Flinders Drama students in rehearsal for Coming Of Age In Australia in 2022.
The AusStage database, created and currently housed at Flinders University, will join a major research infrastructure initiative aimed at bringing together data on Australia’s rich cultural history and making it more accessible to researchers, policymakers, arts organisations and artists.
A world-leading digital platform now replicated by several other countries, AusStage has over half a million records of live performances in Australasia and has been welcomed to the prestigious UNESCO Australian Memory of the World register.
Now, thanks to a $2.9 million investment by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), the database will join others from across Australia to create a national data infrastructure for Australia’s creative history.
Flinders University’s Professor Chris Hay, AusStage Academic Lead and Deputy Director of Assemblage Centre for Creative Practice Research, says “this extraordinary investment from the ARDC represents a generational opportunity to secure Australia’s cultural data infrastructure. This project will ensure that Australian cultural data is networked and harmonised in ways that reflect creative practice.”
Led by UNSW, with partners Creative Australia and ACMI, the Australian Creative Histories and Futures project will bring AusStage together with Design and Art Australia Online (DAAO). An open source, freely accessible scholarly data e-Research tool with 30,000 individual entries (1860 Indigenous cultural entries), DAAO is one of the largest databases on artist careers and works in the world.
Along with 50 years of invaluable data held by Creative Australia, these major datasets will converge so that they can be upgraded, integrated and future-proofed.
While the databases will remain separate, the project will develop their interoperability to enable them to be searched simultaneously, allowing for Australia’s rich history to become more visible and usable by the creative industries, as well as by researchers and other groups.
The ACHF project will examine cultural data across several arts disciplines including the performing arts and visual arts, with ACMI contributing their in-depth knowledge of screen culture and advanced expertise in technology, as well as a unique Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) sector perspective.
A key focus area for the project is on how Indigenous cultural and creative data is kept and shared.
The ARDC’s investment of $2.9 million, through its HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons and enabled by the Australian Government National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), will be boosted by co-investment from the project partners, bringing the total investment to $5.8 million.
Jenny Fewster, Director of the ARDC’s HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons, says, “We’re excited to recognise the value of national research infrastructure for the creative arts through expanding the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons. Until now, data about Australia’s creative outputs has been fragmented and under acknowledged. This new project will usher in a new era of data-driven research and decision making for Australia’s creative arts sector.”
Flinders University’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Enterprise and Infrastructure) Dr Fabiana Santana says it’s inspiring to see Flinders’ long-term commitment to AusStage thriving.
“This project highlights the vital role of national research infrastructure in preserving our Indigenous cultural history and supporting the creative arts. We thank ARDC and our partners and are incredibly proud of Professor Chris Hay and the AusStage team.”
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