This page explains each dataset included in the map. Here you can find descriptions of all categories in the ‘Cultural Spaces’ dataset and descriptions of each dataset found in the map’s ‘Layers‘ tab. Research Fellow Melisa Miranda wrote and compiled this information.
Cultural assets
This dataset is a collection of over 1000 places where culture and community engagement take place; it is composed of several categories, from government and Council institutions, to grassroot initiatives. We gathered the dataset from 2018 – 2020; part of the results obtained from a participatory process that asked cultural producers to determine which categories and places should be included. There are three major categories that include most small-scale cultural production: places for making objects, virtual production and performance.
Hubs
Hubs support cultural producers and engage actively with local communities. The 9 Hubs in the map were identified in workshops that asked participants both to define a hub was and select places in Edinburgh they considered as candidates. As many places are valuable for different sectors of culture, we agreed that a hub should include performative arts, production of objects, and creative industries focused on digital production, from books to illustrations.
Made Objects
Made Objects refers to the cultural production of objects. It includes the subcategories of: Art, Products & Prototypes, Multiple (meaning that includes more than one category), Design, Clay, Craft, Photography, Community arts and café, Land art, Auctioneer, Pottery, Sculpture, Jewellery, Woodworking, Fashion, Architecture, Art therapy, Graffiti and Materials provider. Another field of this data describes the kind of space where the activity takes place: Gallery, Studios, Studios and gallery, Platform (support and artist development), Church, Equipment and studios, Flexible space, Showroom, Artist studio, Gallery and art centre, Gallery and studios, School and gallery Workshop, Materials re-use, Open space, School, Café, Pop up space, Upcycling, Venue, Lecture Hall, Programme, Stores, Art Café, Maker space or Atelier.
Performance
This category refers to ‘performative spaces’ and includes all the infrastructure that supports the work of performative arts such as Multiple (meaning more than one discipline), Theatre, Aerial, Dance, Music, Multi-purpose, Music and theatre, Theatre – suppliers, Music and comedy, Comedy, Concert, music recording studios, music rehearsal and dance rehearsal studios.
Virtual Outputs
Virtual Outputs captures areas of culture that produce virtual objects (objects that do not exist in any one place) and people who work mainly digitally. This includes literature, illustration and filmmakers. This data shows particular qualities of those places, whether it is a school, a cinema, second hand bookshop, a publisher or a coworking space. Some lists were obtained from the following websites:
Community Organisations
This is a complex dataset that aims to gather all those local initiatives that congregates people in relation to territories. This dataset includes different kinds of community organisations, such as community centres or neighbourhoods run by the council, community youth centres and community gardens among others. It also shows a wide range of cultural activities such as crafts (sewing, floristry, book binging among others)
Libraries
Edinburgh council libraries host a range of events for different ages. Some of the events hosted by libraries include free events for ages 0-4, book groups and other events focused on craft and reading. The majority rents rooms with prices for commercial and non-commercial use. More research on ‘making cultural infrastructure’ should ask about libraries’ cultural activities and whether there is a will for increasing flexibility for using libraries as writing spaces, coworking, workshops, and rehearsal space.
Charities
This dataset includes ones with a focus on culture named by workshop participants.
Institutional
This dataset is showing museums and galleries run by institutions at a government level and Council or education institutions such as Edinburgh University.
This list is using data scraped from google maps, a wikipedia list of museums in Scotland and the list of museums and galleries run by the council.
Schools
This dataset includes primary and secondary schools, private schools, special schools, Rudolph and Montessori schools. Nurseries are included as well.
Worship
Worship refers to places used with a religious purpose. It includes churches and mosques and aims to include all religions and beliefs practiced in Edinburgh. Subcategories for this dataset are: Mosque, United Church, Church of Scotland, Evangelical church, Free Church, Presbyterian church, Catholic church, Orthodox synagogue, Baptist church, Methodist Church, Destiny church, Pentecostal church, RCCG, Catholic Apostolic Church, Scottish Episcopal Church, Quakers, United Reformed Church, Episcopal church, Unitarian church, Roman catholic, Anglican church, Ecumenical Christian, Parish Church, Reformed church, Buddhism and All faiths. This list also includes churches that today work as venue for events. These tags were obtained in Google maps.
