Kaptur – five months into the project

Posted: March 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: events, monthly reports, project posts | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

This is our update for the end of the fifth month:

WP1: Project Management

  • consortium agreement – waiting for the fourth institution to sign
  • steering group meeting held (presentations available on SlideShare), minutes circulated, blog post

WP2: Environmental Assessment

  • as reported previously, this phase is completed, although it is also feeding into the Technical Infrastructure phase
  • environmental assessment report – this has gone through a series of iterations and we have received very positive feedback; it will be available from early next week to download: UCA Research Online
  • the implementation plan was part of the original draft, and presented at the Steering Group meeting, but was then removed for clarity, and will now be made available as a series of blog posts this week

WP3: Technical Infrastructure

  • The Technical Manager has met and interviewed IT staff from three institutions.
  • In addition the four Project Officers have been involved in providing feedback on the technical requirements originating from the 16 interviews with visual arts researchers (from the Environmental Assessment phase).
  • Last week the first draft of the Technical Analysis report was sent to the Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator.
  • The Technical Manager is installing DataBank and DataStage for requirements testing and comparison with other software.

WP4: Modelling

  • The Project Officers have been contacting and meeting a range of stakeholders from across their institutions, and also working with the Project Sponsors.
  • One institution has established a working group which will meet every 4-6 weeks; another institution has established a working group due to meet in early April.
  • The other two institutions are in the process of forming their working groups, including identifying relevant stakeholders.

WP7: Dissemination

4. Issues/challenges

The past month was about transition, so there were a variety of challenges!

The environmental assessment report was drafted last month, but following the Steering Group meeting it went through a series of iterations which took longer than expected, and it has also been verified by the 16 interviewees.

The relationships built up during WP2: Environmental Assessment are leading into WPs 3 and 4; however as we are in the process of getting the working groups together this is naturally throwing up a lot of questions and queries from all parties.

The Project Sponsors have been very engaged with Kaptur and they have been working closely with the Project Officers.

All Project Officers, and the Technical Manager, have now attended the excellent Digital Curation Centre (DCC) Roadshows. This has provided us with a solid base to move onwards with the aims of Kaptur, however the next challenge is to grow that same awareness amongst the stakeholders at each institution. The following DCC Research data policy briefing (PDF) document is being used as a starting point for discussion for WP4: Modelling. This was discovered through a DCC blog post by Sarah Jones (December 2011).

Kaptur Steering Group Meeting, 6th February 2012

Posted: February 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: meetings | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment »

On Monday we held our first Kaptur Steering Group meeting at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. This was followed up with a meeting with Simon Hodson, JISCMRD Programme Manager in the afternoon. There are a lot of action points to follow up from both meetings and further blog posts will follow on some of these.

The presentations given on Monday are available from the Kaptur SlideShare page. As mentioned during the meeting, we are using SlideShare as a way to generate altmetrics for the project and also to ensure ease of access to outputs from Kaptur.

At the Steering Group meeting we were delighted to welcome high-level senior management and Project Sponsors from all four institutions; they were so engaged with Kaptur and keen to get involved to promote the project which was wonderful. Earlier this week I followed up one of the action points from the meeting which was to create a one-side Word document with headlines about Kaptur tailored particularly to the Project Sponsors role. This is to enable them to promote Kaptur more effectively within their institutions. [NB: The Steering Group members had previously received key points in terms of their roles and responsibilities, and the purpose of each steering group meeting when they were invited to join the Steering Group in October. This was followed up with a Steering Group Terms of Reference document a couple of months prior to the meeting.]

Simon Hodson recommended sending the Steering Group members a separate monthly lightweight report i.e. targeted to their needs as opposed to the report sent to Simon and blogged about overall project progress.

This week the Project Officers have been moving onto the next stage of the project – the modelling and technical workpackages – which run parallel and will involve the setting up of working groups at each institution to inform and support these stages. The working groups will continue to build on existing relationships established through the environmental assessment, as well as draw in the full spectrum of stakeholders i.e. IT, Library, Research Office, Researchers etc. The Kaptur Technical Manager has also been setting up meetings with IT at each institution as part of the work he is doing on the Technical Analysis.

