Presentation from the British Museum event "What Does Data Have To Do With Me?", 5th June 2015

1. Making sense of small 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. #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.

5. Be more data-centric
• 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 that might be relevant to other
people

6. It’s just information
• Calling 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. Basic steps
Building blocks for an information strategy:
• It’s 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?

8. Relational Culture and me?
• 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.
• Might be a uniquely important piece of
information about an object that is uniquely
searchable online.

9. 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?

10. 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

11. 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 is core
ideology of Open Authority

12. 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
• Keep quality at the heart of the data and info plan

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 NESTA/Arts Council
England.
• Gavin Starks, CEO of ODI – great and simple
explanation of what Open Data actually is:
http://www.slideshare.net/theODI/odi-at-
digital-utopias-201501

15. The Internet of Place
• London Data Dashboard
• Leeds Data Mill
• Culture data 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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
2014

22. 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
20152014 2016

23. 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
2014 2015 2016 2017

24. 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.

25. Next steps
• Partner 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
• Deeson - platform integration or uploading
• Partners - diplomacy and negotiations around
copyright and IP

26. 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

27. Thanks
…this is my last day at Arts Council England.
Jon Pratty
Creative Digital Producer
jonnypratty@gmail.com
@jon_pratty