What has been your career path to becoming Arts Council England’s first Director, Arts Technology and Innovation and what do you hope that the role will achieve?
I don’t have a traditional tech background, I worked in management consultancy supporting tech companies, and then practised intellectual property law. I moved into the sector and was the Director of Museums and Cultural Programmes at University College London, working with academics on developing 3D imaging technology and its application for museums. From this post I was seconded for 8 months to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) to support them to develop a digital strategy for the sector, culminating in the Culture is Digital report. At the end of the secondment I was thinking how great it would be to see some of this work implemented and the role at Arts Council England enabled me to realise this.
The aim of my role is to ensure the whole cultural sector has the ability to use digital technologies to create new experiences for audiences in addition to using digital platforms for distributing artistic content. I want to help the sector to take risks and innovate. My job is also to work internally within the Arts Council to help think about how we support the funding of digital work with the different types of challenges it brings.
What work have you seen in the arts and cultural sector in the use of digital and technology that particularly excites you? What do you think might be coming round the corner that arts organisations should be thinking about now?
So often we see digital portrayed as dystopian and manipulative, I’ve been really encouraged by how artists are approaching digital from a more optimist perspective, exploring how it can help us to have better relationships with the world around us. A couple of great examples I’ve seen recently are We Live in an Ocean of Air at the Saatchi Gallery, where Marshmallow Laser Feast have used Virtual Reality to incorporate our bodies into the natural world; and Riot by Karen Palmer where tech is used to give audiences the experience of having to confront police during a protest march.
Artificial Intelligence is going to have a huge impact on the sector. Artists are already using AI to create painting in the style of Old Masters and create new music. As such, it will both allow people to be more creative and allow us to ‘capture’ our creativity and automatically reproduce it.
How do you think technology can be harnessed to better connect with our donors and supporters in terms of fundraising?
We have access to so much information about the people who engage with our organisations and we can harness this to support building more of an understanding of their behaviour, motivations, attitudes and habits. Simple things like integrating data from different areas of the organisation (box office, fundraising, café) can help to build a picture and develop more tailored approaches. The ability to visualize data for staff and stakeholders is key. Providing donors with as much real time data on the impact of their contributions is really important.
What do you think the future holds for arts fundraising and digital developments? What sorts of areas should organisations try to engage with to better develop their income generating potential?
Contactless donation points are a really simple way of organisations keeping up with an increasingly cashless society. I know a gallery which embeds contactless donation points into their labels, offering visitors the opportunity to contribute to the preservation of a particular artwork. A few years ago, Comic Relief put big red noses with contactless donation points onto bus shelters. It is about engaging with your audiences in fun ways and expanding the opportunities people have to support you.
Arts Council England recently piloted a matched crowdfunding scheme with NESTA . It tested the theory that matched funds generate better results and there were some interesting experiments around the mechanics of the campaigns – with some schemes offering £1 for £1 matching and others in which match funding was unlocked once individual donors totalled a certain amount.
What are the biggest challenges for arts and cultural organisations to engage with digital and how might we support them to develop their practice?
All organisations need to move away from thinking about digital in isolation. Digital is not an end of itself, but a tool that can be used to support an organisation in many different ways. Organisations need to understand how digital tools will help advance their core mission and strategy and focus on developing their skills and capabilities in those areas. Funding can be a challenge, but I would encourage organisations to prototype, thinking about what it is they want to test and how they can do that in a cost-effective way. Look beyond your patch and think how you can adapt existing tech to suit our sector and our values.
In Autumn 2019 we’ll be launching our Digital Maturity Index, an online tool allowing organisations to benchmark and improve their capabilities across a number of different functional areas including fundraising. Our Tech Champions are now embedded across the country and can offer bespoke support for Photography by Stephen Pelling. your work. Within our next 10-year strategy we’re looking at how we can provide platforms to experiment with digital, give organisations opportunities to partner and collaborate with tech companies and create space for innovation.
