 2021, focused on

  • Free culture, free knowledge
  • Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia
  • Free licensing
  • Photography masterclass

Trainees
The training initiative will be provided for free to at least 10 people in each country. The public targetted will be photo professionals and amateurs professionals who already showed a certain degree of interest in free culture (for example, it could be people who already contributed a couple of good quality pictures to a former WLA photo contest but know very little of how our ecosystem works and why it make sense to contribute free content to the world).

Activities
Nos Jardins will be set up in the following manner

  • three online webinars organized early 2021, open to everyone, on the following topics
- Project launch, program presentation and presentation of Wikimedia Commons
- Intellectual property rights and free licensing
- Using and reusing freely-licensed photographies
  • 8 in-person training and practical sessions (4 in Cameroon and 4 in Switzerland) on the following topics
- Free culture and Wikimedia Commons
- Intellectual property rights and free licensing
- Photography masterclass
- Integration of images on Wikipedia
  • Participation of trainees to 2 photo contests : Wiki Loves Africa (Feb-April) and Wiki Loves Earth (May-June)
  • Photo exhibitions in Cameroon and Switzerland of the best photos produced by the trainees and submitted to the photo contests
  • Post-mortem meeting with all project organizers and trainees to celebrate, collect feedback and draw lessons

The team
The project is proposed by Ynternet.org (a Swiss non profit) and Wiki in Africa (a South-African non profit that operates global initiatives in support of the WikiAfrica mouvement, such as Wiki Loves Africa). It also involves 2 experienced Cameroun-based wikipedians as well as several civil society organisations in Cameroun and Switzerland.

Involved wikipedians include

To know more and get in touch

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