About the project

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE CURRENTLY ARCHIVING THE 2011 PROJECT AND WILL PUBLLISH INFORMATION ABOUT THAT V SOON. TA

General info

What is the Summer Festivals listings API project?
For the first time this year and in a pilot initiative, the summer-based Edinburgh Festivals will be making their listings data publicly available for digital developers and technologists in a form known as an API.

Err…what’s an API?
API stands for Application Programming Interface and is a way for people outside of your own organisation to engage with your proprietary data.  For example whenever you see a customised Google Map on a website not run by Google, it is because Google Maps has provided its core mapping information available as an API.

Who are the participating festivals?
The seven summer festivals participating are:

• Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival
• Edinburgh Art Festival
• Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo
• Edinburgh Mela
• Edinburgh International Festival
• Edinburgh International Book Festival
• Edinburgh Festival Fringe

The data for the Mela and the Art Festivals are not currently in the API.  The Art festival data will be added ASAP and the Mela data added following its launch on July 21st.

Why are the festivals doing this?
As evidenced by the recently published Edinburgh Festivals Impact Study (BOP Consulting 2011), the Edinburgh Festivals are the centre of a hugely important system and together result in £261M additional income to the Scottish economy.  Through this project, the festivals will further extend their value by allowing innovators to use official festival information to produce new but unofficial web and mobile based applications.    The values of the Edinburgh Festivals are of quality, openness, accessibility and supporting & showcasing new ideas and new talent.  For sixty five years the festivals have been doing this for artists, thinkers and performers like nowhere else in the world and this year for the first time this year the festivals will be doing the same for technologists.

What will happen as a result?
Through the Summer Festivals API project, we hope to see a whole host of innovative new web and mobile-based applications powered by the Edinburgh Festivals’ data.  What the exact nature of these apps and websites are is up to the creativity of the technologists and could include games, creative visualisations and new practical services.  All of which will lead to making the Edinburgh Festivals experience even richer whether you’re a performer or a member of the audience.  Prototype examples of how festivals data can be used in creative ways can be seen in the showcase section of www.culturehackscotland.com - a recent event hosted by the Edinburgh Festivals which tested the API approach together with a talented community of local web developers.

Can anyone get involved?
This is a technical project by nature and therefore while the project is openly available, it is primarily web developers, publishers and other organisations already familiar with APIs who will be most interested in participating.  Participation in the project is dependent on participants complying with the terms of use which are outlined in the API licence written specifically for this project.  While access to the Summer Festivals data (excluding the Fringe) will be unlimited, there will only be 20 API accesses available to access the Fringe data for the purposes of building applications.  The reasons for this restriction is that due to the approval process there is an associated human resource cost for every application using Fringe data.  There may be an opportunity to extend the number of API accesses to Fringe data – this will be dependent on demand and human resource capacity.

Who is running the project?
The Summer Festivals Listing API project is part of Festivals Edinburgh’s innovation programme of work known as the Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab or festivalslab.  Festivals Edinburgh is the high-level organisation created in 2007 by the Directors of Edinburgh’s 12 major festivals to lead on their joint strategic development and maintain their global competitive edge.

Who has helped produce the project?
While festivalslab is managing the project, it would not be possible without the collaboration and generosity of a number of people and organisations. Over and above the festivals who provided their data, we would like to thank two organisations in particular without whose collaboration, generosity and sheer hard work this project would not be possible.  First there is Red61, the ticketing partner of the Fringe who have brought their deep understanding of the nuances of Fringe data to ensure the API is as accurate as possible.  Finally there is Web Species, led by Juozas Kaziukenas, who have actually built the API itself.

In what way is this project a pilot?
The Festivals are as passionate about learning as they are about innovation and therefore because this project represents a new way of working, the results of the project will be evaluated later in the year and used to inform any future related activity.

Has anyone done anything like this before?
Many organisations of different types have their own APIs, including Amazon, Twitter, The Guardian and the UK Government.  Within arts & culture however, there are very few examples with most restricted to the museums and heritage sector.  We therefore believe that this will be the most significant API project in the performing arts anywhere in the world.

Where can I find out more?
For the latest information related to registration, licences and technical formats, you can find them on our site here in this dedicated 2011 API Project Section.

Technical info

What data is included in the API?
If you are returning a Fringe event then there is one set of fields and if you are returning a non-Fringe event then there is another set of fields. This is a good thing, because of the extra information that we have available for Fringe listings.

What formats are returned?
The API currently returns JSON and the IVES format. We are planning to launch an ATOM format asap.

Full technical information available at http://api.festivalslab.com

If you want to know anything else please just add it as a comment here and we’ll answer you as soon as we can.