Events and dates

Calendar entries without copy-paste

Strahlenförmig blendendes Licht auf einer Freiluftbühe bei Nacht, im Vordergrund Silhouetten vieler Menschen

Event information

Theater ensembles perform a piece multiple times, possibly as guest performances in different cities. Musicians tour with a program. Craft workshops offer courses and museums host thematic tours. This information about an event offering is created once and appears in all related dates. Changes can be made centrally—no more tedious "copy-paste"!

  • Header image, title + subtitle, description
  • Type (e.g. "festival", "symposium", "workshop" – freely definable)
  • Images/videos
  • Press quotes (with source and appropriate language tagging)
  • Tagging
  • Sponsor logos

Structured data (helpful for search and filtering, interfaces, etc.)

  • Participants (profiles) with their respective roles in the event
  • Organizer (profile – displayed with legal details, e.g. imprint)
  • Duration
  • Minimum age
  • Accessibility information (e.g. sign language interpretation) and trigger warnings
  • Premiere date
  • Event language(s)

 

On the event page, all upcoming dates are automatically listed.

Simply attach dates

This content is partly composed and enriched from reusable components: an event takes place at a venue (or online, or hybrid). The event description, organizer, participants, and venue can be selected via autocomplete from existing entries.

Types of dates

Dates can vary in format:

  • Single day with or without time (all-day)
  • Date range for multi-day events (start and end date can be set with or without time)
  • Recurring rules for regular events (exceptions can be defined)
  • The status of a date can be changed with one click—e.g. "cancelled" or "rescheduled"

Smart connections

Depending on the context in which a new date is entered, certain fields are pre-filled. For example: clicking "add date" in the calendar on a venue's profile automatically sets the location. Adding a date from within an event description pre-selects that event.

If a venue is not yet in the database, you can use an embedded form to enter its key details without leaving the input screen.

The smart part of this linking principle: on countless content pages, a filtered event calendar appears automatically. So on a venue's profile page, you’ll see upcoming events at that location; on a band's profile, their next dates with venues; and even on landing pages (e.g. festivals), where calendars are compiled by keyword.

And many more details possible

  • Prices/ticket information can be entered per date
  • Date-specific texts can be added and will appear before the general event description
  • Individual dates can be marked as highlights (e.g. "premiere") and visually emphasized in calendars. A collection of such special dates can also be automated, for example for a teaser block on the homepage
  • Integration with ticketing platforms is possible. At minimum, a custom link to the desired platform can be set for each date

Event series

A unique feature of OpenCulturas that we haven’t seen on any other platform: dates can easily be part of a larger program. For example, a date for the Fête de la Musique in Potsdam can be created, and artists can reference it when entering their performances. This automatically builds a "growing program" on the landing page for the Fête de la Musique in Potsdam.

Clarification of the terms “event series” versus “date instances”

We often see the term “event series” in requirements documents, which is sometimes explained in the same way we understand a date with “multiple date instances”. To avoid misunderstandings, here is a brief list of the terms as OpenCulturas uses them:

Event

General information about an offer, independent of time and place

Date

Specific information about an event taking place on at least one specific date at a specific location (or online or in a hybrid format), including the applicable prices and terms

Date series
Serial date
Repeating date

Identical with Date but with multiple date/time entries or with a repeat rule

Event series

Identical with Date in the sense of a parent date as a consequence of further dates referencing this date entry und thus generating a list of “dates in this series“

Publication date
Author
Image
German text Intuitive Bedienung: Screenshots of input forms, including a smartphone.

Modern, clutter-free input forms – also compatible with tablets and smartphones

Interfaces & data exchange

Universal export

Your platform, your data: you can decide for yourself which data to export. There's already an elaborate configuration for exporting dates as CSV (a universal exchange format compatible with countless applications). You can copy this template and fully adapt it to your own requirements. The export formats JSON and XML are also possible.

This works conveniently through a graphical interface and is easy to learn. Members of OpenCulturas e. V. are happy to give you tips for your first steps.

Branch calendars

The included (activatable) OpenCulturas Calendar Widget module allows you to provide branch calendars for selected partner websites. The overall calendar can be filtered according to specific criteria (e.g. dates in a particular municipality, at a particular address, or with defined tags).

The partner website then receives its own individual code for embedding the calendar (in an iframe). Header, footer, and parts of the teaser design are customizable.

Import

The good news: there are already several importers for OpenCulturas. For example, for importing from:

  • Open Data Germany
  • Reservix
  • Eventim

The less good news: although we helped shape the standards for the Kultur data space (Datenraum Kultur), the same applies to OpenCulturas: there is (still) no universal interface for exchange between cultural platforms. There's a proof of concept for OpenCulturas, but unfortunately we have no influence over the structure of the datasets to be imported. So it always has to be checked case by case which data needs importing and how it may need to be prepared.

Get in touch with us — we can put you in touch with professionals, including for one-off imports to populate the platform initially, for example for an image archive or a member list.

Duplicate handling

When multiple importers are used, the likelihood of importing duplicates increases. Our importer includes solutions both for proactively identifying duplicates and for matching linked content that already exists on the platform (after all, we'd rather reuse the venue that's already been lovingly enriched with images than create a plain address entry).

Kulturpass (program discontinued)

Almost simultaenously with the announcement of the Kulturpass (a German culture-voucher program for young adults) we had developed a compatible export format (the target platform required upload, there were no openly available APIs). Proven here: we can be really quick with APIs.