Kaptur – four months into the project

Posted: February 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: events, monthly reports, project posts | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment »

This is our update for the end of the fourth month:

1. Project Outputs

  • consortium agreement – this has been signed by 3 out of 4 institutions (so nearly there!)
  • environmental assessment report – a draft version is available which will be published and promoted very soon

2. Environmental Assessment

  • This workpackage is now complete.

3. Technical Infrastructure

  • The Kaptur Technical Manager has written a methodology for the Technical Analysis report.
  • Meetings will be arranged very soon with key stakeholders at each institution.

4. Dissemination

  • This has been a relatively quiet month in terms of attending events, although Robin Burgess was part of the 7th Emergy Conference and his abstract, which is about applying Emergy accountancy to arts related data, is available from SlideShare.
  • The Kaptur Project Director submitted two conference abstracts.
  • The Project Officers have been working collaboratively in Google Docs to write up the Environmental Assessment report; our methodology is available on SlideShare as is the final version of our questionnaire.
  • The Project Manager has been working on the report and with the Project Officers and Technical Manager, also liaising with the Kaptur Steering Group in order to ensure that everything is in place for the first meeting on Monday 6th February 2012.

4. Issues/challenges

The focus this past month has been on analysing the data from the 16 interviews as well as writing the Environmental Assessment report. As part of this process the project team have been considering the research data that we ourselves have been creating. A blog post on this will be forthcoming.

The Technical Manager has begun work on the Kaptur project, and brings with him experience of managing and working on other visual arts projects. The project team have been thinking about how the work on the environmental assessment can be turned into reality with policies and technical infrastructure, as these are the next tasks to be tackled.

visual arts research data and ‘creation’

Posted: February 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: resources | Tags: , | 2 Comments »

The first Kaptur Steering Group meeting will be held on Monday 6th February at University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. The Project Officers and Project Manager will present findings from the Environmental Assessment Report, which we will disseminate following feedback from the Group.

V & A Museum, London

V & A Museum, London. Photo: MTG

The following quote is not in our report, but it does resonate with some of our own findings. It is taken originally from text on display in the Theatre and Performance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. However credit is due to Katie of the JE SUIS UNE MONSTRE blog for making this available online:

“The process of creation differs from artist to artist but always springs from the premise that something must, could, or should be created.

Artists take inspiration from everywhere – literature, landscape, advertising, other works of art, political and historical events – so the process of creation and inspiration is cyclical.”

The blog also shows examples of visual arts research data as part of a ‘conversation with Amber Hards‘, a Knitwear Designer.

Kaptur – two months into the project

Posted: December 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: monthly reports, project posts | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

The following blog post is based on a report submitted to Simon Hodson, JISCMRD Programme Manager:

1. Project Outputs

  • consortium agreement produced – in process of being signed
  • roles and responsibilities document produced and discussed verbally with each party
  • steering group meeting arranged for 6th February 2012 – agenda and terms of reference circulated

2. Environmental Assessment

  • Project Officers have now carried out 16 one-hour recorded interviews, this data is currently being transcribed and analysed. The marked-up transcripts will then be analysed collaboratively across the project team at our next meeting in early January, before we publish our findings in the Environmental Assessment report. Our interview methodology has been briefly mentioned in previous blog posts, but we will make it properly available soon for use and re-use.

3. Dissemination

4. Issues/challenges
The main focus of November was to spend time finding out what is happening elsewhere through attending events and making inroads into the four partner institutions internally. As we are a collaborative project, it is really important that we share information as widely as possible – hence the long blog posts – but hopefully still digestible with links and headings etc. We aim to make as much of the project as open as possible. Challenges this month were in terms of ensuring that the interviews could be carried out (support and engagement) and also establishing the date for the steering group meeting.

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