The Heritage and Culture Open Data Challenge was a part of The Open Data Challenge Prize Series, which was a series of seven challenge prizes to generate innovative and sustainable open data solutions to social challenges. It was funded by the Technology Strategy Board,(now known as Innovate UK) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, now known as the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and supported by The British Museum.
The Challenge posed the following question, which it incentivized innovators to solve: How can we use open data to engage more people, and more diverse people, in UK heritage and culture?
Open data has the potential to power tools that provide solutions to real problems. Although the UK is the world leader in releasing open data, its use in informing real world solutions has been limited and fragmented, with innovative start-ups lacking support and data expertise to scale to a sustainable business level.
This series of challenges aimed to galvanise a new community to use open data as the key ingredient in helping solve social problems. The challenges helped SMEs and start-ups to work with data providers, industry experts and business leaders to develop new ways to reuse available data, creating sustainable business opportunities.
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Culture Everywhere is helping organisations deliver better social outcomes through culture, by making it quick and easy for fundraisers and smaller grassroots arts and heritage organisations to develop fundable projects. The platform helps organisations reveal the need for their activities by using open data, helping them to find partners and funders, and track impact.
Culture Everywhere combines existing government data, (including Census and Indices of Multiple Deprivation), with grants data from arts funders. New open data is made through tagged research snippets created by organisations using the platform, as well as impact evaluation data.
Grassroots arts and heritage organisations reach people and communities that mainstream institutions can’t. But unfortunately they often don’t have the same resources available to invest in writing successful bids. Culture Everywhere simplifies and streamlines the project research and development process, helping teams to work together, build innovative projects and partnerships, and free-up capacity to concentrate on delivering their projects instead of writing funding bids.
Culture Everywhere will help grassroots arts organisations deliver better projects. In the longer term, the platform will promote openness and trust between organisations and hopefully increase sustainability and decrease funding pressures.
Organisations delivering cultural activities pay an annual subscription for the R&D, portfolio and collaboration features of the Culture Everywhere platform. Packages will also be available for arts networks, funders and academic organisations.
Organisations can sign up to register their interest in using Culture Everywhere now (from cultureeverywhere.com), as well as to join as early adopters to help shape its development ahead of public launch in January 2016.
A Software as a Service that turns an existing audience development methodology – powered by open data – into something more dynamic, that can be used on a daily basis by organisations and by funders.
A new way for families to spend time together, having fun and getting useful stuff done in local culture and heritage sites.
