Hack4Culture – the day, the projects, the video

I often rant on about the need for cultural organisations to work closer with creative digital experts and to stop seeing the relationship as purely transactional – “I need a website – I can supply you with one”

Hack4Culture took place in March at the Art and Design Academy organised by Open Labs part of LJMU with assistance from LARC – Liverpool Arts and Regeneration Consortium. The aim of the event was to encourage arts organisations to stop viewing digital in simple terms – as in a simple transaction but to view a digital specialist as someone to work with to listen to to collaborate with on equal terms.

Prior to the event the arts organisations in Liverpool had been asked to submit their cleaned data, for example; attendance figures with postcodes (no names or full addresses) or old events listings, this data was made available to the geeks who had signed up to do the hacking so that they could prepare projects prior to the event. Being able to interrogate the data is quite vital so that you know what can be made form it, design and plan.  So when we gathered on the Saturday a good few people already had solid projects to work upon.

My involvement over the weekend was to lead a workshop entitled “Move Fast and Break Things” while others were busy getting their hands dirty with real data and real projects, but it did allow me the opportunity to help a small arts organisation with some of in my terms very simple problems – setting up a Google account and Facebook page but it was what they needed and we seem to forget at times or at least I do where the starting point is for many people, they may not have a website/blog or even know how to post pictures online.

Here are some of my photo’s from the day. https://www.flickr.com/photos/defnet/with/6807777276/

I think that it is only now that iPads are within reach of the public sector employee that Technology is being taken a bit more seriously and is being sought out as an solution to problems. When it is sought out before a problem arises, that is when you know it has truly arrived.

These two days were nothing like the Ambition seminars of old, this was an open event and to be honest not as many people attended. I was pleased to be joined by Bill Thompson from the BBC Click podcast, it had been a couple of year since I had met him at Brick and Clicks, an Arts Council event in Newcastle. (I have photo somewhere of him and my mate Adrian Slatcher)

In the final line up the awards went to:

Project that best enhances the cultural experience – Young Everyman & Playhouse (A new Buddypress site for the Young Everyman) 
Project that best improves our understanding of cultural audiences – Mycroft Milverton
Project with the most commercial promise – Keep on Moving
Judges selection (Immediate Impact) – Art in Liverpool (website redesign)
Judges selection (Improvement over the Event) – UCA
Project demonstrating the most interesting mashup of data – Zarino (Table 4)
Project that best pushes the boundaries – Hicks for Culture
Chief Geek – Dave Borrows (Damibu)  (Very cool image recognition software forget QR codes this uses real images) 
Loquacious Tweeter – Sunil Manghani
Workshop – Neil Morrin

Culture Code a similar event took place recently in Newcastle and @Documentally was on hand to capture it.

So all over the world, from Scotland to Austin – people are gathered together humped over keyboards of expensive looking apple Macs each in their own way trying to improve the ways that we interact with culture. It is our culture and yet we find it hard to get close to it, to be intimate with it, to feel it in our hands like the alcohol wash we use to rid our hands of germs. We feel it cold and damp in our hands but only fleetingly Hack4Culture along with other projects aim to make access to culture seamless. 

It is vitally important that our arts organisations and cultural institutions look at new ways of opening up their data vaults and making access to the arts easier and engagement higher – there is still more to be done and we should roll this event out again and again.

If you are interested in getting involved in similar events then check out How Why DIY and also NHS Hack Day