Dr. Jenny Nex giving the guided tour of St Cecilia’s Hall concert room and music museum. Pic by Ellie Whitehead, CC-BY-SA
This post was written by Assistant Wikimedian in Residence, Ellie Whitehead.
Our most recent event saw us editing Wikipedia to add more women composers and instrument makers onto the world’s go-to site for information. The event took place on Friday, 21st June 2024 to mark World Music Day.
Our World Music Day celebrations took place at the historic St Cecilia’s Hall Concert Room and Music Museum. St Cecilia’s Hall dates from 1763 and is Scotland’s oldest purpose-built concert hall and also houses the University of Edinburgh’s musical instrument collection.
Attendees on the guided tour of St Cecilia’s Hall concert room and music museum. Pic by Ellie Whitehead, CC-BY-SA
Our event kicked off with a bang, as St Cecilia’s Hall curator, Dr. Jenny Nex, provided a guided tour of the museum’s collection. Jenny gave us a tailored tour, based upon her archival research, focusing upon the “Hidden Women of St Cecilia’s”. We saw instruments that were made by women, such as flutes and violins, and heard stories about historic women’s places in music which have only just been uncovered.
After the tour, our guests were provided with lunch. This time gave people the opportunity to get to know each other and start thinking about what they might want to edit as the afternoon went on. As always, we made sure that the tea and coffee was flowing and that we had a good supply of snacks to keep our fantastic team of volunteer editors going!
Tea and coffee to keep us all going! Pic by Ellie Whitehead, CC-BY-SA
After lunch, we were welcomed back by a fantastic talk by Luke Whitlock. Luke is a current MScR student in Music at the University, researching women instrument makers, and a producer for BBC Radio 3. Luke gave some insight into his experience of writing about women composers and instrument makers on Wikipedia, referring to two pages he had previously created on Ethel Parker and Margaret Purcell.
Luke Whitlock, BBC Radio 3 producer at MScR researcher, giving a talk on his research into hidden women composers in the music archives. Pic by Ellie Whitehead, CC-BY-SA
Luke gave us some wise words of wisdom, particularly emphasising that much of the information about these women is hidden. He encouraged us to ‘think outside of the box’, looking at newspapers and sources that talk about people these women were linked with in order to build a bigger picture of the women themselves.
After this editing training began and I, with the help of Ewan, got to teach the attendees how they can add to and edit Wikipedia. Once the training was out of the way the researching and editing began. People began scouring books, biographies, encyclopaedias, and the internet to find all the information they could about women composers and instrument makers. Overall, we created and edited 24 articles and added almost 10,000 words to Wikipedia. A few of the articles created include:
The afternoon finished with everyone being able to publish what they had been working on. It was a fantastic afternoon with a great group of attendees who were eager to learn and add some fantastic pages onto to Wikipedia. We are very grateful to our colleagues at St Cecilia’s Hall for hosting us in such a lovely venue, making for a thoroughly enjoyable event.
Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence, instructing attendees how to publish their new articles on Wikipedia at St Cecilia’s Hall concert room and music museum. Pic by Luke Whitlock, CC-BY-SA
