1. Culture Hack Scotland – Handy Data Guide (version 1)
An unprecedented amount of cultural data has been made available for this event. You can link
to everything listed here via culturehackscotland.com/data. In this document you’ll find out
more about what that data is. Some developers have asked us to provide guidance for how this
data might be used from the arts/cultural angle. We include pointers on that too, but they’re
just suggestions.
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Edinburgh Festivals-related data
1. Complete summer festivals listings API for 2010. This includes listings in a common
format for six world-class festivals: the Fringe, Edinburgh International Festival, Book Festival,
Art Festival, Edinburgh Mela and Jazz&Blues Festival. And while it’s last year’s listings data –
any exciting projects build on this 2010 data could be taken through to live in 2011.
2. Fringe performance master datasheet*. Excel datasheet that lists all of the 3000 different
performers and companies that put on shows in 2010. There are two sheets to the
spreadsheet, one has all the UK companies and the other the International companies – all
marked with country of origin.
3. Fringe venue master datasheet*. An Excel data sheet that lists all of the 250+Fringe venues
AND their subvenues which takes it up to 354 actual performance spaces. There are two
sheetst, one has all the main venues with addresses, postcodes, lat/long, accessibility
information and venue descriptions. The other sheet lists the root venue with sub-venues.
4. Edinburgh International Festival 2011*. This is the first of the summer festivals to
announce their programme. There wasn’t quite time to turn it into a JSON and XML
endpoint but we do have it as an ol’fashioned Excel datasheet.
5. Edinburgh City Footfall Data*. This is the first public release of official city footfall data as
collected on behalf of the City of Edinburgh Council. This Excel spreadsheet lists complete all
365 days in 2010 data in 19 core city locations.
6. Guardian API and festival content. The Guardian have set up a special key on their superb
OpenPlatform API called chdscot which has unlimited calls (limited to 30/sec). They are
especially interested in hacks built using their festival content and you can find some 3140
Edinburgh festivals-related content pieces using calls like
http://content.guardianapis.com/search?tag=culture/edinburghfestival&format=json. There
are many other calls that you might use too.
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What might be done with it? The Edinburgh Festivals have unique scale and diversity - as
you’ll know first-hand. This presents a number of real challenges such as:
• Visitors need to find the right shows – but they want some serendipity in there too
• Can festival data be combined with other data/APIs e.g. location services?
• Can going from A-to-B be more fun/playful/artful and more than just a walk?
• How can visitors make sense of social media noise at peak festival times?
• Can we help visitors make meaningful social connections while in Edinburgh?
• What services and tools can be provided for people with access/disability issues?
• How can we reduce environmental impact?
* indicates that this data has been made available for the first time thanks to Culture Hack Scotland

2. Museums/collections data
7. National Museums Scotland*. NMS have provided a set of 1066 records from their
database. The records don’t currently include images or URLs but they do provide a wealth of
other information and provide insight into the data associated with an item in the NMS
collection. The records are available as CSV, XLS and XML.
8. National Galleries of Scotland. NGS have a series of RSS feeds available on their website
that they’re keen to see used in new, innovative and stimulating ways. What can you do with
their events, exhibitions & online collections?
9. National Library of Scotland*. NLS have provided access to four large image collections
with associated data from their digital archive.
10. Culture Grid*. Culture Grid is an amazing API of UK collections data which is ever growing.
It contains LOADS of items from across Scotland and over 1.2M from across many collections
in the UK. And for #chs11 they have released 80k records from the Hunterian museum in
Glasgow – including 20k with images. All available through an API on their site.
Publishers’ listings data
11. The List*. This fine publication has provided a full set of listings for all events in
Glasgow in May in the very handy IVES format.
12. The Skinny*. Another great publication, the Skinny have a series of CSVs containing
reviews, previews and listings as well as some images.
Scottish Arts Organisations data
13. National Theatre of Scotland*. Excel files featuring audience numbers for the full range of
NTS shows, plus a library inventory. Also available, a spreadsheet with details of all the
freelancers & associates NTS have worked with across Scotland since launching 5 years ago.
14. Glasgow Film Theatre/Festival. XML feeds with listings information for this terrific cinema
and their annual festival.
15. ARIKA*. This is a mini-snapshot of Arika’s audio visual archive, a spreadsheet of content
from their two 2010 festivals - Instal and KYTN - with some associated rich media files. Please
note, Arika are working to clear all media for use online by the start of 2012, but at the
moment can’t release all content due to copyright issues.
16. NVA*. Extracts of audience data for award-winning organisation NVA’s full inventory of
public art / environmental projects, in Excel format.
BBC-related data
17. Subvertle! A hack by @ideoforms et al at Culture Hack Day in London which allows you to
access, translate and synthesise BBC iPlayer subtitles. All code on github.
18. BBC Feeds. Initiated by the BBC Backstage project (RIP), there are still many live feeds
providing BBC data.
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A Nice Note About Data Licensing
All the organisations who have provided data for #chs11 have done so with great generosity.
For many this is the first time they have done anything like this. We therefore ask politely that all
projects clearly attribute whichever data source(s) are used. The general license under which the
data has been provided is the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence unless otherwise stated.
Correct attribution is really important - it makes it more likely that cultural organisations will
become increasingly involved in events like this and other open data approaches in the future,
an outcome we all want.
* indicates that this data has been made available for the first time thanks to Culture Hack Scotland