Lucie Rie, Sheet of sketches from Council of Industrial Design correspondence for Festival of Britain, 1951.
© Mrs. Yvonne Mayer/Crafts Study Centre.
Available from VADS
About the KAPTUR project
The KAPTUR project is funded by the JISC Managing Research Data programme from Monday 3rd October 2011 to Friday 29th March 2013.
Objective
Building upon the work undertaken by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), KAPTUR will discover, create and pilot a sectoral model of best practice in the management of research data in the visual arts. Led by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), the project will be undertaken in collaboration with four institutional partners, who will support the creation of the model, then apply, test and pilot it within their respective institutions. The four institutional partners are: Glasgow School of Art; Goldsmiths, University of London; University for the Creative Arts; and University of the Arts London. The results will be fed back into the model, which will be revised and then published freely to the wider higher education community for use and reuse.
Method
The project team will start by investigating the nature and scope of research data in the visual arts. The variety and complexity of research outputs in the arts is well documented through work undertaken by the JISC funded Kultur (2007 - 2009); Kultivate (2010 - 2011) and eNova (2011) projects. Research data in the visual arts mirrors the complexity of the outputs, taking many forms including logbooks, journals, workbooks, sample libraries and sketchbooks. Currently, very little is known about the curation and management of this data: none of the specialist arts institutions have research data management policies or infrastructure in place and evidence suggests that practice is ad hoc, left to individual researchers and teams without support or guidance. It is anticipated, however, that the curation and management of distinctive and varied research data in the arts will be as complex as managing the research outputs themselves.
Outcomes
Research data is seen as a valuable resource and, with appropriate curation and management, it has much to offer learning, teaching, research, knowledge transfer and consultancy activities in the visual arts. To address the lack of awareness and usage of research data management systems in the arts, the KAPTUR project seeks: to investigate the current state of the management of research data in the arts; to develop a model of best practice applicable to both specialist arts institutions and arts departments in multidisciplinary institutions; and to apply, test and embed the model with four institutional partners.