What Types of Users Will Find Culture Kent’s Open Data Source Helpful? Personas & Use Cases (part 2): Strategic Thinker

September 29, 2015August 26, 2015Leave a comment

As part of Culture Kent’s research, we asked Deeson to provide us with Personas & Use Cases for the types of users that will potentially use our Events open data source. In turn, they identified six Personas and explained their corresponding Use Cases. This series of blogs will highlight each one in detail according to their behaviour & motivations or responsibilities, goals, challenges, and interests.

In the previous post, we discussed the Persona & Use Case for the ‘Culturally Curious’, the first of our six-part series on the types of users who will potentially use our Events open data source. In this post, we focus on the ‘Strategic Thinker’, which might be someone specific like an Arts Council Director, or, in a broader sense, someone whose role focuses on how Arts & Culture can assist with economic growth, lead to new skills, and increase community well-being.

People who are ‘Strategic Thinkers’ might state:

“By sharing information we’ll be able to become smarter as a sector, target funding and build a better offer for cultural tourists”

What are their responsibilities?
• Providing strategic direction for cultural growth to the local councils
• Understanding the relationships between arts, culture and local area benefit
• Identifying beneficial partnerships and making the connections

What are their goals?
• Grow the local economy by bringing in new businesses and tourism
• Support the creative industry by developing skills in young people
• Increase community well being to make peoples lives better through arts and culture

What are some of the challenges they face?
• Getting the data required to provide a high service level to local people
• Finance – the sector is just catching up with the impact of the recession
• Understanding how event data maps to other data sets about local well being

What are they interested in regarding an open data source?
• Better data mapping and visualisation tools
• An agreement between local organisations to share data for the benefit of the local area
• A picture of what events have happened, are happening, and are planned for the future to
help target funding to the right areas

Does this sound like you or someone you know? Leave a comment to discuss!

This post is made possible by the work done by Deeson in Canterbury, Kent. We truly appreciate their hard work and collaboration with Culture Kent.

Read the previous post: What Types of Users Will Find Culture Kent’s Open Data Source Helpful? Personas & Use Cases(part 1): Culturally Curious

What Types of Users Will Find Culture Kent’s Open Data Source Helpful? Personas & Use Cases (part 1): Culturally Curious

September 22, 2015August 26, 2015Leave a comment

Turner Contemporary launch event, 12th April 2011

In this first post, we will focus on the Persona identified as ‘Culturally Curious’. This can be someone specific, for instance a student studying Arts History in the EU, but it can also be someone who is interested in culture & arts around Kent.

People who are ‘Culturally Curious’ might state:

“I just want to experience the culture. Finding events is difficult and time consuming.”

What are their behaviours and motivations?
• Uses Google to search for terms such as 1/events in Kent March 1st”
• Finds lesser known events on bulletin boards in local shops
• Wants to supplement digital learning with real experience

What are their goals?
• Find relevant events in reasonable travelling distance
• Broaden cultural experiences
• Find career opportunities
• Find cheap events- student budgets don’t stretch far!

What are some of the challenges they face?
• Finding events that fit price and location criteria
•Knowing where to look, often misses events because of lack of awareness
•Meeting like-minded people is not always easy
•Event information is not always accurate and up-to-date

What are they interested in regarding an open data source?
• A single source of truth for events in the local area
• Something that has accurate and timely information
• An easy way to register to cultural events
• A way of meeting new people with similar event interests

Does this sound like you or someone you know? Leave a comment to discuss!

This post is made possible by the work done by Deeson in Canterbury, Kent. We truly appreciate their hard work and collaboration with Culture Kent.

Spotlight on an Arts & Cultural Organisation in Kent: Creative Foundation

September 15, 2015September 16, 2015Leave a comment

In this blog post, we are going to learn more about Creative Foundation, located in Folkestone, Kent. One of Culture Kent’s Pathfinders, Creative Foundation has had a positive impact in arts & culture in Kent.

1.) Name of organisation: Creative Foundation (Folkestone Creative Quarter, Quarterhouse, Folkestone Book Festival, Folkestone Triennial, Folkestone Artworks)

2.) Type of organisation: Arts Charity

3.) Year founded: 2002

4.) Tell us a little bit about your organisation and what it offers tourists:

The Creative Foundation is a visionary arts charity dedicated to enabling the regeneration of Folkestone through creative activity. Working with the people of Folkestone, partners and other stakeholders we will transform the town making it a better place to live, work, visit and study.
The Creative Foundation believes in the power of creativity to transform people, places and communities. We are passionate about this, and believe it will inspire others to be curious and imagine a changed future. We will enable or collaborate with them to make this vision happen. This will be fun but requires specialist knowledge; at times we will be radical and irreverent, but we will take on the challenges and risks our work demands.

Established in 2002, the Creative Foundation has a remarkable record of success having already transformed the most run down part of Folkestone. Ninety buildings have been restored in the Creative Quarter, and Quarterhouse, a performance venue for music, theatre, dance and comedy has been built. The area has been animated by three internationally acclaimed visual art Triennials, a collection of significant and permanent contemporary public art, a full performance programme and an annual book festival. The area is populated by artists and home to creative industries and is home to higher education study and research; all this has created more than 300 jobs.

