CASE eNewsletter: May 2012

Welcome!

Welcome to May's CASE eNewsletter, bringing you all the latest CASE-related news. In this issue:

Data visualisation workshop
Meet the team
CASE icons
Events
CASE at a local level
CASE u pdates

Data visualisation workshop
by James Doeser, Arts Council England

Those of us working on the CASE programme have been putting a lot of thought into data visualisation. CASE has a lot of data: asset data, investment data, engagement data, and much else besides. One of the major challenges we have as researchers is communicating what this data tells us.

There are various visualisation tools that can help us do this. Furthermore, data visualisation can also be used as a means of interpreting data and helping us to ask the right kinds of questions. To help us with this process we invited Tony Hirst from the Open University to talk us through the various tools we can use to visualise our data. Slides from Tony’s talk can be found here and a shortlist of resources can be found here.

These free resources will be useful to anyone with an interest in communicating research. If any of you have created visualisations of culture and sport data we’d love to see them.

Meet the team - Lucy Glazebrook

Lucy, a Social Researcher, joined DCMS and the CASE team in the summer of 2011. Before this Lucy spent many years working in arts organisations large and small, commercial and publicly funded.

CASE icons

The wealth of evidence contained in the CASE programme can be split in to the six areas below. We'll be using the icons above throughout our web pages and online communications to help you navigate through the different tools and reports available.

The six areas are:

The CASE database
The Drivers, Impacts and Value work
The local culture & heritage profile tool
Sport England local sport profile tool
Regional and local insights data
The asset mapping toolkit

Events – sign up to the CASE Webinar

Topic: Making the CASE for culture and sport – how to use the local profile tools

Date: Tuesday 28 June, 12.00pm – 12.50pm

This webinar is aimed at local authority colleagues with an interest in using evidence to support local sport and cultural policy making.

Presented by James Doeser (Arts Council England) and Alan Dovaston (Sport England), the webinar will provide:

An introduction to CASE
An overview of the Sport England local sport profile tool
An overview of the culture and heritage profile tool
Practical ways to use the CASE tools to support advocacy and policy development

The webinar is free but places are limited. Please email alison.scammel@fastdawn.co.uk to book your place.

Webinars are easy to use – you simply need a computer with telephone access. We will provide full registration details when you book your place.

CASE at a local level

Last week’s CASE blog post by Jane Wilson It’s time to take-up CASE at a local level serves as a clarion call for local authorities to make CASE an intrinsic part of their work.

Familiarity with robust evidence sources are increasingly important in a challenging economic environment where smaller budgets need to make a big impact and Jane provides some good examples of why the CASE local profiles and insights tools are so important.

They say data is the new oil, and like oil, data sometimes needs refining. We’re starting to hear innovative ways CASE data is being re-formatted to meet specific local authority needs. Look out for the next CASE blog article by Sally Staples at East Sussex County Council, about a web interface and software tool they are using to make CASE data even more simple to use.

If you have used CASE in your work and would like to write a blog please email case@culture.gsi.gov.uk

CASE updates

CASE database – The updated CASE database goes live on 11 June. All relevant articles published between February 2011 and February 2012 will now be included. If there’s demand, we'll run a webinar to demonstrate the database and searching techniques. If you'd be interested in this webinar please email case@culture.gsi.gov.uk.

Related updates:

Measuring sport participation – On 17 May, DCMS and Sport England issued a consultation on proposals to change the way sport is measured in the Taking Part and Active People surveys. Full details of the proposed changes are in the consultation document, available here.

If you'd like to have your say please read the consultation document and then complete the short survey here.

The consultation closes at midnight on 7th August 2012. Any questions, please email statsconsultation@culture.gsi.gov.uk