Retaining Students in Coventry and Boosting Cultural Growth
The Coventry Cultural Challenge was a two-day event where teams were given access to the latest Coventry cultural data and asked to develop an idea/proposal that had the potential to ‘make life better in Coventry’. At the end of the weekend, each team presented their ideas to a jury of experts.
WBS Datarian aim to provide an efficient method to retain students in Coventry, in turn boosting the cultural growth and economy.
Team WBS Datarian
Idea/Proposal
The WBS Datarian outlined things that Coventry is doing well in comparison with other cities:
- aware about environment
- low cost of living
- high happiness rate
- good cultural Infrastructure
- diverse background of students
and things that could be done better:
- increase the retention rate of students that remain in Coventry (currently ranked the fourth worst place in the United Kingdom)
- boost the number of student friendly activities
- attract industries to Coventry
- implement a more start-up friendly environment
- increase the average income
- increase disposable income.
Team Members
- Dillon Sim
- Jeongmin Son
- Jonghwan Moon
- Sonali Sachdev
- Yatharth Kher

It was a valuable time for me to work with well-experienced data analysts and to realise how real data is used for a better decision making in a real business.
Jonghwan Moon (LinkedIn post)
The Coventry Cultural Challenge was part of the AHRC funded Place-Based Knowledge Exchange project; organised by members of the UK City of Culture 2021 monitoring and evaluation team.
