culture.explore(data)

A hackathon is an event for people from a variety of backgrounds to come together and to develop digital projects over a short span of time. Over the course of two days, we invite participants to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin to experiment with a series of curated datasets and explore the open data held by two of the world’s largest cultural heritage institutions, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and the Libraries and Museums at the University of Oxford.

In small teams, participants will have the opportunity to build their own digital project, advance their digital skills and meet like-minded participants. Participants may have experience in coding, in the arts or they may have a background in research. The key is the diversity of views and experiences that everyone brings to exploring cultural heritage data.

Before heading into the coding phase, participants will have the opportunity to learn about the data from library and museum professionals who will also be available to assist and to advise as needed throughout the hackathon. Final projects are not expected to be market-ready applications but creative experimentations that expose collections to unusual contexts, new ideas and overlooked perspectives – failure is an option! What better way to unlock the creative freedom of the worlds of culture, technology and open data?