 One thing I know is that art goes hand in hand with history. Art is a way of knowing how the heart speaks, how the mind functions, and how it expresses itself to the world. Art is a very valuable way that we know about the human experience. So without, if we really wanna tell the story of human history, if we really wanna know the facts about life, you have to include art. My name is Taz Elias, and I am the Brand Collaborations Lead in the Brand Studio of the Communications Department at the Wikimedia Foundation. This is a panel discussion with myself, Sherry Antoine and Inam Bosoka about the Unseen Project, a project that looks to highlight visual knowledge gaps amongst Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Let me introduce Sherry. Hi, how are you? I'm Sherry Antoine. I'm the Executive Director of Afro Crowd, an initiative focused on the African diaspora and the Wiki community. I'm also the Lead Organizer of a user group called Wiki Caribbean. And let me introduce Inam. Hi, I'm Inam Bosoka, and I am an illustrator and a sculptor from Ghana. I live and work in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. You know, we are all individuals, right? None of us are alike. We all have different fingerprints. We all have different spheres of influence. We all come from different places. And that includes people of African descent. And now while there are many different kinds of us, just in the three of us, we come from different places. We speak different languages even or around different kinds of folks and different influences. But all of us will likely be represented very similarly in a lot of the media that we see online. And so as a Black woman, who's also happens to be an immigrant in the country that I live, a lot of times, there are different ways that we are represented that aren't necessarily representative of us. And a lot of times we don't get to represent ourselves. Other people make those decisions for us. So one of the reasons that I'm so happy to be part of the Wiki community is that we get a chance to work on improving that, at least in this sphere online. But I know that we're much more complex than the two dimensions that we are often represented as. So visually, especially when that's missing and you're missing in the annals of your history, it can have a psychological toll. I am from Africa, obviously. And I can relate to what Sherry has said in a lot of ways in that we are currently the same people as certainly in different parts of the world. I think that Africa is not that much represented on the global or on the internet as you put it, right? There's no denying of the fact that much less is known about Africa globally. In my line of work, I often refer to the internet most of the times in search of inspiration and reference and maybe some things like that. And I often find out that there is not enough information about Africans out there. For example, I could be out there just looking for an African woman or an African lady. And on the first few pages, you may find pictures and a likeness of people from Africa. And then the pages that follow, you tend to find people that are not Africans and you start to wonder how come those are part of the particular word or phrases that you keep on which you were looking for. And so I think to, I can even say that Africa even lacks more in terms of what is out there about the people that are from here or the cultures and the things that happen down here in Africa. That means it's a great opportunity to connect with people like you. There are people all over the world doing such amazing things in different projects on Wikipedia. And I don't think, I think in the last five or six years, it's been more of an explosion of that. And so that's very exciting. And there's also been a push for greater representation. As you know, historically speaking, sorry, Wikipedia, which Wikimedia helps to run is 20 years old and for most of its history has been written mostly by Western Caucasian men. And I think it was like for a while there was either, it was above 80%, I think it was close to more than that. And over time, because of efforts to improve numbers like that with greater representation for example, of more women, people of color and so forth. Women for example, it's now, I think it was before the number of women represented on Wikipedia I think was in the teens. And now I think we've reached about 20%, which isn't perfect, but it's better than before. I understand you guys, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, you guys deal with information and putting knowledge out there so that it can be accessible to the whole world. Whilst you have done your research and have come out with the necessary information, I think that kind of helps illustrate those your points or whatever research you've come out with in a way that it helps people, people are able to relate to the stories that you make. People are able to, like I said, people are able to relate to the stories even more through acts. I mean, there is no doubt at itself in a form of, has served in a form of records in history books and so I think acts going hand in hand with history makes it important for an artist to be part of a privilege such as this one. So yeah, so I'm happy that I can also contribute my bit to the bigger goal or the bigger picture that is being created by Wikimedia. Before there was language that was written, there was artistic expression. I'm a violinist and music for me is the art, one of the arts that I love and I love that on Wikimedia, we can even add things like that. Art is a way of knowing how the heart speaks, how the mind functions and how it expresses itself to the world. Art is a very valuable way that we know about the human experience. So without, if we really wanna tell the story of human history, if we really wanna know the facts about life, you have to include art. And so that's a very important part of what we're doing here in this project to tell the story of the black experience of people of African descent all over the world, but also in general when we're doing anything related to data, I think it's important to consider that very important portion of our full human understanding. I am very excited, I have to say. Even though we are just at the beginning of the project, I've been new to get to know a lot more people from like you, like Sherry, and I guess there are a lot more that I am yet to meet. We're using data, we're turning that data into a representation that the world can see, right? But what's so great is that number one, they get to be seen because that's the whole point, right? These people are missing from the annals of our digital history, which is by and large becoming our history period. That's where people go to learn about the world around them in many ways about themselves. But what's wonderful is that these different artists are bringing their expression and we're translating it into what we see in front of us. And imagine all the ways that other people will be able to do the same thing. So in some way, what they're creating is a reflection, not only of where they're coming from, which is always gonna be that way because that's just human nature, but it's almost like looking in a mirror at ourselves for those of us, especially of African descent, but just people in the world to be able to see this expression and say, okay, this is who this person is. And now they're gonna take what they, their own understanding and perspective and then that becomes a lot more personal to them because of that. I think most importantly, it has to do with the fact that they are more of education. That is why I am much attracted to them. I feel education has a huge role to play as far as taking us to the next level as concerned. This is not the end of the project, that these, this is just the beginning, that there's more people who will be interested in continuing on the project and getting more faces that are not included to be included. I hope this project continues because there's just so many more possibilities. We want to include people from different backgrounds. It goes along with the problem, which is the black community or Africans and diaspora, not being represented enough online. And so at the end of the project, maybe it doesn't end, maybe it just goes on and goes into different forms. I guess it's going to provide a good enough information online and that is accessible to those who might be interested in it for academic consumption or people that might just be interested in knowing about certain things that are related to the people from Africa and then the diaspora. Please tell us a bit more about throw crowds. Can you describe our throw crowds mission in one sentence and then tell us a bit more about Afro crowd in general? Afro crowd's mission is to essentially highlight and involve the African diaspora on a comedian. So our mission is we're focused on the African diaspora and we're focused on not only engagement with the African diaspora, but also inclusion of it. So it's both front end and back end. So who's telling your story? Who's helping to write your history as a person of African descent? And also to ensure that you can be a part of that as well in this particular way, in the wiki community. We want to encourage people, regardless of whether you join us or some of the other groups online, regardless of your background actually, because we're open to anyone and everyone who's interested in participating with us of any background. What we also want to do is when you join Wikipedia as an editor, that you know that there is a supportive community there waiting to welcome you. And also through whom you can ask questions, you can try things out. And if we don't have the answer, we have a large community that we're connected to to help you get the answer.