Culture Data & Research Network – CDRN.UK – Collective of U.K. Arts and Heritage professionals working with data in the arts.
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Voluntary Network supports colleagues working with data in public arts organisations, who have faced unprecedented pressures in recent times
On the 28th of October the Culture Data & Research Network (CDRN) launched their website: cdrn.uk and set out their mission to bring together and support researchers and data practitioners working within public-facing arts and cultural institutions and heritage organisations across the UK.
The network was established through partnerships between Living With Data’s Dr. Susan Oman (University of Sheffield) and colleagues from The Lowry (Kate Fitzgerald), Manchester Museums and Galleries Partnership (Helen Mark), the National Gallery (Meriel Royal), the National Theatre (Rishi Coupland), and the Royal Shakespeare Company (Becky Loftus).
The steering group has changed, but the passion remains to ensure that the cultural sector should be supported to celebrate and strengthen data and research practice and skills within the sector. It does this by providing members with a forum to exchange experiences, share best practice, debate current issues and form new collaborative partnerships.
The network held two pre-Covid conferences for members, over 100 people working with data that are key to understanding the arts The network is a community that promotes good practice with data and research and social support for workers who are often working in isolation in their organisations. Using data well is even more important as we navigate out of the pandemic, and demonstrating the links between culture and data will be key to this process.
The CDRN network emerges from Dr Oman’s Creative Economy Engagement Fellowships that were part of two projects that were linked to Living With Data. Data, Diversity and Inequality in the Creative Industries (January to August 2018), was co-ordinated by Dr Mark Taylor and What constitutes ‘good data’ in the creative economy? (January to July 2019) was co-ordinated by Professor Helen Kennedy. The research was also supported by Dr Oman’s Honorary Fellowship to The University of Manchester’s Institute for Cultural Practices.
You can read more about Susan’s work on these projects, here