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C. Group mission 300word max

Just For The Record is an intersectional feminist collective fighting against online gender biases, investigating how gender is represented in online tools like Wikipedia, and analyzing how it influences the way history is recorded. To address these issues we proposed a series of workshops from 2016. The main goal of this first series of events was to analyse online gender bias and the power structures which shaped them. 

The collective mission evolved after 3 years of intensive program, going to new formats to address the intersections between gender and the way history gets written, spoken, drawn, shouted. With this shift, we zoomed out from a Wikipedia-only focus and worked on more tangible ways of sharing input. We kept organizing workshops, but also took time to reflect on how to create collective outputs in the form of a residency, exhibitions, texts, and nourishing a network of feminist organisations around us.

From 2022, to escape suffering from "activist fatigue", we decided to let our non-profit be dormant for two years. The first year was for hibernation, and the second year for clearing the land and refine our mission. We are now in the second season, pruning, sowing, replanting, and starting a fresher garden where we wish to once again organise gatherings, weave (world wide) webs and find moments for sharing and (un-)learning. The resilience grant would be an important opportunity for this refertilisation process.

We believe the internet is still pliable if we use the right tools. By connecting to local scenes and artists who know how to shape new narratives, the web carries a potential yet untapped by our focus populations. We want to use our case studies of Wikipedia to empower feminist action online and understand this fight to be about labour, care, anti-racism, queer life and trans*feminist techno-politics.

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E. Please give a short description of strategies you use or activities you have undertaken relevant to your selected work issues. 500words max








F. What change does your groups' work want to make in the world? 500words max

Just for the Record wants to pick apart and pinpoint dynamics that shapes the gender bias online, and how this affects our collective memory and the way we narrate our history and societies. We anchor this practice in intersectional, trans*feminist tools and theory. We want to use the fact that online spaces put a lot of oral communication into text to visualise dynamics that are less tangible in the physical world, and to build new feminist approaches into online spaces. 

We want to demystify technologies with trans*feminist and decolonized perspectives and approches.

We want to show how the way we write history is repeating itself and that it never is neutral, and how through these dynamics the threat of big tech is a feminist issue. 

We work on deconstructing the big tech settlement dream by understing how they work and by giving tool transparency.

We want to create local resilience in the face of the futures to come.

We wish to create a hub and knowledge in Brussels that other online networks can lean on and use. 

We will talk from our own network intersections (art, feminism, queer archives, multilingual existence and online-technologies) in a Brussels context.


G. What is the most significant achievement that has resulted from your group’s work? Please also indicate the year(s) when this achievement took place. 300words max

To us, the most significant achievement of our collective is that we managed to make feminist wikipedia editathon an empowering and collectively known thing in Brussels for several years (2014-2018). These editathons were the starting point of our collective. We met up on 8th of March in 2014 when our core member Loraine organised an "art + feminism" Wikipedia editathon, which enlightened between us a real feeling of empowerment. At the end of this event, refusing to wait for the next Women’s Day, we decided to start organising events together to share this feeling with others on a more regular basis. Believing in the open source motto 'Never Alone' we wanted to work with collective writing, discuss online gender-bias and strengthen the intersectional-feminist network in Brussels.

We organised full-day-events on topics that questioned how online architecture takes shape. Renting spaces in places we found interesting in terms of feminist networks, inviting speakers to share their knowledge on the event topic, giving access to free catering and providing child care. The word spread and quickly we were invited to organise feminist editathons and discussions in multiple venues.

To us, the craze around these events succeeded in reaching some of our initial goals. It did participate to weave and fork a different type of local feminist network. It did also participate to emphasize Wikipedia gender biases to a larger network of Brussels' artist and feminist communities giving them the tools to actually be part of a change on this platform, and to organise feminist editathon themselves for their comunities. We also feel that the collective analysis of gender biases on Wikipedia had an impact on the participant and the hosting organisations, making them look at wikipedia, online platforms and their own structure in a more nuanced and critical way.

H. Please share the names of any organisations, networks and/or alliances your group currently works with and how you collaborate with them (maximum 5). 

Constant
Constant is an artist-run organisation that develops, investigates and supports practices from within feminisms, art, media and technology.
Constant have always been a supporting our work, inviting us to be part of their collective reflections on tools x feminism, give presentations and inviting Just For The Record to become a member of their non-profit. Our core member Mia is also a core member of Constant since 2021. 
https://constantvzw.org/site/

Spexcraft and Futurology of Cooperation
Futurology for Cooperation and Specxcraft (Speculative Crafting for Un/Common Futures) engages 2/3 of JFTR core members in collective practices for future and alternative scenario building. The aim of this work is to use speculative concepts from feminist Science Fiction and Futuring tools to deepen the way we think of our shared,potential futures. In these collaborations cyberfeminist knwoledge is brought from JFTR and futuring tools to enlarge the JFTR scope of activism is brought back, working like a symbiotic plant structure. 
https://grimoire.futurology.be/ 
https://constantvzw.org/site/-Specxcraft,243-.html




