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Data Art NI – Open DataNI Outreach Funding

Data Art NI is running meetups across Northern Ireland to bring the tech, creative, and public policy sectors together, so share their successes, failures, experiments and experiences, in order to build a shared understanding of how we can make the world, if not a better place, at least a more informed one!

Data Art Northern Ireland is a community of technologists, artists, policy makers and other creatives that regularly come together to show, tell and learn about the collision of Data and Art.

Learn about visualisation techniques, data aggregation, and where to get data sources to create, inform, and excite.

If you want to get involved, join our Meetup Group to be first to hear when we release our schedule of events.

Data Art NI

Belfast, GB
462 Data Artists

Meetup bringing artists, technologists and creatives together to show, tell, and learn about the collision between Data and Art.Learn about visualisation techniques, data agg…

Check out this Meetup Group →

Meetups

Data Art NI is running meetups across Northern Ireland to bring the tech, creative, and public policy sectors together, so share their successes, failures, experiments and experiences, in order to build a shared understanding of how we can make the world, if not a better place, at least a more informed one!

Data Art has been operating as a community-run meetup group since 2017, mostly based in Farset Labs, Belfast.

Thanks to the support of the Department of Finances OpenDataNI Advocacy fund, we are taking the show on the road!

Venues and partners we plan on working with include:

If you’d like to host Data Art NI in your venue, please get in touch with us at dataart@farsetlabs.org.uk

(Also if you’d like to collaborate on running a local chapter of DataArt in your area…)

Workshops

Meetups are only part of the puzzle; we need to learn how to handle the different facets of “Data Art”, and that takes more than a cursory presentation…

Farset Labs are hosting a series of technical and creative workshops to upskill technologists, creatives, and passionate amateurs in targeted capabilities to enable the acquisition, exploration, augmentation, and visualisation of data in one way or another.

This could (depending on interest displayed) include sessions on topics such as:

  • Programming for Data Analysis
  • Embedded IoT for sensor acquisition and data visualisation
  • Machine Learning and Statistics
  • Geospatial Techniques and Analysis
  • Real-time Visualisation and Sonification
  • Typography and Graphic Design Fundamentals
  • Colour Theory and Interactive Visual Arts Design
  • 3D Design / Game Development
  • Physical Programming (aka Knitting and Crocheting)

But we want to listen to you! And we’ll be planning out the workshops with partners based on feedback received from the Meetups.

Hackathons

Over the past years, Hackathons have become the ‘de-rigueur’ way of engaging with the technology community to showcase some technology, problem, or task to be crowdsourced or socialised, usually in exchange for an .

Rather than running a big, high end, one-off, 24 hour crunch-time hackathon, we are running a quarterly series of hackathons instead, all with the thread around the cleaning, use, analysis and ‘artification’ of open data to inform and excite.

This provides time to really understand processes, projects and experiments, and also for relevant data owners in local government to be able to react and engage with the data-user community through platforms like OpenDataNI, and provide space to get real projects off the ground and make real change in our communities.

Open Data Innovation and Outreach Fund

We’re not the only ones being supported in this programme; Seven projects from Belfast, Derry and Newry have been successful from the £30,000 fund which encourages innovation in the reuse of data on the Open Data NI portal.

Allstate Northern Ireland was awarded £2,500 in partnership with Belfast City Council to host hackathon events for the technology community and STEM students.

Also among the winners was Anaeko Limited, who received £3,000 to host events and marketing activities for entrepreneurs to develop sustainable business models leveraging Open Data.

Derry City and Strabane District Council in partnership with Carnegie UK Trust was awarded £3,000 to host cross sectoral workshops to tell the story of Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon; Derry and Strabane; and Lisburn and Castlereagh Council council areas.

Newry 2020 received £4,995 to deliver an integrated environmental sensor network to assess the impact of human activities on the environment in Newry and £2,995 to host outreach events.

Xpand Group in partnership with Belfast City Council was awarded £4,960 to create a shared access platform to enable business case development and decision making for large scale regional projects, while Flax & Teal Limited received £5,000 to develop an environmental disaster simulation tool for use in education and emergency planning.

Northern Ireland’s Finance Minister Conor Murphy, who announced the winners, said: “This fund provides entrepreneurs and organisations with a real opportunity to use public sector data for commercial opportunities and drive future economic growth.

“I am delighted to meet the winners and hear more about the range of ingenious projects and events which will further develop digital skills while creating a culture of data transparency.

“It is encouraging to see the collaborative approach the winners have taken, working with community groups, businesses and local councils to optimise public sector data for research, outreach and innovation.”

Farset Labs is receiving £6,000 (as part of a budget of £11,000) to run the Data Art programme, including 6 Meetups, 6 Workshops and 4 Hackathons, and this budget allocation is directly to fund venue, refreshments, travel and equipment costs.

If you’d like to participate in the programme or help run the project, join the Meetup Group below or contact dataart@farsetlabs.org.uk for more information.

Data Art NI

Belfast, GB
462 Data Artists

Meetup bringing artists, technologists and creatives together to show, tell, and learn about the collision between Data and Art.Learn about visualisation techniques, data agg…

Check out this Meetup Group →

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