The background to this joint UK-US symposium was the interest, in both countries, in establishing some kind of framework for measuring ‘cultural’ activities, production and consumption. In the US the Bureau of Economic Affairs was in the process of establishing a Satellite for Cultural Indicators; in the UK there was a less focussed but broad interest in the topic, especially under the influence of thoughtful commentators like Goldsmith College’s Geoffrey Crossick. This post includes the agenda and speaker list of the event, an outline of the satellite data project by Sunil Inyegar Director, Office of Research & Analysis, of the US National Endowment for the Arts, and my own presentation, which advanced the ‘datapedia’ project for collective data curation.