Mapping cultural infrastructure: A quickstart guide

Anyone who has ever tried to map local cultural provision and/or infrastructure will immediately spot the oxymoron in the title. There is no quick fix to this process, and it cannot be easily automated either through a data-led approach or through AI.

The reason is pretty simple. Available data is patchy, inconsistent and invariably either out-of-date or with a limited shelf-life. There really is little option but to conduct local research on the ground – often with the kind of large consultancy fees required which local authorities find it increasingly difficult to justify, even if they do have the nominal budgets to access.

For those lucky enough to have resources, the solution does little to address those bigger picture issues: cultural access points change regularly – usually in tandem with the availability (or otherwise) of funding. And with every local authority doing their own thing, we find ourselves back at square one from a national perspective: patchy, inconsistent data with a limited shelf-life.

Exploring and innovating

So when Five10Twelve started discussions with Arts Council England (ACE) about possible user groups and use cases for its Culture and Place Data Explorer, the idea of facilitating production of a local cultural infrastructure map for every town, city and local authority came pretty high on the list.

Now, with the Explorer launched and established and ACE committed to its further development, we are working with Kent County Council (KCC) on a pilot project to assess how this powerful tool might be used to address the challenge of a data-led approach to cultural mapping. Crucially, this is a joint project between KCC’s cultural leads and its planning department, continuing Kent’s strong track record of innovative cross-departmental working with its cultural team.

With the project ongoing – and with the kind agreement of KCC – we are pleased to share some of the early learning and questions raised for consideration, discussion or benefit for the wider sector.

Defining culture

One of the primary uses of a cultural map is to quickly identify where, exactly, the gaps in cultural provision occur. More specifically, it’s about identifying gaps where lack of cultural infrastructure within a reasonable journey time is a barrier to participation. Since this is vital information for both the culture and planning teams, it’s equally vital there is a shared understanding of what we mean by ‘cultural’ infrastructure.

It’s good to start by agreeing those definitions. Be specific and identify where data needs refinement before it can be considered for inclusion. National data is available to plot neighbourhood pubs, for example, but will not necessarily specify whether these also function as grassroots music, spoken word or pub theatre venues. So, should they always count as cultural infrastructure?

Similarly, cemeteries or religious buildings often feature in data for heritage sites – which a planning team may consider cultural infrastructure – but they may not meet the criteria for inclusion by culture teams or through the lens of cultural provision.

A good basis for agreeing on inclusions could be ACE’s definitions of culture – as set out in Let’s Create – or those industries defined as creative and cultural under DCMS Sectors Economic Estimates releases.

Dated data

For the KCC project, our starting point is merging existing data available from the planning and culture teams with that from ACE’s Explorer. Key decisions here are around shelf-life. How recent is it? – and not just recently accessed, but how recently sourced or verified? It’s important to decide a reasonable cut-off point.

Given the changing shape of venues, providers, openings/closings – particularly during and post-Covid – how dated can data reasonably be before it becomes useless? Big decisions might be made on the basis of it – capital investment decisions, planning policy, cultural or economic strategy – so if the data is bad or unreliable, those decisions may be too.

When commissioning bespoke local research, it’s also important to consider how long this will be useful. How often will you be able to update it? What resources might be required? This is where using national datasets can prove so useful since they are more likely to be prepared and resourced to keep things up to date, with data captured through standardised and approved methodologies.

This is important, particularly if part of your use case involves comparing different local authority areas or assessing counter-factuals for funding bids or evaluation purposes, for example. In this regard, the ACE’s recent decision to appoint product and data managers for Explorer is very welcome, as part of their role will be to ensure the underlying data is maintained and up to date as possible.

Tangible vs intangible infrastructure

Planning teams are likely to be interested primarily in tangible infrastructure – theatres, venues, arts centres, buildings. Culture teams may take a wider view – particularly when considering access to opportunities – and include intangible infrastructure, such as arts groups, organisations or creative networks.

Again, key decisions need to be coordinated and agreed. Explorer offers a wealth of point location data – labelled ‘services’ – for every neighbourhood in England, updated annually. These include recently funded organisations broken down by category – NPOs, libraries, museums, grassroots music venues and more.

At present, it is not possible to identify through the data which of these are tangible or intangible –  eg which NPO has a publicly accessible building or offers services on site? – but there is a strong case for including them regardless. Similarly, while it is not currently possible to identify the area of impact or benefit for any funded organisation, it is a reasonable assumption that an organisation is likely to operate or provide services – and therefore access to cultural provision – in its own neighbourhood or local area.

These may not be perfect solutions, but it’s a great head start, if only to identify where more research may be required or tighten the brief for more specific and targeted data capture or refinement.

Mind the gap

While tools like Explorer and mapping exercises can offer great starting points, there will inevitably be gaps. The question then becomes how can this be done sustainably, with increasingly limited resources, and – ideally – collaboratively, particularly across different local authority, regional or national boundaries? This latter point should be of particular interest to national organisations, including those in national and local government.

Multiple ad hoc local mapping projects, commissioned independently through a variety of consultants, collating different data using different methodologies will result in larger costs overall, inefficiencies, patchy data with massive gaps nationwide and little or no coherence between the data that it eventually captures. There is an opportunity to fix this. Perhaps it could start with establishing agreed methodologies and indicators for data capture that can be mapped at local level and feed back into a consistent and coherent national dataset.