This case study presented for AmbITion Scotland by Hannah Rudman summarises the development of the Edinburgh Summer Festivals’ API, and its impact on app developers, festival audiences and the festivals themselves. A project of Festivals Edinburgh’s Festivalslab, it was one of the first large scale open data initiatives in the arts, cultural, and heritage sectors and heralded a new wave of sector organisations reassessing the more intangible value of their data and opening it up to each other and different sectors, such as digital and interactive, for new uses.

Following its initiation at Culture Hack Scotland, this case study video maps the development of a hack into a fully operational mobile site launched by Edinburgh International Book Festival this summer.

It’s good to see the Edinburgh International Film Festival jettison its strained efforts to “keep up with the Cannes-es”.

Reduced funding this year has clipped the Film Festival’s wings in terms of the amount of high profile stars appearing for red carpet premieres. But the clipped wings have resulted in innovative programming around the enduring quality main film programme (50% of the brochure).

New media art (New Media Scotland), photography and visual art agencies (Stills) formally join the programme and stretch its span, hosting events that celebrate the impact and relationship of film to may other art forms, and the impact of other art forms on film. The events are held in other places and spaces Edinburgh – a strand called “Outside The Box”. The relationship between film and music is explicitly acknowledged, with a thread of programming around sound tracks.

read on >