About the event

Tens of thousands of cultural events happen across the UK every week, from theatre to comedy, and festivals to exhibitions. The data stream that is left as a record suggests an opportunity for researchers to analyse trends, understand the contribution that the UK creative industries make to our culture and society, and plan ahead for the future. But how can researchers in the Arts and Humanities make use of large-scale data analysis to explore this data?

Working with our industry partners Data Thistle (formerly The List Ltd), we have been looking at how we can design a data service to connect researchers with cultural events data at scale.

The aim of this event is to share our findings on:

• How to get large-scale cultural events data into the hands of arts and humanities researchers
• What a large-scale cultural events data service would look like
• The kinds of research projects this data service would enable
• The future of research with cultural events data

About the project

The AHRC-funded “Towards Large-scale Cultural Analytics in the Arts and Humanities” project is part of the AHRC’s “Scoping future data services for the arts and humanities” scheme. The Principal Investigator is Professor Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage, University of Edinburgh, the Co-Investigators are Professor Lesley McAra, Professor of Penology, University of Edinburgh, Professor Mark Parsons, Personal Chair in High Performance Computing, University of Edinburgh and Dr Rosa Filgueira, Lecturer in Computing Science, University of St Andrews, the Post-Doctoral Research Assistant is Dr Suzanne R Black, Research Fellow in Data Service Design, University of Edinburgh, and the Research Assistant is Alina Kamalova, PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh.

For more information, see https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/tolcaah/

First broadcast on 30 August

Chaired by Melissa Terras