A unique interactive event to enrich Wikidata of our cultural places!

Cultural Venues Datathon, from April 25 to May 2, 2022

Produced by LaCogency, CAPACOA and with the support of many partners, the Cultural Venues (Wiki)Datathon brought together passionate volunteers who worked in a relaxed and informal session to populate Wikidata with information about the cultural places we know and love.

Cultural venues are an important part of the performing arts ecosystem in Canada

Theatres, concert halls, black boxes, music venues: these buildings located across Canada provide the best possible settings for audiences to experience the outstanding performances our artists can deliver.

However, there is still no comprehensive open database of performing arts buildings. This makes it difficult for these venues and the productions they present to be found online by audiences.

The Cultural Venues Datathon took place in French and English, from April 25 to May 2, 2022. The French datathon program is below.

No previous experience with Wikidata was required. At each session, experienced wikidatians guided participants on how to populate cultural venue information into Wikidata. This (Wiki)Datathon was intended to be a unifying activity that supports the overall goals of the Wikiproject Cultural venues.

DATATHON OUTCOMES

Datathon documentation and resources

All documentation, including the “Datathon Toolbox“, is available on the Datathon Wikipage.

Participants

FRANCOPHONES (Canada, Switzerland, Algeria)

Out of 26 registered, 17 participants over the 3 sessions.

ANGLOPHONES (Canada, Switzerland)

Out of 49 registered, 38 participants over the 3 sessions.

Quantitative Indicators

Activities including actions in Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Specific activities that took place in Wikidata only.

The 58 participating editors made over 15,000 changes in 5 days of activity, including an impressive number of description additions and enrichments or clarifications.

Canadian Cultural Venues in Wikidata

Here is the dynamic list of cultural venues in Canada with geolocation coordinates

(The request runs live so please wait for the short delay)

Click on the link to access the item in Wikidata.

Here is the dynamic list of cultural venues in Canada without geolocation coordinates

(The request runs live so please wait for the short delay)

Click on the link to access the item in Wikidata.

Datathon Schedule

Here is the schedule of sessions in English.

April 25	April 26	April 28	May 2
3:00-4:30 p.m. (EDT) / 7:00-8:30 p.m. UTC	12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. (EDT) / 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (UTC)	12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. (EDT) / 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (UTC)	3:00-3:30 p.m. (EDT) / 7:00-7:30 p.m. UTC
Official opening of the Datathon. – Presentation of collective objectives First round of practice: – Create a venue item and optimize it for discovery (including a focus on geographic metadata and identifiers)	– Check-in and guided editing TOPIC: – How to model building with several performance spaces	– Check-in and guided editing TOPIC: – How to add a photo of a cultural venue	– Presentation of the collective result of the datathon. – Closing of the datathon