I posted some time ago about Culture Hack Scotland and the work of Edinburgh Festivals Lab (do read it as this will make more sense). I was hoping that some of that work with the arts organisations up there could be duplicated down here in Liverpool and that through my work with LARC I would be able contribute to setting it up. So to the business of this post. So on Wednesday 5th I was invited to attend a meeting organised by LARC at FACT with a presentation coming from Rohan Gunatillake from Edinburgh Festival’s Lab which was very similar to this slideshare attached.
This image is taken from James at tinnedfruit.com and is the image of the app that he created for Edinburgh Book Festival during the culture hack day in Edinburgh. They went on to commission him to improve his prototype.
Showcase NI festivalslab presentation
The Edinburgh Festivals Lab project concentrated on events listing, you can imagine with eight festivals all taking place at once that is a lot of listings. I’m sure someone described it as the largest festival in the world but maybe that was just me. Rohan had great advice for the LARC members looking into combing social media and technologial innovation – namely don’t plus not to make the assumption that presenting events in a digital format that they will work.
- Pressures on the Environment – imagine how much print get published and the damage that can do to the environment, let along your back if you are carrying it around all those steep hills in Edinburgh.
- Visitor Navigation – If you have not been go to Edinburgh, you can be standing right on top of somewhere and you still can’t find it and that is invariably because you are standing on top of it ie. it is down a steep hill
- Relieving capacity issues – Some of the venues are rammed while in others you feel as if you are interrupting the performers by being there.
- Opportunities – we all love it when new ideas come along.
Our needs in Liverpool will be different of course.
There was great enthusiasm from the invited guests and LARC are eager to ensure that a cultural Hack day takes place, ensuring that the arts organisations that take part understand what they need to deliver their data, hopefully events listings data that can be used by the hackers to come up with some playful innovative and useful projects.
There is already great interest in this Culture Hack day so if you are a Hacker sorry let me put that another way, a coder then leave a comment and I’ll give you more information when I receive it.
I managed to write that without mentioning xml files – wow.
2 replies on “Culture Hack day”
Check this post as an update as Hack for Culture is taking place soon
http://www.defnetmedia.com/tech-news/item/1381-hack-for-culture
Check Rohan Gunatillake article in the http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2012/feb/28/hackday-rise-significance-arts-culture
Love this to “Paying a digital agency to deliver your website is not a collaborative relationship – it’s a transactional one. Given that in most cases this is how a cultural organisation engages with digital talent, it doesn’t develop much capacity for innovation.
Hack days remedy that, freeing us to have a creative conversation with digital talent to explore what might be possible rather than being fixated on what we think we want and need. It also exposes us to the creative processes of the digital sector.”