This document discusses how cultural organizations can better utilize open data. It recommends that organizations flag themselves online to be more discoverable, understand what data is and their own needs, and take small steps towards an information strategy. Relational thinking about how different pieces of data connect is important. While some organizations see data as only for digital purposes, having quality foundational information publicly available is important for audiences. The document outlines a project in Kent, UK where cultural organizations came together to share data in order to create a larger pool of cultural data and new digital services.

1. How can we get smarter about open
data?
Jon Pratty/Arts Council England

2. “We want a website. We don’t want a
database. We don’t need a database.
We want more people to visit our
attractions, our museums, our
theatres.”

3. Cut to another place…
We were almost at the gallery we’d
scoped out for a weekend visit.
But it wasn’t there.

4. Back to reality
• Flag yourself up to the web, making your culture
findable
• Think about what data is
• Work out what your needs are
• Take small steps
• Think about how things connect, how context
works
• Understand brand values of data
• Keep quality at the heart of the data and info plan

5. #Small Data: check how people find
you, online!
• You are the single most important
source of info about what you do.
• No-one else is tasked with getting
your info right.

6. It’s just information
• Call the same things, the same things.
• Info about your venue, your work, or the
things you have collected in your museum.
• Where is it?
• When does it open?
• What’s the most popular object?

7. #SmallData?
• Might be a uniquely important piece of
information about an object that is uniquely
searchable online.
• In a relational world, all info sources are
important, big or small.
• Your valuable info mixes into a bigger pot of
data that people search online.

8. Making a start
• Being data-centric isn’t about being digital.
• It’s about your stuff, your collection, your
theatre piece
• It’s about picking out the most important facts
about it that might be relevant to other
people

9. Basic steps
Basic building blocks of an information strategy:
• Its impossible to know everything about all
objects in your museum collection
• Key thing is to know the basic stories
• What are the most important items?
• Distinctive characteristics?

10. Things connect in different ways now
• Search engines, Reddit, Twitter, Europeana,
the National Curriculum, the OCLC Universal
library info system.
• But how do you decide what, and how, to
connect?
• New meanings and cultures: have we got a
history or anthropology of hashtags?

11. Relational thinking
• Relational thinking = taking one story about
your early lawnmower, and making
connections to transport or social history
websites or databases.
• What might the National Curriculum link be to
that?
• Thinking about linking means thinking about
deeper relationships between objects, eras,
subjects

12. Why is it my job?
• Because you are the expert here
• People need to come to you to find out about
this
• You’re the mother lode of info about the work
• Knowing your key facts and info is the start of
being data-centric
• Curating, thinking relationally might be core
ideology of Open Authority

13. Brand values of data
• We trust it
• It’s up-to-date
• it’s authoritative
• It’s information rich
• It’s neutral
• It’s easily readable
• Accessible
• Sustainable

14. Read More
• Counting What Counts, an excellent research
report commissioned by Arts Council England.
This opens out many points I’ve explored here,
but in more detail
• Digital as a Dimension of Everything by John
Stack, the digital lead at Tate. It’s a think-piece
that has become a key text for Tate as it tries
to understand how to advocate internally for
more awareness of how stuff connects

15. Our friends around the table?
• Manchester: understanding here about how
culture activity and info
• It sits in broader information context
• Crime rates, school catchment areas, pollution
danger zones, property prices by postcode
• Novel online services and commercially viable
business models with open data
• Social machines
• Organisations as platform

16. But in other places…
• Digitisation is slow, collections not geo-
referenced, age-old copyright agreements
prevent access
• Few culture venues create quality content to
professional standards
• Emphasis on looking inwards rather than
outwards, towards people as a platform
• ‘Our Audiences have Audiences!’ said Annette
Mees, Agency of Coney

17. Culture Kent Pathfinder project
• Towards a regional data economy
• Strategic funds [£25k] into arts/tourism
partnership
• Town councils, a county council, museums,
galleries and theatres, and major destination
marketing organisation
• Intention: transformational change, agreement to
collect culture info and content
• Share it out to reach bigger audiences via other
platforms, other publishers or data output