Historic
As the dataset for monuments and listed building is quite complex, large, and not necessarily representative of community imaginary, we completed a new set of data based on google maps. The list includes listed buildings, landmarks and monuments.
Open spaces
This data was obtained at The Open Space Strategy. Here there is a selection of spaces that were mentioned by participants for their relevance in terms of culture and community engagement. The complete dataset can be found on the “Layers” section. This list also includes cemeteries and civic spaces.
Mobility
Accessibility is essential for disabled communities. Access to culture can only happen when there is access to places by using adequate equipment. This is a list showing places who offer equipment rental for mobility such as scooters.
BME (Black and minority ethnics)
This data it is based on EVOC’s red book.
Women organisation
This list is based on places tagged under that category on google maps. At the moment we have a register of ten places who supports women’s organisations: YWCA Scotland – The Young Women’s Movement, Scottish Women’s Aid, Edinburgh Women Aid, Healing for Women, Scottish Women’s Institutes, Shakti Women Aid, Women in High Performance Computing, Women‚ Äôs Fund for Scotland, American Women’s Club of Central Scotland, Link Up Women’s Support Centre and Sikh Sanjog.
Archives
This is a list of archives registered on google with this tag. At the moment we have a register of two places for National Records of Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland, Lothian Health Services, Heriot Watt, Scottish Catholic Archives, School of Scottish Studies Archives and Scottish Dance Archives.
Gaelic
This is a list of places where Gaelic is registered on google with such tag. It includes Gaelic Edinburgh, Parkside Primary School, Dunedin Connollys home ground and training pitches, and Òganan Dhùn Èideann.
Outdoor
This dataset was created to highlight specific outdoor activities that take place in open spaces of the city. It includes bike and skate parks, Gorgie City park, Children parks and Playgrounds.
Radio
This is a list of radio stations registered on google with such tag. At the moment we have a register of ten stations in total: Radio Forth, Edinburgh Hospitals Broadcasting Service, SAM (Scottish Autistic Media) RADIO, Forth 2, Radio Alternativa .NET, EH-FM, BBC Scotland, LiveSportOn.TV, Richer Sounds, Edinburgh and Sunoh Edinburgh
Layers
Edinburgh & slavery data
This dataset explores Edinburgh’s connections to slavery through public and commercial buildings and monuments. The data are based on existing online public resources including articles and maps published by University College London’s Legacies of British Slave Ownership project, a guest blog by Lisa Williams of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association for Historic Environment Scotland, Edinburgh Libraries’ Our Town Stories project, National Library of Scotland and The University of Edinburgh’s UncoverED project. The dataset offers a starting point for exploring Edinburgh’s historic links to slavery; it draws on our research strategy of using cultural mapping to develop narratives that attach meaning to cultural spaces.
Community engagement map 2018/19
This data was collected by the Council’s Culture department, which asked organisations they fund to report on their community engagement in Edinburgh. It was originally qualitative data transformed into cartographic information.
Clusters for Community engagement map 2018/19
This layer shows how many times Council funded cultural organisations reach communities. They include mostly schools and community centres such as Traverse theatre, TRACS, and many others (which can be found on the symbology list). Schools and community centres ensure a consistence audience, however as we can see in the map, there are some places not being reached by these organisations, such as East Craig’s primary school. In contrast, Abbey hill primary school is reached by 5 different programs.
Festivals
Festival included are: Children’s Festival – Imaginate, Free festival, International festival, International film festival, Jazz and blues festival, Art festival, Military tattoo, International book festival, Scottish storytelling festival, Leith Festival, Fringe Festival, Science Festival and Edinburgh Mela. This is a list scraped from official websites and in particular, for the Fringe festival the list is based on a wikipedia list of venues. The reference date that is included for some festivals corresponds to date in 2019. Please check the dates on the official websites (included in the pop up box) due COVID-19 contingency as many festivals have been cancelled.
