From the moment On the Move was founded our central mission has been to inform artists and cultural workers of the opportunities that exist for them to work across borders. In the process, we have tried to keep track of what’s happening now so that we can imagine what’s coming next in the mobility field.
Information monitoring is still the foundation of what we do. Our network – which brings together different domains, missions, and of course countries of the world – connects us with news and insights, helped along by readers who contribute calls and information to our website and guides.
Working with data
As much as mobility is a large field, it is an ever-changing one. By collecting and sharing open calls and funding opportunities we try to build a picture of trends and movements to capture its international flow of people, projects and ideas.
In 2020, we overhauled our information system and rebuilt it with three layers:
- A system for monitoring websites and online activity, leveraging Huginn and lots of RSS.
- This website, which we use to sort and label information before making it available to users.
- A series of data pipelines running into R Markdown, which allow us to explore statistical data and generate reports.
This set-up lets us explore activity by time period, geographic region, art form, or other variables. It opens the way for analysis of long term trends, and makes it easier to get information into the hands of others.
Data itself can be useful to understand both what is there and what is missing. Its limitations are also revealing, and we see data analysis as a process that opens lines of research rather than concluding them. We use it to support our work internally and with our network, as well as to collaborate with our external partners – most recently European Dancehouse Network and i-Portunus.
Get in touch if you’re interested in hearing more: mobility@on-the-move.org