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Innovation is less about tech and more about developing people. Photograph: Simon Belcher/Alamy
Innovation is less about tech and more about developing people. Photograph: Simon Belcher/Alamy

Just do it: reimagining digital innovation inside the arts

This article is more than 9 years old

Don’t wait for new funding – build on what you have to better reach your audience

For arts organisations that want to survive and thrive in an evolving environment of funding cuts and rapid technological developments, the ability to navigate change is crucial. Digital innovation, not only for artistic practice, but also for organisational practice, is held out as the answer. But how can all arts organisations understand and adopt digital innovation?

By addressing a public funding gap to support research and development within cultural organisations, the now-closed Digital R&D Fund for the Arts was important. As well as supporting arts organisations to explore new forms of audience engagement and business models, it elevated their importance in the eyes of policy-makers and funders.

But there are difficulties if this funding-led approach is seen as the only way to promote digital innovation. What happens when funding dries up?

Also, innovation is not about money; it is about value. By borrowing the rhetoric of R&D used in the commercial sector, which relies on creating competitive advantage and increases in sales and profit, it defines value by focusing heavily on new product development and return on investment. While arts organisations must increasingly think commercially, how do they also innovate to enhance their public value?

An alternative definition

Digital innovation for public value isn’t just about new ways to connect with audiences; innovation can also occur through recognising and using what you already have in different ways, for example by unlocking value from your existing audience-facing online channels and content.

The recent Digital Culture study of arts organisations found that by the end of 2015, 95% will be running their own websites and 92% will be publishing content on other platforms. But does this represent public value? Only if the content published via these channels engages audiences meaningfully.

Innovation means looking at digital channels not as generic marketing outlets, but as routes to different audiences with niche interests and needs. It also means thinking about whether the content is fit for our audiences’ purposes – not our own. To do so arts organisations must shape their content to be editorially relevant, technically portable and design-sensitive.

It’s about what’s next as well. Digital innovation is about building organisational capacity to support the creation of innovative digital projects in the future.

However, capacity-building for innovation is less about changing organisational setup and technical infrastructure, and more about developing people, their confidence, skills and working practices.

The recent FuseBox24 project explored the fusion of the creative arts with technology and business in Brighton. It focussed on the methods used to bring about innovation. The solution adopted was to explore a people-centred approach that focused more on developing and understanding innovators rather than the resulting innovations.

Similarly the Digital R&D Fund-funded Uneditions project reflected on how changing people’s working practices and rhythms fostered the collaborative working conditions needed for innovation.

An alternative approach

As part of Culture24’s Let’s Get Real collaborative action research project, we supported 29 diverse arts and heritage organisations to conceive, run and track their own online content experiments – all with audience engagement and organisational learning at their heart.

The V&A explored how to cull, shape and create future content on its website based on audience need; the RSC investigated the lifecycle of online production content to maximise audience engagement; while Bristol’s Watershed experimented with creating an online community around a theme using existing social media channels.

All of these experiments were small-scale, used existing online channels and content, and adopted a people-orientated process that explored how participants could build confidence and skills, change work rhythms and promote collaboration with colleagues. They were low-cost and low-risk, yet delivered high value for participants, helping them better understand audience engagement and organisational change through small but insightful actions.

Any arts organisation can explore digital innovation in this way. All you need is a desire to engage your audiences, a curiosity to test your hunches and a willingness to learn from the process. This form of low-level innovation should not seek to replace top-down initiatives, but complement them. Any organisation that adopts these processes and an audience-focused mindset will surely be better-placed to take on more formal forms of digital innovation support in the future.

So don’t wait for funding calls or organisational shake-up to begin your digital innovation journey. Look at what you already have and build on it. You can begin anywhere; you just need to start.

Sejul Malde is research manager at Culture24

Download the Let’s Get Real Phase 3 report and find out more about Phase 4

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