TALE: Find 100 Thematic Curation Projects

Oliver Ding

Published in

TALE500

5 min readJan 3, 2023

TALE stands for Thematic Analysis Learning Engagement

TALE was launched as a new knowledge center for the Thematic Engagement project.

Thematic Engagement refers to the “Person — Theme” relationship and interaction.

As a knowledge center, TALE considers the “Person — Theme” relationship and interaction as its primary object.

Anthropologist Morris Opler (1945) developed a theoretical concept called “cultural themes” for studying culture. Career counseling therapists and psychologists also developed a theoretical concept called “life themes”.

From the perspective of innovation, we consider Themes as a sign of Trends in social life and individual life.

Innovation is about changes in social life and culture. The changes in Cultural Themes indicate the direction of social life.

There are various concrete activities and projects under the abstract notion of Thematic Engagement. We will introduce some examples one by one.

Today we will focus on Thematic Curation Activity.

Curating Various Themes Together

A thematic curation activity sees various themes as pieces and turns them into a meaningful whole.

According to Curativity Theory, there is a general model behind all curation activities. See the diagram below.

General Curation is about social practices which require selecting, collecting, organizing, presenting, and reflecting.

The above diagram highlights several pairs of concepts:

Pieces v.s. Whole
Whole v.s. Container
Collect v.s. Present
Actor v.s. Audience
Experience v.s. Theme

As an application of Curativity Theory, the above General Curation Framework represents the structure and dynamics of general curation practice. The activity of general curation aims to collect pieces of things into a meaningful whole in order to present a theme to a group audience.

There are three immanent contradictions within the activity of curating: “pieces — whole”, “things — themes” and “curator — audience”. For the first dichotomy, I use the concept of “Container” to balance the pieces and whole. For the last dichotomy, I use the notion of “Everyone A Curator” to deconstruct the concept of “Curator” because I want to claim that the activity of curating is a general social practice.

The dichotomy of “things — themes” refers to two classical great debates of social science: “mind — matter” and “individual — collective.” After reviewing the concept of “theme” in various disciplines such as Cultural Anthropology, Counseling Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and the Philosophy of Science, I developed a new concept “Themes of Practice” to propose a process view of “Theme.”

The Thematic Curation Activity is only about curating Themes into a meaningful whole.

How does it work? Let’s see some examples.

Example 1: L&D Trends Map 2022

L&D stands for Learning and Development. Offbeat is a community about L&D. They recently launched L&D Trends Map 2022. See the diagram below. You can find the large-size diagram on their website. You can find its author Lavinia Mehedintu on Linkedin.

The map uses four zones and six categories to curate various L&D-related themes. For example, the below are trends under the Lifelong Learning category.

New normal: Learning in the flow of work, Peer learning, Learning Sciences, Microcredentials, Learning how to learn, Self-paced learning.
Reactive zone: Cohort-based learning, Build your own degree, Self-leadership, Career Portfolios

The map doesn’t display any trends under Innovation Zone and Foresight Zone. Since the map is based on over 50 reports, it seems the original reports don’t discover such trends.

This is a typical case of a Thematic Curation project. The container is a map designed with four zones and six categories.

Example 2: Landscape of Innovation Approaches

Nesta’s Bas Leurs made a diagram titled Landscape of Innovation Approaches. See the picture below and you can find a large-size diagram on Nesta’s website.

The above diagram is a great job of thematic curation. Each innovation approach can be understood as a thematic space with a primary theme.

The diagram uses four categories to curate various methods and approaches:

Intelligence Space
Solution Space
Technology Space
Talent Space

The author also shares original resources about these methods and approaches on their website. We should consider these resources and the diagram as a whole of the outcome of the Thematic Curation project.

Example 3: Trends.vc

Trends.vc was founded by Dru Riley in 2020. The primary activity behind the website is a Thematic Curation project.

The project is not one-time curation, but an ongoing newsletter. It means that the team has to do Thematic Curation each week.

Each week, the newsletter features one particular theme for business trends. For example, the newest one is “Startup Studios”.

Each time, the team run a thematic study and produce a research report for their members.

The report is represented with a well-defined format that includes the following categories:

Name of the Theme
Why It Matters
Problem
Solution
Players
Predictions
Opportunities
Risks
Key Lessons
Hot Takes
Haters
Links

Paid members can unlock the full report. In this way, the project finds a great business model in order to support its sustainable operation.

While the above #1 and #2 are one-time thematic curation projects, #3 is a long-term operation that requires a business model. The success of Trends.vc indicates that Thematic Curation can lead to a research-based content business.

Help me find 100 Thematic Curation Projects

The Thematic Curation Activity is only about curating Themes into a meaningful whole.

A thematic curation project can be a one-time curation, or an ongoing business or non-profit program.

TALE aims to build a list of 100 thematic curation projects.

If you find similar projects in your field, you can leave a comment or DM me on Linkedin.