Good practices for schema:performer

[fjjulien]

What are good practices that Artsdata should recommend regarding the schema:performer property?

Issue

Based on Artsdata’s experience delivering data literacy services to performing arts organizations, cultural workers are reluctant to populate the schema:Performer value, because their time is limited and populating this property is more time-consuming than, say, schema:location or schema:organizer. With schema:location and schema:organizer, they have a limited number of values to choose from and they can ask their developer to program a drop-down list to choose from. With schema:performer, there’s hardly ever a predefined list to choose from and making a decision on what value(s) to populate can require some analysis and judgement. Cultural workers can be at times hesitant about what value to populate under the schema:performer property. If it’s a comedy show with a single performer on stage, that’s a no brainer. If it’s a dance production, it’s more tricky: should the value be the production company? The choreographer? The performer(s) on stage? All of the above?

Solution

Artsdata would like to elaborate a set of guidelines that would address these questions and that would encourage more cultural workers to make use of the schema:performer property.

These guidelines should be relevant and applicable both for cultural workers who manually populate their event structured data, as well as to developers who build applications to support event data population.

These guidelines should be accompanied with one or more proposed modelling strategies to serve promotional use cases as well as other use cases along the performing arts value chain.

Current Artsdata instructions for the property

Current Artsdata instructions for adr:PerformingArtsEvent entities read as follows:

en: “Enter information identifying and describing the company, group or person(s) delivering the performance. Recommended properties for the nested entity include: name, url, and sameAs (with link pointing to an ISNI, Wikidata or Artsdata URI).”

fr: “Saisissez les informations identifiant et décrivant la compagnie, le groupe ou la (les) personne(s) qui est(sont) responsable de l’exécution de la représentation. Il est possible d’ajouter plusieurs performer(s). Les propriétés recommandées pour l'entité imbriquées incluent : name, URL et sameAs (pointant vers un identifiant ISNI, Artsdata et/ou Wikidata).”

Potential guidelines and questions for discussion

Should the performer value designate:

• The main entity performing on stage?
• The main entity responsible for the artistic direction of the show (for example, the choreographer and/or the production company)?
• All individual artists performing on stage?
• The entity whose name has the most notoriety / whose name is most likely to be recognized by search engines (and consumers)?
• Consistent with how the show is described (whatever the show is named and/or described)?

Should the answer to the above question vary depending on the genre of the show?

Should the answer to the above question vary depending on the user’s ability to assign a particular schema:role to performer entities (see this discussion about the modelling of performing roles)?

[fjjulien]

evenko uses schema:Role to assign a particular contribution role to performers (see this issue).

This modelling strategy would work fine for describing a headliner, guest performers and other roles

{
    "@context": "https://schema.org/",
    "id": "someURI",
    "type": "Event",
    "additionalType": [
        "MusicEvent",
        "http://kg.artsdata.ca/resource/MusicPerformance"
        ],
    "name": "Some Rock Concert",

    <--!  startTime, endTime, location, etc. ...  -->

    "performer": [
        {
        "type": "Role",
        "roleName": "Headliner",
        "sameAs": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1571829",
            "performer": {
            "type": "PerformingGroup",
            "name": "Some Main-Act Band"
            }
        },
        {
        "type": "Role",
        "roleName": "Opening Act",
        "sameAs": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q28228",
            "performer": {
            "type": "PerformingGroup",
            "name": "Some Up-and-coming Band"
            }
        }
        ]
}

[fjjulien]

At a meeting held on February 7, 2025 to discuss this topic, members of the Artsdata team agreed on the following guidelines.

Guidelines for the schema:performer property

Scope

These guidelines are primarily designed to support promotional use cases:

• Informing search and recommendation engines about the key performer(s) associated with a given performance;
• Enabling governments and destination-marketing organizations to filter performances based on the provenance of its key performers.

These guidelines may not yield suitable data for archival purposes, where detailed cast information might be needed.

General guidelines

• The value(s) for the schema:performer property should be consistent with how the show is described on the event webpage. Consider the show’s title, subtitle (if any), and the full body text description. Make sure the value(s) coincide with the contents on the page.
• As a general rule, the value(s) should correspond to the main entity(ies) performing on stage.
• If the array of values is long, consider nesting schema:Role objects to assign distinct roles to each performer entity and to clarify which one is the main performer on stage (see the above comment).
• If the CMS or information system only allows for a single value and you are unsure which one to choose, go with the entity whose name has the most notoriety / whose name is most likely to be recognized by search engines (and consumers).

Genre-specific guidelines

Team members agreed that genre-specific guidelines are needed. Selecting the performer for a one-woman comedy show is much more straightforward than picking the performer for a contemporary dance production. These genre-specific guidelines

[fjjulien]

Here are suggested genre-specific guidelines and examples.

Guidelines for dance performances

For the performance of a dance show, the value(s) for the schema:performer property may designate:

• the dance company;
• a solo performer;
• a guest performer;
• a principal dancer (i.e. prima ballerina); and/or,
• an array of individual performers.

In doubt, the dance company is always a good option because it makes it possible data reusers to infer the origin of the show.

Guidelines for orchestral concerts

For an orchestra's concert, the value(s) for the schema:performer property may designate:

• the orchestra;
• a solo performer; and/or,
• a guest conductor.