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.