Transforming the Arts, Cultural & Heritage Sector’s Data Infrastructure – nationally, regionally and locally
What is the National Cultural Data Observatory?
The National Cultural Data Observatory (NCDO) is an ambitious, long-term, sector-wide collaboration aimed at building a shared, intelligent data ecosystem for the arts, culture and heritage sectors. Through better data integration, it will connect people, policy, and practice, representing the collective intelligence of policymakers, funders, sector bodies, practitioners and communities that form our cultural and creative ecosystem.
The NCDO stems from an ESRC-funded research partnership that consulted with over 470 scholars, cultural sector partners, and policymakers to lay the groundwork for a national data observatory. We’ve already mapped more than 70 existing observatories across the UK and internationally and reviewed over 200 datasets to design a framework that unites cultural, social, and economic data.
Why the NCDO matters
Across the UK, the collection, analysis and use of data about arts, culture and heritage remains fragmented, inconsistent and short-term. Practically this results in duplication, inefficiency and unnecessary burdens in handling data – but the strategic cost is greater:
- Sector strategies and public policies are not joined up because the evidence used to design them isn’t.
- Lessons are not learnt as there is little recorded about ‘what works’ in which situations.
- Areas of greatest need or opportunity are difficult to identify and then precisely target in initiatives.
- The narrative and quantitative arguments for compelling investment cases are difficult to mount against other demands backed with better evidence.
The NCDO will change that by turning our collective intelligence about culture into a national asset by offering a distributed but coherent, reliable data hub that supports more equitable, data-driven decision-making. By connecting data across communities, cultural and creative sectors and public policy areas – such as health, education, and local placemaking and growth:
"in this era in which data is power, the NCDO enables those that know and care about culture to shout with one voice."
Bringing fragmented data together
The NCDO will unite hundreds of cultural, social, and economic data sources within an interoperable, trusted framework. It will enable those in the cultural and creative ecosystem – policymakers, funders of all kinds, sector bodes, cultural leaders and the researchers and advisors that support them – to discover, access and reuse as well as compare, combine and contribute data seamlessly across geographies.
Supporting evidence-based decisions
The NCDO will transform strategy and policy development and other decision-making by providing real-time, actionable intelligence and insights as well as more traditional period research reports. By combining many different kinds of national, regional, and local data, the NCDO will give policymakers, funders of all kinds and cultural leaders the evidence they need to plan, invest, deliver and evaluate with confidence.
Highlighting cultural impact
We all know that culture drives positive change in many areas - in wellbeing, education, inclusion, pride of place to name a few. The NCDO will help measure and communicate such impact more consistently and defensibly, ensuring that cultural value is more widely recognised and understood in policymaking and funding decisions than now.
This will align with national frameworks of priorities and indicators such as those being developed by the LGA and CLOA under the National Framework for Culture banner. It will support the identification and valuation of different kinds of Cultural & Heritage Capital aligned with the framework being developed for DCMS/AHRC by Historic England and partners.
Supporting place-based planning
The NCDO will enable local and regional authorities and their partners to identify opportunities and needs across their regions - whether focused on cultural infrastructure, local regeneration or community priorities. It will benchmark data across networks, share best practices, and help build data-driven, tailored strategies for sustainable and inclusive development.
Whilst allowing for differentiated regional and local priorities and approaches, the NCDO will help avoid duplication of similar data-related functions across multiple local and combined authorities.
Driving equity and inclusion
The NCDO will identify gaps in access and representation within cultural sectors, ensuring that opportunities are more fairly distributed and empowering communities to be part of data generation and decision-making. This approach will promote equitable participation and enhance cultural access for underrepresented groups.
We recognise that this will require a step-change in the quality and precision with which EDI is represented within cultural sector data and invite partners specifically interested in working with us on this challenge.
How the NCDO will work
The blueprint project is aimed at creating a connected ecosystem for cultural data across the UK that reflects the diversity and complexity of the cultural and creative ecosystem. The NCDO will bring together key components – including:
Automated data onboarding
The NCDO will simply and automatically process priority datasets helping to fill gaps in data about the cultural and creative ecosystem. All such processing is overseen by experts to ensure accuracy, quality and compliance with privacy standards. ‘Synthetic data’ approaches will enable analysis and comparison even when data stays is stored outside of the NCDO.
Connecting Datasets
The Translational Layer and NCDO Data Model makes it easy to connect and compare different types of data. From ticketing or community health, all data is mapped to the same easy-to-understand system, allowing researchers and policymakers to start asking meaningful questions with relatively little training.
We will be carefully testing out AI-enhanced approaches to help guide and support users to get better answers to their questions – and ask better questions of our data.
Data Exchange Hub
The Data Exchange Hub is where users will be able to browse, request access, download, and share curated data products. Such data products will use multiple datasets and additional analysis to create easy to use intelligence and insights for people who are not research experts – from cultural participation and the creative economy to culture’s contribution to better health outcomes.
The Data Exchange Hub will also carefully manage IP and data permissions, so data is used in the ways intended – and the rights of those contributing data are respected.
Secure Research Environments
The NCDO will ensure data privacy for accredited researchers by providing secure access to any detailed, sensitive datasets. Researchers can use the network of secure pods to run their own analysis, ensuring security and flexibility in their work, whilst assuring data controllers of secure management and safeguarding.
How to support the NCDO
The success of the NCDO depends on collaboration from across the cultural sector. Here’s how you can get involved:
Share your experiences around accessing and using data
We want to hear from you! Get in touch to share your organisation’s data challenges and success stories. Together, we can build a richer, more comprehensive picture of the UK’s cultural landscape.
Collaborate on research
Work with us on funding bids, research projects, and data collaborations that can help advance the ambitions of the NCDO. Together, we can align existing and future research to strengthen the UK’s cultural evidence base.
Join the NCDO community
Join the growing community shaping the future of cultural data in the UK. By signing our manifesto, you’ll be part of a shared ambition to build a connected, trusted data infrastructure that helps culture thrive nationally, regionally, and locally. Add your voice to the conversation and help champion a stronger, more evidence-informed cultural sector.
Bradford 2025 Demonstrator (Coming soon!)
The Bradford Demonstrator is an output of the ESRC-funded Towards a Blueprint for an NCDO project, testing how national, regional, and local datasets can be connected through a single local portal.
The Demonstrator will continue to evolve as part of ongoing NCDO development, including the Bradford 2025 legacy, future funding opportunities, and collaborative projects contributing to the long-term goal of building a national cultural data picture.
...the problem of fragmented and hard-to-compare data matters to us all … it makes it harder to justify and evidence the social and economic impact of cultural activities in a compelling way. This limits investment, hampers innovative policymaking and inhibits collaboration between public and private sectors. It also leaves the ACH sectors vulnerable to public funding cuts.
Project leads Ben Walmsley at University of Leeds and Patrick Towell for The Audience Agency