- mothers and daughters bal

We have initiated and collaborated with Mothers & Daughters - a lesbian* and trans* bar*, and it's off-shooting projects such as the exhibition and publication BAL, that dug up radical feminist and queer spaces from our past and traced polyphonic lesbian herstories from fragments of histories made by lesbians rather than history that happened to lesbians. All uncovered in our research of Belgium’s grass-roots archives with added oral herstories. 
https://www.mothersanddaughters.be/
https://www.balbrussels.be/



- BAD.brussels 
BAD (Brussels Almanack Dykes) is an online platform and network we have initiated and keep being a part of, that attempts to put as many Brussels based queer & feminist spaces on the map as possible. BAD is showing the past, present and future of Brussels’ queer feminist life, both on- and off-line,


https://bad.brussels/


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B. What specific population(s) is/are the primary focus of your work? For example, disabled women , Indigenous women, lesbian women, migrant sex workers, etc.* 50words

- women
- gender expansive people
- People who's voices have been less represented in historic documents.
- feminist online activists
- non activist people who participate to our events through bigger cultural institutions which invite us

D. What makes your group self-led? How do you ensure that your focus population(s) are in control of the organisation’s decisions, structure and the implementation of your plans? 300words max

We are an all-women lead organisation with strong connections to our focus population. The core team consists of 3 women, with different identities that gives us ties to queer, racialised and activist communities (personal bio's on page 5). The events are centered around group discussions, collective writing and feedback sessions that guide the research questions and activities. We always work towards crossing our personal urgencies and focal points with those of our participants.





E. Please describe how the context in which you operate (such as current laws and policies, cultural norms, values, practices, ideologies and customs) affects the focus population(s) that you work with. 500words max

With the importance that such platforms as Wikipedia have gained in our society, and the new writing and publishing tools they propose, it is becoming clear that history is being written down once again. Therefore it is of great concern when studies reveal that only 8,5 to 22.7% of Wikipedia’s contributors are women. It looks as though history is being rewritten with the same biases and that people are forgetting that these platforms, learning tools and narratives we have accepted into our lives are human-made and changeable.

Through lack of understanding the power dynamics they have inherited from the physical world, online spaces and knowledge platforms are today presenting themselves under false ideas of flexibility and inclusivity. With the promise of neutral spaces and participatory re-writing of history but little-to-no implementation of feminist tools and theory we find that online spaces are mirroring the same cultural norms, values, practices and ideologies as our physical world. By now they also have been operating with them for some time and their users have started incorporating arguments such as "this is how we have always done things". The fact that multinational platforms still mostly operate from American headquarters and therefore fall under american policies and copyright laws also contributes to a legal americanisation and patriarchalisation of the world wide web. 

The lack of diversity within those in control over how we shape our collective narratives erases the achievements of large parts of our focus populations from the collective memory. Which leaves us/them feeling invisibilised, with lack of agency and in worst case apathetic when it comes to shaping our future societies. 



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5. Financial  information
A. What is the amount that you are requesting from Mama Cash? (in Euros)

B. What was your organisation's annual income for the previous year? (in Euros) 

2022 : dormant
2021 : 26328.75 €

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B. Is there any additional information that you want us to know about your group and the work you do? 500words max
our background and etc

Just For The Record is nourrished by the inputs of its core members Mia, Loraine and Sarah, coming from art/design practices but with different flavors and backgrounds.

Loraine Furter, she/i·elle/ան, is a graphic designer and researcher based in Brussels since 2007, specialized in editorial design, hybrid publishing and intersectional xfeminism. She designs and edits paper publications as well as web and digital ones, and is particularly interested in the interaction between these media.

Sarah Magnan, she/elle, is a graphic designer working with open source softwares and is part of several networks and collectives (OSP, Médor, Teaching To Transgress, Futurology of Cooperation) that embrace collective intelligence tools and structures, questions the influence and affordance of digital tools through practice of commissioned graphic design and applied research. She spent half of her time in La Cambre art school (Brussels) helping to shift to a more inclusive school with open source, decolonized and feminist tools.

Mia Melvær, she/hun, is a visual artist and artistic researcher whose work often centers around questions about materiality, technology and finding processes of recording. With a special interest in tools for collective work and archives of queer and feminist ephemera, her practice oscillates between sculptural installations and assembling scraps from archival deep-dives to create narrative patchworks.



C. How did you find the application process? Is there anything we can do better, next time? 500words max


- in  general we are happy about the form, which ease the reading from their side but also lighten the writing process avoiding repetitions
- The participatory approach to grantmaking, the transparency on and diversity of the COM COM group is an aspect that we really did appreciate, making us feel that our activist work is taking seriouly and history might not alway be repeated. 
- A bit tricky to find an overview over the grant-process timeline.
- we do think asking for feedbacks on application process is a  great idea and hope you will give us some to, doesn't matter the answer.