On Monday 26 January 2026, we joined a large online sector session introducing the National Cultural Data Observatory (NCDO), and exploring how organisations across arts, culture and heritage can help shape it.
The NCDO’s ambition is clear, build a shared, intelligent data ecosystem for the UK’s arts, culture and heritage sectors, so evidence can better connect people, policy and practice.
From an FMTW perspective, this matters because freelancers are central to how theatre and the wider sector actually works, but they are too often missing from the data that informs big decisions. If the sector is building a stronger evidence infrastructure, freelancers have to be part of the picture.
This blog is our first reflection on what the NCDO is, what it is trying to fix, and how FMTW’s evidence work, including five years of Big Freelancer Survey data, could potentially feed into this emerging national approach.
What is the NCDO?
The NCDO describes itself as a long-term, sector-wide collaboration to create a shared data infrastructure for culture and creativity, nationally, regionally and locally.
On the NCDO website, the team explains that the work stems from an ESRC-funded research partnership, with consultation involving over 470 scholars, sector partners and policymakers, mapping 70+ observatories, and reviewing 200+ datasets to design a framework that unites cultural, social and economic data.
The NCDO is being led by four core delivery partners, Centre for Cultural Value, The Audience Agency, MyCake, and Culture Commons.
Why the NCDO exists, and the problem it is trying to solve
A consistent theme, both on the website and in the session, is that cultural data is currently fragmented, inconsistent and too often short-term. Practically, that creates duplication and inefficiency, and strategically it weakens learning, targeting, and investment cases.
This came through in very plain terms during the discussion. Many organisations are sitting on piles of evaluation PDFs that never become usable datasets, and research samples are often too small to slice by geography or subsector.
In other words, the sector has plenty of evidence activity, but not enough evidence infrastructure.
What the NCDO aims to do
The NCDO sets out several practical aims for what the Observatory should enable, including:
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Bringing fragmented data together so people can discover, access, reuse, compare and combine data across geographies.
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Supporting evidence-based decisions by providing actionable intelligence and insights, alongside more traditional reports.
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Highlighting cultural impact more consistently and defensibly, including culture’s links to wellbeing, education and inclusion.
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Supporting place-based planning so local and regional decision-makers can benchmark, learn, and reduce duplication of similar functions.
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Driving equity and inclusion, including a stated need for a step-change in the quality and precision of EDI data in the sector.
How it could work in practice
The NCDO’s approach is not “put everything in one place.” It is described as distributed and federated, connecting to existing datasets and adding value through shared standards and tooling.
In the session, Stephen Miller (CTO at The Audience Agency) talked through the technical thinking behind this, including onboarding from federated datasets, a “universal translator” style framework to connect and compare different kinds of data, a data exchange hub to make curated data products accessible, and secure research environments for sensitive data.
The NCDO website also describes these components, including automated data onboarding, a translational layer and data model, a data exchange hub, and secure research environments.
The demonstrator, and why Bradford matters
A key part of the project is a demonstrator, designed to show that this kind of joined-up approach is feasible now, not just a theory.
The NCDO site references a Bradford 2025 demonstrator, testing how national, regional and local datasets can be connected through a local portal, with plans to evolve it as part of Bradford 2025 legacy and future collaborative projects.
Workforce data came up repeatedly, and that is where freelancers come in
One of the strongest takeaways from the discussion was the scale of the workforce data gap, especially data that can be broken down by subsector and place.
The NCDO also flags this publicly. In its “story so far,” it identifies key gaps including data on the cultural workforce, non-ticketed activity, everyday creativity, local authority provision, and longitudinal data.
For FMTW, this is an important signal. If the sector is serious about a people and place-centred evidence base, then the freelance workforce cannot be a footnote. Freelancers are not just “labour supply,” they are expertise, creative leadership, and delivery capacity. If we cannot see the workforce clearly, it is hard to plan for sustainability, skills, fair work, and retention.
Where FMTW could potentially contribute
Over the last five years, we have built an evidence base rooted in lived experience, through our Big Freelancer Surveys and wider work to understand what freelance life in theatre actually looks like.
We are not claiming our dataset is automatically plug-and-play for a national observatory, and we are mindful that any integration would need careful standards, governance and consent. But there is a clear opportunity to explore whether freelancer evidence like ours could contribute to a more complete national picture, especially in areas like:
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Pay, precarity and income volatility
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Retention, skills pipelines and career sustainability
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Late payment and working conditions
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Barriers to access and progression
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How “growth” feels on the ground for freelancers and micro-businesses
In the session, there was also a strong emphasis on qualitative evidence sitting alongside quantitative data, because numbers alone cannot explain change or tell the real story of culture’s impact.
That aligns closely with how FMTW works, combining data with testimony, context and practical recommendations.
What happens next
The NCDO says it completed its blueprint phase at the end of 2025 and is now moving into an implementation phase, focused on securing the resources to turn the blueprint into practical tools and services, including access to demonstrators to show how this can work in real settings.
There are clear calls for organisations to get involved by sharing experiences of data challenges, collaborating on research, signing the manifesto, and joining the community shaping what comes next.
We plan to stay close to this work, and to advocate for freelancer visibility as part of the infrastructure, not as an optional add-on.