How often do you witness and capture the display of rich culture, beautiful faces, magnificent ancient traditions, and charming ornaments exhibited during festivals? Are these captivating moments you witness during festivals a true reflection of how they are represented on the web?
Festivals are an essential part of the human race and it depicts the way of life of a group of people. Festivals are used to communicate and preserve ancient occurrences, these are done through the songs (folksongs), stories (folktales), and actions exhibited during the celebration. Festivals are celebrated for many reasons or are celebrated to tell different stories about a particular tribe or culture, usually having backgrounds relating to an occurrence in the history of that culture. They are meant to celebrate or commemorate special moments and emotions in the lives of people. From Glastonbury Festival in England, the Homowo festival in Ghana, the Sango Fire festival in Nigeria, and to the various carnivals in the Caribbean.
Albeit the importance of festivals, they are scarcely covered on Wikimedia Commons and often limited to stubs on Wikipedia. Even if they exist, many of these articles lack photos or videos to further visualize, tell the story, or enrich the experience of the reader or seekers of such knowledge.
In our bid to promote culture and heritage, we at Open Foundation West Africa are running The Wiki Loves Festivals campaign again this year, after a pilot of the project with several members of the Ghanaian community in 2019. We wish to use this campaign as a medium to promote the importance of Festivals and to seek to improve the visualization of such content on Wikipedia.
This campaign runs from the beginning of July 2021 to October 2021. Members of the Ghanaian community are encouraged to submit photos of festivals that have been captured over the years to take the opportunity from July to capture some photos. Uploads will begin during the month of October 2021.
Note: that the Wikimedia Commons category for uploading is “Wiki Loves Festival 2021 in Ghana.’’
