Using Data to Map Creative Education

Cultural and creative engagement enriches lives, and should be accessible to all young people regardless of their background. Schools provide an environment to ensure that all young people can access high quality arts and cultural education. However, not all schools have the resource and facilities to provide the same access to creative education - and there is very little data available to understand how schools engage with the arts already, or how they can seek support to improve their offering for young people.

Over the last few months, we have been working with Dr. Briony Thomas at the University of Leeds, helping them to understand how Leeds schools are engaging with arts and culture by improving the availability of data on cultural engagement within schools in Leeds. This ties in with our work with the LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture, as they need to understand the baseline picture of engagement in order to evaluate the impact and legacy left behind by the programme.

Dr. Thomas has been leading a project with the University of Leeds, working with Leeds City Council, LEEDS 2023, the Audience Agency and Open Innovations. During the project, they held focus groups with schools and cultural organisations in Leeds, and sent a survey to all schools to understand their curricular and extra-curricular creative offering.

We used the data collected through this programme, and several other cultural data sources, and created a prototype open data resource that maps cultural engagement in schools across the city for the first time.

A better baseline picture of culture in Leeds will inform Leeds City Council's priorities for arts and culture, the LEEDS 2023 evaluation and investment priorities in the region for children, families and young people. This initial project will serve as a pilot to gauge response and validate the approach and methodology for a future phase of work, through which the prototype will be developed into a rich source of data on cultural engagement in the Leeds region.

To explore the data site, and the associated data, head over to our Github. As always, if you are interested in the project or have any comments on the site, then get in touch - either by dropping us an email or raising a Github issue.

At the beginning of our work together, we identified where there are gaps in the data and laid out their vision for a data resource to address this, where organisations could explore the current landscape of cultural engagement across Leeds, both to understand the baseline for evaluation and to inform their own decision making and strategic priorities. You can read more about the research programme on the About page.

The data

A pilot survey was sent to members of the senior leadership team at every school in Leeds, designed to collect data about schools’ arts curriculum and extra-curricular delivery of arts and cultural activities. We presented the key headlines on the data site, so that the University and school leaders can easily see how local schools are currently engaging with the arts to inform their evaluation and improve their own creative offering and arts provision.

You can explore the Survey here.

Alongside the data collected through survey responses, we supported the University to improve the availability of open data on the schools in Leeds and how they currently engage with the arts. Using several open data sources (and lots of data cleaning!), we created a Schools data tool to explore all of the schools in Leeds by their type, size, their arts offering and its relationship with creative subject takeup by students in each school.

The site also aims to provide a resource for schools to understand how cultural organisations are already engaging with schools and young people, and to encourage new partnerships and outreach with local organisations.

We created a cultural organisations map, which serves as an initial proof of concept for how schools might research and identify potential groups and individuals to deliver cultural engagement programmes in their school. We have created some initial classifications to define how these organisations are engaging with young people so that schools can easily identify groups and individuals that provide the kind of engagement they need. For example, do they deliver workshops, CPD or are they an arts and entertaining provider?

This could provide schools with the means to contact organisations directly, making it easier for creative collaborations to develop.

Where next?

We’re looking forward to continuing our work with Dr. Briony and the University of Leeds, supporting them to build on this pilot study and the prototypes we have created, developing a resource that facilitates cultural collaboration with young people in Leeds and ensures the legacy and impact of the LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture going forward.

If you are interested in this project, have any comments or feedback on the prototype or would like to discuss other opportunities then we welcome you to get in touch with us at hello@open-innovations.org.