As museums face conflicting demands on maintaining and caringfor their collections, opening for visitor engagement, and beingmore inclusive in their practice, new approaches are needed tomuseum work. This article introduces a democratic and inclusiveapproach focusing on the relational properties of the artefact–the Method of the Thing (Tigenes Metode). We use interviewswith different museum professionals in Sweden. The methodallows knowledge to emerge from the convergence of differentactors within and outside the museum who negotiate theirexpertise, (professional) roles and technical infrastructure of themuseum by foregrounding the object rather than the curators’story. We use the encoding/decoding model to discuss thestrengths and weaknesses of the method where centring theobject allows for a process of democratisation and polyvocality totake shape, thus allowing divergent narratives to emerge.

The Impact Canvas and the visualised guidelines to fill out the impact canvas are outcomes of the research project Me-Mind. The aim of these visual materials is to support the self-assessment of cultural and creative organisations to understand their potential impact and to identify the necessary data to measure the impact of a cultural and creative industry organisation.

Museums are participating in the capturing of global data for the perceived benefit of improved relationships with the public. This article proposes a framework for critically analyzing the ratification of museum visitors and visitor engagement, combining a critical lens from data studies with a social view of datafication as practice—a set of practices within a sociotechnical assemblage that is continuously reproduced by the choices made within and outside the museum. Museums are situated at the intersection of PierreBourdieu’s economic, cultural, and political fields; thus, I highlight some of the external social and technological pressures driving datafication in museums. Relying on public accounts and previous case studies, I argue that datafication of visitor engagement is made to work through data loops: circular processes between institutional practices of museums and social practices of audiences where data are collected, processed, and decided upon.

When new data practices are being deployed at cultural heritage organisations, a new set of apprehensions and insecurities emerge. We invite participants to the interactive session where we employ monsters to explore what is happening with data practices in cultural heritage organisations. The participants will confront/get to know their data monsters through interactive exercises: depicting the monster, naming the monster and addressing the monster.

As contemporary research conceptualizes the agency of technology and data through the figure of the monster, our workshop aims to explore the monstrous aspects of data practices so that we might learn to live (differently) with our monsters. In the three-part exercises, the participants will explore the mutuality of agency in relation to data practices as monsters.

The workshop is intended for people who are working with data in the cultural heritage organisations – through collections’, management’, visitors’ or other kinds of data. In this workshop, we will experiment with monster making as a collaborative inquiry into data practices. Data and activities around it are often very elusive, and we hope that after the workshop, participants will be better aware of their own ideas about data practices or will be equipped to conduct a similar workshop at their home institution with concerned and wary colleagues to discuss data monsters and their care.

As an academic researcher, I have proposed that the way we celebrate metrification and numbers as measures of our work has implications in the misinformation and fake news. If we think things that have lots of likes or shares are indicators of great engagement - what are we missing out on our understanding of engagement 

The one-page infographic gives a basic visual introduction to the data in cultural and creative industries. The image is available in three languages - English, Italian and Estonian. 

Illustrated guideline #2:Data collection methods for CCIs.  The one-page visual overview will give a basic introduction to cultural and creative industries to the following questions:

1. How to collect data? What are the advantages of the various techniques?

2. Data is everywhere, even where we don’t expect it!

Data-based Cultural and Creative Industry organisation. On the one-page visual guide will find answers to:

1. Why are data-driven decisions important?

2. What is the role of data in the organisational processes?

3. Does data help measure impacts?