Title of session: BoF: EU funding calls and projects
Session description: This BoF (birds of a feather) calls affiliates and other entities actively participating in the Wikimedia Movement with interests in diversifying funding for Wikimedia related projects through funding calls created by the European Union. This projects should have a direct applicability in the European Union area, but to be developed in the Movement for universal benefit. There are a lots of calls answering many, if not all, the 2030 Strategy goals. Think for example in the Europeana community (GLAM), Erasmus+ (skills development) or the data spaces initiative (fostering data reusability).
Username for contact: @Olea
Session duration: 30 minutes
Session type: discussion
Language of session: English
Prerequisites: none special
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Notes from session

BoF: EU funding calls and projects

Date and time: 5 of May, 11:30

Relevant links

• Phabricator task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T364012
• Session slides: none
• Session notes: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/BOF-EU-funding

Facilitators

Susanna Ånäs
User:Olea

Participants

Notes

This BoF (birds of a feather) calls affiliates and other entities actively participating in the Wikimedia Movement with interests in diversifying funding for Wikimedia related projects through funding calls created by the European Union.

Cultural commons where wikimedia projects are one of the projects out there in the oprn ecosystem safeguarding cultural heritage and making it availiable online taking into consideration the pripities of the foundation and making adense network with other actors in the ecosystem so we dont fail the cultural heritage.

This can happen by:

• Funding
• Resources and the data spaces

There are lots of European projects financing programs and calls. For Erasmus+ projects, for example, any country in the world can participate excluding North Korea, Vatican and United Kingdom. Participant entities usually are located in Member States, but, depending the call, countries outside the European union can participate depending the agreements signed with the European Union.

The goal is to share information to those intrested, identify more induvidual/org who are intrested in this movement.

An interesting thing is the Common European data space for cultural heritage (https://www.dataspace-culturalheritage.eu/) is related with Europeana, which is a massive federation and afiliated network of European cultural institutions. This data space seems very aligned with GLAM Wiki.

There is a new mecanism called Cascade Funding (also named as Financial Support for Third Parties, FSTP) . In this schema the EU selects a set of big consortium with defined goals. Each consortium opens their own funding calls to smaller entities. Some examples in cascade funding are in the NGI (Next Generation Internet) calls, like the NGI Zero (https://nlnet.nl/funding.html), leaded by NLnet, funding projects with up to 50,000 Euros for entities and individuals working on opensource, privacy, commons, etc. There is another different consortium NGI Commons (https://commons.ngi.eu/), but at the moment we don't know if they'll manage in cascading. More information about FSTP: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/funding-tenders-opportunities/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=25559615

We also have Erasmus+ they have a lot of calls and consider EU countries with several project focus areas, mainly related with education and skills. We find a call for our size and we can make a small consortium to apply for grant of about 100,000 Euros or more. One of the criterias is that there have to be 3 countries involved in the project. There are several patterns and criterias to the Erasmus + proposal. There is (or will be) a dedicated European data space for skills also.

DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities), which partners with Europeana and others, maybe should be considered also.

In Wikimedia España we are setting up a working group for GLAM to, among other goals, look for projects funding, consolidate ideas and grow with real development eg software Developments etc.

When applying for a call you'll need to have a background and a well thought or ongoing project to be able to be selected. There is massive interest in the EU to explore GLAM projects (Open GLAM) with so many active contributors to various areas of wikimedia. We need to identify the projects, the cause and start applying for proposals to help us develop.

Data spaces, particularly Gaia-X and the heritage and skills ones should be carefully considered for the interest of the Wikimedia Movement. Seems Europeana will be the main implementation Common European data space for cultural heritage. The concept of data spaces is about agreements and policies and principles on data and date exchange related issues. We can explore what opportunities they provide for wikimedia activities in Europe.

Questions

Q: In the European space what are your needs or Interests?
A: (Galder González, from EWKE) We are making a project for schools to write on Women in Wikipedia in underrepresented languages. The project gives us money for 3 years and requires we provide justifications for each year (50,000 Euros in 3 years) and a 3rd party org affiliated to the wikimedia foundation and part of the project.
Its about building long term relationships especially those in the infrastructure space. ERC grants the only criteria is Excellence but you can present the idea and convey the value and the impact and you have access to about 1,500,000 to 3,000,000 Euro. The have several progrmams a Starting program, Consolidated program and Advanced program and the funding level varies.
EIT Culture and Creativity fund was initiated last year.
Next Erasmus call is March 2025 so theres time to prepare. NGI Zero is a rolling fund. More NGI open calls: https://www.ngi.eu/opencalls/

Q: How do we launch European Projects when we are all small?
A: We could consider self fund. It's useful to find experienced partners to join them. Also, hiring experienced consultants can set the difference.

Q:The process of applying for grant application for small organizations might be a barrier.
A: Many of the organizations are grassroot and might not have much experience also. In terms of writing grant applications with larger organizations or those with more experience helps with Grant writing. There are consortium filled with individuals with much experience in these areas.

Q: What should we do?
A: (Ismael Olea, from LaOficina) Currently we are working together with Wikimedia Spain who has some limits on what they can do and we plan to start a working group. In LaOficina we plan to facilitate a new consortium for Erasmus+ developing the very small GLAM concept. OTOH, we need to understand what data spaces are and how they perform would be great to have a little funding to identify the similarities with Wikimedia and Data Spaces. We also plan to keep applying to NGI Zero till they give us funding.