Umepedia is aimed at improving Umeå’s digital presence – and establish Umeå as a Wikipedia town. The work mainly took place during 2014 when Umeå was the European Capital of Culture. The idea is to provide an easy way for visitors and citizens to access information about the culture in Umeå in a modern way, where the vast majority already is looking for information – on Wikipedia, the sixth most used website in Sweden.

In 2013, the project group made an inventory of how Umeå’s culture (in a broad sense) was described on Wikipedia, primarily in Swedish. This inventory was the basis for the work that took place in 2014. During the year new articles was producded and old ones improved thanks to dedicated volunteers and our many partnering organizations. The Swedish articles were then translated into around 40 languages by volunteers from all over the world. Of course this work has not ended because Umeå is no longer the European Capital of Culture but volunteers will continously improve the material on Wikipedia and many of the cooperations with organizations continue to bear fruit.

In order to make Wikipedia’s material more available the project aims to install information signs with so called QR codes on them. These signs will be placed around Umeå, adjacent to the main sites that are described in the Wikipedia articles. With the help of QR codes visitors can easily find relevant information on their smart phone – and in their own language!

Umepedia is currently a collaboration between Wikimedia Sverige, Umeå University, Umeå Municipality, National Heritage Board, Common Culture of Umeå, Rödåsel Bygdegårdsförening, Umeå Energi and Nykterhetsrörelsens Bildningsverksamhet Norr (NBV). We hope that more partners that are interested in spreading neutral, well sourced information about the city will join us!