CULTURE HACK DAY///LONDON

Culture Hack Day – 15th – 16th January, 2011

Luke Blaney, @lucas42, Richard Lewis and Jamie Forth worked on a theatre ontology
http://lukeblaney.co.uk/semweb/theatre

Culture Hack London helped facilitate fast-prototyping and project development for national and regional cultural theatres, museums and galleries – spanning the worlds of film, theatre, dance, science and visual art.

It produced 2484 hours of volunteer software developer time over the weekend and created a space for discussion and debate about open data across cultural and commercial sectors.

The event debrief saw people from arts, culture and technology sectors create personal pledges towards open data and culture/tech collaboration.

Culture Hack Day London 2011 was conceived and produced by the Royal Opera House, led by Rachel Coldicutt. As part of Wieden + Kennedy Inspire,Wieden + Kennedy London provided the space, and the event was supported by Google, Arts Council England and the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network.

What happened?

Lots of developers came along and loads of cultural organisations shared data, including The Guardian, Welsh National Opera, Mute, DCMS, National Maritime Museum, Watershed, Global Data Point, Crafts Council, Culture Grid, Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab, BBC Archive, Proboscis, UK Film Council and theRoyal Opera House.

As well as a weekend of hacking, there was an afternoon of inspiring provocations and encouraging debate. Hosted by Simon Hopkins, metadata champion, Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network, we heard talks byTom Uglow, Creative Director, Google and YouTube, Europe, Clare Reddington, Director, iShed and Pervasive Media Studio, Leila Johnston, author, blogger & comedy writer, Tom Armitage, Creative Technologist, BERG, Tom Dunbar, Producer, Hut V, Matthew Somerville, developer, Theatricalia, Nick Harkaway, author and blogger for FutureBook, and Chris Thorpe, ArtFinder. You can read some notes about the talks on the Meshed Media blog and from Mia Ridge.