About The CultureCode Initiative about

The CultureCode Initiative is creating an opportunity for cultural and digital communities to work closely together, increasing their understanding of each other’s work and the mutual benefits of collaboration. CultureCode events are connecting leading cultural organisations and practitioners with software developers and creative technologists to see what amazing things happen.

Open data and hacking have played a critical role in CultureCode processes, engendering new and interesting ways for digital and cultural communities to work together. To showcase some of the possibilities with data, CultureCode commissioned an artists and a creative technologist to compose a visualisation and sonification of one of the data sets released for the pilot project in the North East. The result was the incredible, Global Sequencer by Ed Carter and Matt Jarvis. It uses animal sightings from the EYE project (part of Tyne & Wear Museums & Archives) to create a music sequencer where the melodies are created by the datasets and the order and speed of playback can be controlled by a performer:

Global Sequencer:

The piot phase of CultureCode concluded in 2012. If you would like to see the presentations, listen to interviews or see some of the tweets captured across these events then go to the Media section of this website. 

CultureCode Manchester

CultureCode now also has a base in Manchester and we are exploring opportunities in the area. We have already had contact with some potential future partners but if you are based in or around the Manchester area and want to know more about CultureCode then please get in touch.

The evaluation

As part of the pilot phase, Arts Council England Commissioned an independant evaluation, you can read the evaluation here

Data

''From opening times to artistic programme or sales, our sector holds an abundance of valuable data, which, if made more widely available could be reused in many different, creative and useful ways. The CultureCode initiative is helping artists and arts organisations in the North East better understand the value of the data they hold about their work and their audiences, and how this can be used to maximise their public value. Allowing developers and creative technologists access to open data could lead to all sorts of new ways for the cultural sector to engage with their audiences or develop new business models.'' 

Lara Robinson, Arts Council North East 

As part of the pilot phase of CultureCode 32 organisations contributed 120 data sets. These data sets can be found here and with those data sets 9 hacks were created. If you are an artists or a cultural organisation and you would like to discuss what data you might have and how to open that data then please contact CultureCode HQ 

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