Speaker

Sarah Lutman amplified

What’s fear got to do with it?

In 2014 the Wyncote Foundation commissioned Lutman & Associates to research digital adoption by legacy cultural institutions. The resulting study, Like, Link, Share: How cultural institutions are embracing digital technology, showcases the awesome creative work of 40 cultural organizations and shares common themes and lessons learned among these leading practitioners.

When I spoke about the report at conferences and meetings, arts leaders’ responses were frequently that they knew they “should be” engaging digitally, but they feel overwhelmed about beginning. Surprisingly, the most frequent response from arts leaders was not excitement, but instead fear. Fear of missing out. Fear of getting started. Fear of not knowing what to do after beginning. Fear of making mistakes. Fear of not having enough time or money. Fear of incompetence. Fear of adding more stuff to do on top of already busy jobs.

We were intrigued by the intensity and consistency of this reaction and wanted to provide support. As a result, discussions with Wyncote led them to commission Wayfinding and Wandering: Navigating the Digital Engagement Landscape, or Wanderway, for short.

Launching this week, Wanderway is a free online course in seven parts, designed to walk users through the necessary steps toward creative and sustainable digital engagement. The goals of the course are to provide encouragement, build confidence, and offer useful tools and know-how so that arts organizations, artists, and creative small businesses can connect with, engage, and serve more people in the ever-evolving online environment. It is designed with the resource-strapped in mind.

Wanderway is a different kind of course.

Wanderway focuses on engagement and relationship-building. It aims to help you expand your reach and develop substantive interactions with fans, allies, and collaborators using the wide range of digital tools available today. These transformative possibilities are available to those who overcome their fear of digital technology and commit to the process of learning new tools and ways to connect.

There are plenty of courses available that provide technical knowledge and skill-building exercises, such as the Google Analytics Academy, or courses available through Coursera or Khan Academy. Many are written with the assumption of a higher level of basic knowledge and experience on the part of the user.

Also, most existing online courses target sales and marketing objectives – using digital tools to get more money, more transactions. Wanderway was created with the belief that while more contributions or ticket sales can be a by-product of digital engagement, they are not the goal. Engagement can be significantly more meaningful and have greater impact if audiences are treated as conversation partners and collaborators rather than customers and consumers.

Digital engagement as creative practice

Wanderway addresses the emotional life of digital practitioners by approaching engagement as a creative practice. In creative practice we begin, try things, learn, and start again. A beginner’s mind is a necessity and a strength, not a liability. Creative practice expects “mistakes”—they’re part of the process. Iteration is constant. It’s how we learn. And fear is something most artists and creative workers know a great deal about because it is their constant companion.

Fear doesn’t stop the creative artist. Or as poet Carolyn Forche puts it, “Courage does not mean you are not afraid; courage means a door opens and you walk through.”

So, open the door and walk through

Wanderway invites your participation. We also invite your feedback. Please check out the course, try the exercises and reflections, read the interviews, and, if you like it, share these resources with others.

Thanks to the amazing collaborators who built the course with me: Beck Tench, independent educator, writer, speaker, and practitioner, whose work explores creativity and experimentation in digital engagement; and Jessica Fiala, company member of Ragamala Dance Company, independent scholar, and colleague.

We’ve had a lot of fun packing the course with tools that are free and accessible to anyone, and getting to know the dozens of artists and organizations whose work we feel privileged to highlight.

Defining R & D in the cultural sector: why we need innovation in grantmaking strategy

As part of the research project I’m working on with the Philadelphia-based Wyncote Foundation (see previous posts), I recently had the opportunity to attend the Annual Forum for Nesta‘s Digital R & D Fund for the Arts in London. To give you the lay of the land in case you don’t already know anything about it, Nesta calls itself “an innovation charity with a mission to help people and organizations bring great ideas to life.” R D Annual ForumNesta works in partnership with other businesses, nonprofits, government agencies, and funders to increase social impact and to innovate around ways to test new ideas, new financing methods, and new ways to gather and analyze results. Through research, piloting, convening, and publishing, Nesta spreads knowledge and improves practice around innovation, approaching its work across sectors and disciplines. If you’re interested in these topics you really should scour the website and follow Nesta and its principals on social media. They’re a font of useful information about emerging practice in many different fields.

