Our expert, who has already led two series of the workshop, explains that although the groups worked in accordance with a standard data science model, including data acquisition, exploration, processing, visualisation/presentation of information, the unique nature and value of the data set has made the task a very interesting challenge indeed.

Not only is the declared cultural participation data for Katowice public, but it is also organic and grassroots based and thus reflecting the different kinds of ways residents get involved in culture. Careful analysis of this data analysis can lead to some relevant and non-obvious conclusions. The workshop saw four interdisciplinary teams develop several analysis and visualisation tools based on the same data set”, said Piotr Migdał.

One of the teams, having filtered data on event dates and times, was able to discover some common event organisation patterns. As it turned out, most events start between 6pm and 7pm on Thursdays and Fridays, although Saturday mornings were popular too (the following visualisation is a prototype that will be further developed in the coming weeks; the data covers several thousand events posted on Facebook since 2013).

Another team developed a map of Katowice events based on geolocation data. The objectives were to put the ‘cultural centres” of Upper Silesia’s capital on an interactive geographic map, establish whether such zones exist in other districts of the city, as well as whether these events are organised as part of public, private and or non-governmental initiatives. The database of cultural events visualised on an interactive map and arranged by type of organiser helps define areas of major cultural activity within the city.

The third group has set itself a rather complicated task. Their strategy involved using graphs to visualise the relationships between audiences and specific events or groups of events to identify groups with particular cultural preferences. Work is still in progress on improving the tool and selecting the best form to visualise the discovered relationships.

When asked about interdisciplinary groups, Migdał said that the participants’ different skill and knowledge backgrounds were not an obstacle at all. They were particularly valuable at the brainstorming stage when plans were being formulated for the project stages and objectives. “Even if some of the participants needed more time to overcome some technical difficulties, getting familiar with the application interface, or re-encoding the script, their knowledge of the local cultural context allowed them to work out workable research questions and objectives, which helped to speed up the overall pace of work”, says Migdał.

The tools being developed are now at the prototyping stage and in need of further improvement. After any necessary modifications are completed, they will be shared on an open license. Among the planned features of the tool is the option thanks to which users will be able to display in visualisation or map form the events which they attended within a given period and/or area.

”In some cases, we successfully tested the tools and visualisation methods themselves. The tasks ahead of us involve investigating the complete database and data migration patterns, as well as adapting the tool to the newly defined goals”, adds the expert.

We will be sharing both the results of our studies and the visualisations created in our subsequent posts. First, we will present the Facebook performance of selected leading Polish cultural institutions, including: The City Culture Institute of Gdańsk, Katowice City of Gardens, The Krakow Festival Office, Workshops of Culture in Lublin and last year’s European Capital of Culture, Wrocław 2016.