Australian Creative Histories & Futures
Australian Creative Histories & Futures: A four-year research infrastructure project aimed at augmenting Australia’s cultural data capabilities and developing enduring digital infrastructure to meet the future research needs of the Creative Arts.
Project summary
Australian Creative Histories & Futures (ACHF) is a four-year research infrastructure project being developed by researchers at the UNSW School of the Arts & Media in collaboration with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), and university and industry partners across the country.
The project is being led by UNSW School of the Arts & Media researchers, Dr Caroline Wake and Dr Bryoni Trezise, with partners ARDC, Flinders University, Creative Australia and ACMI. Along with a $2.9 million contribution from ARDC, co-investment from partners brings the project’s total investment to $5.8 million.
Australia’s culture is extensive, dynamic and ever-evolving, and so too is its cultural data. Significant collections of our cultural data have now been amassed, across the performing arts, literature, visual arts, film, and in other fields.
Three of the country’s major cultural datasets – AusStage, the DAAO (Design & Art Australia Online) and data held by Creative Australia – lack substantive interoperability. While these databases need to be separately maintained for disciplinary-specific research and privacy reasons, developing their interoperability is crucial not only for the researchers who study our cultural history, but also for the policy makers, artists and authors who will shape our futures.
Objectives
Ensure sustainability by securing existing data assets, strengthening their technical and social architectures.
Facilitate interoperability between data assets as well as knowledge exchange between their associated research and industry communities.
Develop Indigenous data governance, reparative description, and accessibility principles for the cultural data sector, in line with FAIR (Findable Accessible Interoperable Reusable) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) principles.
Upskill sector stakeholders in cultural data management and analysis.
Benefits & outcomes
- Enabling research about the arts based on the new integrated cultural data capabilities delivered by the ACHF project.
- Increasing the integration of data about the arts in policy and inquiry submissions and discussions.
- Improving the cultural data sector approach to Indigenous and Community Data Governance.
Beneficiaries of Australian Creative Histories & Futures include:
- Researchers in the creative and literary arts, the digital humanities and Australian cultural history.
- Arts and cultural policy makers, advisors and strategists.
- Indigenous artists and historians of Indigenous arts and culture.
- GLAM sector organisations.
- Artists and arts organisations.
- Regional, diverse and other underrepresented arts and cultural communities.
- Arts educators and students.
- Arts heritage organisations.
- State, regional and university libraries.
Meet the team
Funding
Australian Creative Histories & Futures is a co-investment partnership with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) through the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons (DOI: 10.3565/3t64-zy41). The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).