Summer of Colour: Kent Greeters
In preparation for the Summer of Colour, 30 local ambassadors were trained, with the help of Visit Kent World Host training, to become Summer of Colour Kent Greeters. Last Thursday (11th September 2014) Mark Dance, Cabinet Member for Economic Development at Kent County Council, hosted a certificate ceremony to recognise their great work and say a big Thank You.
The last post talked about how difficult it is to define the categories of “cultural” data and decide what information to collect. This post is all about the problems of gathering information from lots of different sources. A much more detailed explanation can be found in the Culture 24 report – available to download at the bottom of this post.
“The mapping exercise attempted specifically to identify sources that either aggregate cultural data or publish aggregated cultural data” (Culture 24 report p9).
So how is data aggregated? And how is it published?
As the report outlines, there are three main ways to gather information:
There are pros and cons with all three methods. Collecting it yourself is time-consuming (therefore expensive), and there is no guarantee the information is fully accurate. If you want to get people to input their own data you need to give them a very good reason for taking the time – so you have to prove your website(or other digital platform) reaches more people, or a specific group of people, than they can reach through their own sites. Automation can be useful but it can be costly and you still need to have a good, ongoing relationship with the providers.
And once you have the information? Online data sources themselves need to be marketed, so the way the information is presented may be:
Some sites just list the venues or organisations, while others include event information too.
In deciding how to collect and present data, Culture Kent will prioritise the way that best delivers the intention to increase the number of visitors to Kent’s cultural organisations.
Read the full report here: CKP Culture24 Data Mapping Research FINAL
Read the previous post: Tracking Down Cultural Data in Kent (part 1)
We are committed to being a Pathfinder because we understand that the project will deliver outcomes that will meet an identified business need of the arts and cultural sector in Kent to deliver greater opportunities for economic impact by:
We are pleased that the pilot is focusing on an information and data infrastructure which has the potential to facilitate the pooling of information and knowledge and enable its free flow between the culture and tourism sectors and audiences.
As well as the value of the project in developing a common approach to listings, data and information sharing we hope to work with partners to develop the project to have a particular emphasis on free access to data to encourage widest possible use and the subsequent exploration of a range of digital media to enable a variety of users to engage.
culturekent.net 