This report documents the work of the Creative Informatics Creative Horizons 4: There be Dragons project. The There Be Dragons project starts from the premise that data can empower creative businesses to do more and to do it better. Data can be used for creative practice, with creative practice, and to tell us about creative practice. However, coping with data is not a simple or straightforward activity. It has to be collected, analysed, visualised, understood and communicated. There are ethical and privacy issues to consider. The project aimed to investigate and untangle some of these messy issues in order to build a representative picture of the role that data plays in the life of the creative practitioner. The work was funded under the Creative Horizon strand of the Creative Informatics project, with the goal of supporting blue sky research on the creative industries.

Creative Informatics is a partnership between The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, Creative Edinburgh and Codebase. Creative Informatics is funded by: the Creative Industries Clusters Programme managed by the Arts & Humanities Research Council as part of the Industrial Strategy; the Scottish Funding Council; and the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal Data Driven Innovation Initiative.