The Creative Foundation aims to attract visitors to Folkestone from throughout Kent and nationally and potentially inspire people to move to the town, start a business and become part of our thriving community. The Triennial attracts a significant number of tourists every three years and we aim to use Folkestone Artworks as a tourist attraction in its own right to encourage repeat visits to the town alongside experiencing the shops, restaurants and galleries of the Creative Quarter and attending events at Quarterhouse and the Book Festival.

5.) What are some concerns your organisation has related to tourism?:

Folkestone Artworks is a fascinating collection of contemporary art that is needed to maintain Folkestone’s visual art reputation between Triennials, and so attract visitors to Folkestone. While the collection strengthens after each Triennial, the fact that the works come from a previous Triennial limits the publicity and therefore impact that can be gained from it. Over the next seven years the development of the collection’s management, interpretation, archive, and marketing and education programme will be continued, however something additional will be needed for the Artworks to deliver the desired impact.

6.) How will the efforts of Culture Kent address your concerns?:

Culture Kent can play an important role in how we use Folkestone Artworks collection to its full potential as a tourist attraction through its efforts to establish an open data source and especially how digital technologies can enhance the visitors’ experience. We would like to work more intensively with other tourist attractions, transport providers and the food and drink industry in the region on marketing and PR campaigns that will invite people from Kent and nationally to experience the best that Kent has to offer. Culture Kent is best positioned to orchestrate such an effort and undertake research about existing and potential audiences.

Thank you to the Creative Foundation for telling us about their organisation and their aims for tourism growth!

Not Just About the Past: Looking Towards the Future of Kent as an Arts & Cultural Destination

September 8, 2015September 8, 2015Leave a comment

Why dedicate an entire project on arts & cultural events in Kent, as Culture Kent does? It seems that Kent is already known as the ‘Garden of England‘, as Visit Kent highlights on its website header, and a place with important historical connections going back thousands of years. Yet, it offers more than just beautiful gardens and World Heritage sites such as Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey, and St Martin’s Church.

Kent refers to an area in southeastern England that comprises 13 districts: Sevenoaks, Dartford, Gravesham, Tonbridge & Malling, Medway, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells, Swale, Ashford, Canterbury, Shepway, Thanet, and Dover. Within these districts are truly unique places that support the arts & culture that may not be as well-known to people in other countries or even counties in England.

Among these districts, tourism in Kent resulted in the following statistics:

Welcomed 57 million visitors
Worth £3.4 billion to the local economy
Supports over 65,000 jobs

Culture and Heritage in Kent
Thanks to research by Visit Kent and Visit Britain, we can identify some key factors in tourists’ motivations, behaviours, and perceptions of Kent.

Motivation

63% are motivated by heritage, which is the top reason for visiting the county
25% are motivated by culture and the arts
9% are motivated by special events

Behaviour

When in Kent:

9% visit a heritage attraction
22% visit a cultural venue
16% attend a special event

Perception

59% associate heritage with the county
25% associate Kent with cultural events and festivals

What can we learn from these statistics?

Of these millions of tourists, a majority of them still equate Kent with cultural heritage. However, the perception of Kent as an arts & cultural destination is continuing to grow. After Visit Kent and Turner Contemporary conducted a marketing campaign aimed to increase awareness of culture in Kent, awareness grew from 4% to 10% – the biggest increase for any one area. We need to continue audiences awareness of Kent as a place to visit for arts & culture.

In upcoming posts, we’ll spotlight organisations and events that are unique to Kent.

Learning from Similar Tourism Research (part 3): Collaboration

September 1, 2015September 1, 2015Leave a comment

Summer of Colour: Red Ladies by Clod Ensemble

Previously, we discussed how open data related to accessibility has many benefits for tourism. In this post, we highlight how collaborative efforts related to tourism can be mutually beneficial, referring to tourism research conducted by the European Commission.

Due to the EU encompassing many countries, they can collaborate with other countries whose citizens frequently travel to Europe. For instance, their 50,000 Tourists initiative enabled tourists from South American countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to travel to the EU by capitalising on ‘spare airline and hotel capacity during low season’. This also benefited EU nationals who wanted to visit Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. However, these tourists, whether they were visiting South American or the EU, had to have specific reasons for travelling, such as ‘family ties, educational or cultural links, or an interest in gastronomic or religious tourism’.

Operating on a smaller scale in Kent, this type of initiative can also be successful since there are trains and buses that take tourists around Kent, and there are also many hotels and B&B’s that may have spare rooms during low season. If organisers of events and owners of hotels and transportation in Kent can come to an agreement similar to the EU’s 50,000 Tourists initiative, tourists can take advantage of low costs and travel more often. But again, there is all this useful information that not many people are privy to!

While an open data source for Kent events is the goal, additional information can truly help users not only become aware of the types of events being held in Kent, but also logistical information such as how these events cater to all types of people, including those that need extra accessibility, and how to get to the events and where to stay. As this posts suggests, the benefits of creating an open data source are endless and can positively affect not only tourists, but organisations in the whole of Kent as well. We just need to collaborate with each other to make the most of what each has to offer to tourists.

Read the previous post: Learning from Similar Tourism Research (part 1): Audience Interest

Read the previous post: Learning from Similar Tourism Research (part 2): Accessibility