18. You’d think that was simple…
• Collective understanding of open culture
values not in place
• Across regional landscape, micro-economies
exist
• Mixed commercial and public sector models
• Sometimes commercial model that dictates
how projects work
• Publicly funded open data culture is
potentially dangerous to business models

19. Agreement!
• We have worked hard to break down barriers
with our partners
• Tentative, but stable, decision
• Shared data is the goal
• It has a shared value between us as partners
• That was the real project, not delivery of the
technology platform

20. What changed?
• New project, setting out agendas that needed
information at the core
• ACE/Visit Britain Cultural Destinations
partnership agreement
• Open call for funding applications for three year
arts/tourism campaigns across England
• Culture Kent Pathfinder partners now had a
compelling reason to negotiate and understand
each other’s business model, public, private, third
sector, shared and open.

21. Finding a #smalldata purpose
• Pathfinder project incorporated into
successful Kent Cultural Destinations proposal
• Pathfinder project forms information strategy
core to the bigger project
• Partners of original project group invited onto
the larger group advisory board
• Now an Open Information project, with a real
public-facing context.

22. Open information business plan
• How long would it take to develop skills in
content production or data sharing
• Considered size of partner organisations and
resources at their disposal
• Looked at ways to make data upload easy: direct
input, CSV files, data or api hook-ups
• Thought about workflows: some once every six
months; some tourism partners working in
campaign cycles
• We had to match the system to some very
different needs and workflows.

23. Culture Kent - project overview
CKP
Data Pool
Data from Pathfinders
Data from cultural sources
website
Analysis
& reporting
Data from Visit Kent
Data
standardised
Engagement
& support
Data sharing with
other data sources,
e.g. Education, Economic
Revenue,
New products
& services
API for researchers
& 3rd party apps
Apps & website plugins

24. Project overview
CKP
Data Pool
Data from Pathfinders
Data from cultural sources
Digital Platform
Analysis
& reporting
Data from Visit Kent
Data
standardised
Engagement
& support
Data sharing with
other data sources,
e.g. Education, Economic
Revenue,
New products
& services
1
API for researchers
& 3rd party apps
Apps & other digital platforms
2013

25. Project overview
CKP
Data Pool
Data from Pathfinders
Data from cultural sources
Digital platform
Analysis
& reporting
Data from Visit Kent
Data
standardised
Engagement
& support
Data sharing with
other data sources,
e.g. Education, Economic
Revenue,
New products
& services
1
2
3
API for researchers
& 3rd party apps
Apps &other digital platforms
20142013 2015

26. Project overview
CKP
Data Pool
Data from Pathfinders
Data from cultural sources
website
Analysis
& reporting
Data from Visit Kent
Data
standardised
Engagement
& support
Data sharing with
other data sources,
e.g. Education, Economic
Revenue,
New products
& services
1
2
3
API for researchers
& 3rd party apps
4
Apps & website plugins
2013 2014 2014 2015

27. Where we are today
• Agreement info is going to be shared
• It might develop into a range of paid-for
information services
• It can be used by our tourism sector partners in
existing services that are paid-for or subscription
services
• There would be an initial information service that
is free and accessible
• Embodies public sector ‘commons’ philosophies.

28. Next steps
• Partners invited to culture/tourism data hack day
• Partners/developers/tech people
• Considering how things join
• How to actually make something
• Mapping common data fields from our cultures
• Map these simple fields across to Culture24
• C24 do platform integration or uploading
• Partners - diplomacy and negotiations around
copyright and IP

29. Closing the last local loop of open data
• These might be new cultural roles
• New models for income generation
• Accumulation of cultural capital
• Imagine a line in your accounts or annual
report, on your asset register, that records
growth in your relational connectivity

30. Thanks
Jon Pratty
Relationship Manager, Creative Media
Arts Council England
jon.pratty@artscouncil.org.uk