Street Art
This list gathers some go the graffiti work supported by Leith Late and Chris Ruttetford in Edinburgh city.
Public sculptures
The list was obtained from a wikipedia site, which has a list of the public art in Edinburgh, and details of the University of Edinburgh’s sculpture collection.
Care homes
This is scraped data from google maps contrasted with a website with Care homes in the UK.
Open spaces
This is a complete list of Open spaces of Edinburgh obtained from The Open Space Strategy.
Accessible toilet (from Euan’s list)
These are buildings with accessible toilet according to Euan’s list.
Listed buildings
This data was downloaded from the Council website The city of Edinburgh Council mapping portal. It is described as:
Buildings are listed by Historic Scotland for their special architectural or historic interest on behalf of the Scottish Government. The aim of listing such buildings is to protect or enhance their special character by affording them statutory protection. The principles for listing buildings are fairly complex and there is no right of appeal against the Scottish Governments decision to list a property.Listed buildings are listed in 3 categories – A, B and C.Category A listed buildings are of national or international importance.Category B listed buildings are of regional importance.Category C buildings are of local importance.A building’s listing covers its interior, exterior and any object or structure fixed to a building or which falls within the curtilage of such a building, forming part of the land since before 1 July 1948.
Edinburgh World Heritage site
This data was downloaded from the Council website The city of Edinburgh Council mapping portal. It is described as:
Polygon shapefile showing the Edinburgh World Heritage Site as of 1997. World Heritage Sites are designated to meet the UK’s commitments under the World Heritage Convention. The UK’s ratification also extends to its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. These sites are designated for their globally important cultural or natural interest and require appropriate management and protection measures.
Scheduled monuments
This data was downloaded from Historic Environment Scotland. The data was filtered to show only scheduled monuments for the city of Edinburgh. It is described as:
This dataset comprises scheduled monuments in Scotland.
Scheduled monuments are nationally important monuments and sites. National importance takes account of a wide range of factors, including artistic, archaeological, architectural, historic, traditional, aesthetic, scientific and social. The aim of scheduling is to preserve sites and monuments as far as possible in the form in which they have come down to us today.
Waterways
This data corresponds to surface water in the format of polygons. It was obtained from the Consumer Data Research Centre.
Source: CDRC 2015 OS Geodata Pack by the ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre; Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2015
Cycle paths
This vector file was composed based on Cycle street website information regarding bike roads.
Lothian bus stops
This is a complete list of Open spaces of Edinburgh obtained from Lothian Buses.
Scottish Index of multiple deprivation 2016
This data was obtained from the Scottish Government – statistics website.
Scottish Index of multiple deprivation 2020
This data was obtained from the Scottish Government – statistics website
Polling districts
This data was downloaded from the Council website The city of Edinburgh Council mapping portal. It is described as:
The boundaries for each polling station district used in elections.
Total household. Data source: Census 2016
This data was downloaded from the Council website Locality and wards data profile. The Census information is provided by ward.
Robbery
This data was downloaded from the Council website Locality and wards data profile. The Census information is provided by ward.
Unemployment
This data was downloaded from the Council website Locality and wards data profile. The Census information is provided by ward.
Total population
This data was downloaded from the Council website Locality and wards data profile. The Census information is provided by ward.
Natural neighbourhood
This data was downloaded from the Council website The city of Edinburgh Council mapping portal. It is described as:
Natural neighbourhoods are neighbourhood definitions and boundaries created during a consultation with Edinburgh residents. Natural neighbourhood boundaries were created in 2004 as part of a review of ward boundaries. The city has changed much since then, the population has increased, new neighbourhoods have appeared and demolition has taken place in other areas so the 2014 consultation has updated these boundaries. The boundaries will be used by the Council and its partners to plan services, consultations and inform policy and strategy development.
Wards
This data was downloaded from SASPAC (Small Area Statistics Package)