National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) is a theatre without walls: they have no dedicated venue but produce work for traditional theatres as well as unconventional spaces such as beaches, meadows, airports, and tower blocks.
NTS work in partnership with organisations and individuals across theatre sector, striving to be a catalyst for creativity, providing opportunities for others to play, grow and collaborate, and acting a galvanising force in Scotland’s creative sector.
They started making work in 2006 for audiences of all ages across Scotland, the UK and internationally, and have created over 340 productions over the last 14 years.
Every production has its own unique touring schedule, geographic footprint, personnel team and audience reach. The data NTS holds on its past productions is currently held in various formats across the organisation, making it potentially vulnerable to misinterpretation and duplication.
The Challenge
Data on NTS productions and their touring patterns is held across multiple departments including production, technical, audience and media.
NTS’s Challenge is to collate their production data and map their touring activity over the last 14 years, creating a tool that will enable NTS and others within the theatre sector to make informed decisions about future touring activity.
The successful development of a solution to this challenge would enable NTS to streamline their data collection and management processes and unlock the potential of their data archives, highlighting geographic gaps in the organisations’ touring activity and identifying communities that are currently underserved by cultural provision. It would also provide a starting point for the creation of a unique, collaborative open data touring resource that could be utilised by a wide range of arts organisations and individuals working in the theatre sector in Scotland and the UK.
Applications for this Challenge Project are now closed. If you have any questions, please contact the creative informatics team at creativeinformatics@ed.ac.uk.