Now this is interesting
On a call earlier this week I suggested that we should write a short post with an update on the open culture listings data project we are running with Nesta. Everyone agreed and nominated me to write it.
Now, as I sit down to write this I find that my head is full but I have no clarity.
A quick recap
We’re working with Nesta on a discovery. We’re exploring the question “Can open data help to make listings more efficient whilst reaching new audiences?”. We published a post explaining what we mean by “discovery” and “open data” in this context.
What have we done
We’ve held two stakeholder workshops in Cardiff. We’ve been incredibly grateful to the people who have given up their time to help us to understand the flow of data from the artist and performer to the audience member.
We’ve had a series of more focused conversations with a bunch of people who have been working in different parts of this space for a while now. We’ve talked to platform providers, producers, creators, marketers and more.
We’ve been undertaking some desk research around the space, trying to understand what has already been done and what other people have learned.
We had the opportunity to learn from the experience of OpenActive in England. They are working in what seems to be a very similar problem space and they have learned a great deal that could well benefit us.
What we have learned
There’s an enormous amount of stuff to analyse, process and reflect upon. What we have learned will emerge as we do this analysis. I’m tempted to say nothing about what we think we have learned but that might disappoint you a little.
So these are the things that, this moment, pop into my head.
There is a problem here. Innovations around arts and culture are, to some extent, limited because it can be hard to get hold of information in a usable form.
There is an appetite to change. People involved in putting on arts and cultural events, at least the ones we have spoken to, are excited by the possibilities that open data could offer. This enthusiasm is tempered by a strong sense that there are many practical problems that could make this change hard: cost, technical skill, and losing control over data to name just three.
Change is hard. The deeper we dive into the issue of arts and culture listings the more complex we see that the space is. We are certainly not the first people to notice the problem. If the problem was easy to fix it would have been fixed already.
What happens next
Our research is not over.
We have more conversations lined up, especially with some of the bigger box-office suppliers and with other people who have been working on the technical aspects of this issue for much longer than us.
Though we focused our initial work on south Wales there has been a lot of enthusiasm and interest from much further afield. We plan to run a webinar so that we can benefit from the knowledge and experience of those people. Watch this space for webinar details or drop a line to rob.ashelford@nesta.org.uk and we’ll be in touch.
Then we have to distill all of this down into a report. Which we will publish online and under an open licence.
That might be that.
We really hope that, at least, we can lay out a roadmap for Wales.
And, if we see the value, we’ll run a small prototyping “hackday” type event. We will only do that if we conclude that there will be an obvious benefit from running that. We really hope that there will be but we are trying very hard not to prejudge our work in discovery.
It’s exciting though. And really, really interesting.
Keep in touch
We’ll publish further updates on this blog.
If you want to get involved or be kept up to date with what’s going on please drop a line to Rob Ashelford.
Thanks for reading.
Please clap so I know you were here…
I’m Ben from The Satori Lab. We work to support public servants so they have the right tools, skills and culture to design excellent public services.
Get in touch if that’s something you can help with.
You may also know me from Twitter where I am @likeaword.
