Between September 2022 and March 2023, 20 arts organizations will work with the Linked Digital Future Initiative and Culture Creates to translate their event information so it is readable by machines.
Requirements
In order to participate in the 2022-2023 cohort, your organization must:
- Be a current CAPACOA member;
- Be primarily a presenting or producing organization (either series and/or festivals), or an arts service organization;
- Present or produce at least 10 different events from your program start date;
- Have a basic level of digital maturity and access to a webmaster;
- Designate a discoverability lead. Throughout the whole duration of the program, this dedicated staff member will be the primary cohort participant and contact person.
How this will work
If your application is successful, you will receive a personalized diagnosis of your website’s event pages. This document will outline your current level of discoverability, taking into account aspects such as Search Engine Optimization, meta tags, site structure and structured data. It will also provide a list of possible solutions to be worked on with the LDFI and Culture Creates. Solutions may include restructuring your event pages, implementing a structured data template, working with an existing API (application programming interface), validating your event data with the Footlight application, and/or or installing a Footlight code snippet. For more information about structured data and Footlight, see the following section.
The estimated value for this kind of personalized website diagnosis is $2,500 – $4,000.
What is structured data
Structured data is markup code embedded in a web page. It describes the content of that page for bots that crawl and index the web for search engines (find out more in this blog post). Other kinds of crawling bots can also read and harvest structured data. For example, bots that harvest events structured data can share it via the Artsdata knowledge graph (more information below).
What is Footlight
Footlight (developed by Culture Creates) is an application and service to convert events web pages into structured and linked data .
Using the latest AI and semantic technologies, Footlight automatically harvests unstructured or semi-structured live events information on your website and transforms this text information into machine-readable data. Once you validate this structured data, you can republish it as JSON-LD code on your web pages. Overall, Footlight helps you ensure the machine readability, traceability, and quality of your events data.
Note: not all cohort members are required to use Footlight. This is one possible discoverability solution of many.
What is Artsdata
Footlight and structured data are means of sharing your events data via Artsdata, Canada’s knowledge graph for arts events. Event data published to Artsdata is available to anyone who wants to reuse it. This open data can, for example, be reused on platforms, such as CAPACOA’s LIVE Performing Arts Directory and any other events listings.
What you should expect
As a participant, you should anticipate a time commitment of approximately 8 to 40 hours over the program period. This number will depend on which discoverability solutions you choose and how many performances you present/produce.
You will need to:
- Join the LDFI and Culture Creates for an initial meeting via web conference;
- Participate in additional training sessions (depending on your chosen discoverability solution);
- Collaborate with your webmaster to implement discoverability solutions on the backend of your website; and,
- Work one-on-one with Culture Creates to troubleshoot any technical issues.
Selection criteria
Cohort participants will be onboarded one at a time and selected primarily on a first come, first served basis. If selected, you may choose to begin your training before the application deadline.
Unselected applicants will have the opportunity to apply for a future cohort.
How to apply
If interested, please fill in this application form.
The deadline for applications is November 1, 2022. Applications may close at an earlier date if the cohort is already complete.
About the Linked Digital Future Initiative
The Linked Digital Future Initiative deploys a range of research, prototyping and digital literacy activities to foster discoverability, digital collaboration and digital transformation in the performing arts.
The Linked Digital Future Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada and by the Canada Council for the Arts.