The Digital R & D Fund for the Arts is a multi-year collaboration among Nesta, the Arts Council England, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The Fund was established to help “accelerate effective innovation and experiment, bringing together researchers, technology businesses and arts organizations.” The Fund’s £7 million budget (about $11.7 million in US dollars) has been distributed via 3 two-year grant cycles with maximum awards of £125,000 ($210,000). It was created in response to the one-two punch of challenging economic conditions and the onslaught of digital technologies that together have required arts organizations “to sharpen up their thinking about how to relate to audiences, and how to develop business models that can bring more revenue.” (Check out the first year report here.)

It would be great to have something like this in the U.S. The Fund is supporting really interesting projects. (Examples: the Imperial War Museum partnering with HistoryPin to invite the public to help curate the content in its First World War paintings collection, Dance Digital‘s development of an animated learning tool to help children create dances, and Cambridge Junction‘s effort to interest youth in digital music production through the development of a customizable and codable musical instrument.) But what interests me even more is the methodology. The underlying questions being asked at the grantmaking table are not about which projects are “the best” but rather which projects ask the best questions and are best designed to deliver answers that will result in field-wide learning. Nesta is taking a crack at defining the nature of R & D as it applies to the cultural sector, using the Fund’s architecture to innovate in processes that result in learning andfailbetter632 progress. The Fund’s goals are to generate knowledge, to share knowledge efficiently, and to speed up the rate of learning not just in the individual organizations that receive support but among the broader field of practice.

Field-wide sharing and learning was the topic of the Annual Forum, held in Vinopolis, a sprawling wine emporium and conference center at Borough Market in Southwark, conveniently adjacent to one of my favorite coffee shops. About 250 people from across the U.K. gathered for the day, many with job titles like Digital Producer, Digital Communications Officer, Developer, Creative Director, Senior Innovation Consultant, or my favorite, Imagination Catalyst (@KnowNOW_KnowHow). We heard a strong panel on “What is R & D in the Arts?” along with panel presentations from funded projects, keynotes delivered from a business’ (Patrick Bradley) and then a cultural organization’s (Nick Starr) perspective, and an interesting panel on the role of data as it applies to creativity and learning. Program highlights are viewable online and Nesta promises more coverage in future editions of its on-line publication, Native.

Nesta gave me a copy of the application form for the Fund (it’s not available online because applications are closed). The Fund’s specific interests are in expanding audience reach and engagement, and in the exploration of new business models (or a combination of these two). Each applicant must collaborate with a researcher and a technology provider, and is asked to propose “investigations from which the wider arts sector might learn.” Applicants incorporate a plan for the action research methods — created with the third-party research collaborator — that can capture lessons from their proposed experiments. This supports the Fund’s overarching goal to “extract lessons and transferable insights to contribute to a growing body of evidence and data on digital innovation in the arts.” The quality of the team — organization, researchers, technologists — and the clarity and importance of the question being asked, are determining factors in funding.

Nesta’s R & D orientation is different from the logic model-driven funding approach so pervasive among U.S. funders. The differences are more than semantic. Logic models detail intended inputs, outputs, and impacts, and are oriented toward planning, delivery, and evaluation. Logic models ask us to demonstrate the causal relationships between what we do (inputs) and what will happen (outputs and impacts). Logic models say, “If we do x, then y will happen.”

What Nesta has designed is a process based on “trying and learning.” It is iterative, modeling a creative process. Their model requires the development and clarification of an important question, one worth asking, and one for which the answer or answers are not known. In their model, the planning rigor is around the quality of the question and in how it will be investigated.  Their inquiry asks, “If we do x, what will happen?” The outcome is not planned, it is sought.

Perhaps I’m out of touch and if that’s the case, please, pile on the examples! But I don’t remember ever being asked by a funder, “What idea are you testing?” and “What data, evidence, and research findings can your project deliver?” and “How is this learning beneficial to the wider arts sector?” Einstein quote

Shouldn’t this methodology be added to the ideas and instruments grantmakers deploy in their program architecture? Certainly, we need operating support grants, capitalization grants, and support for major projects and initiatives, all funding mechanisms represented in contemporary grantmaking. But what would it look like if we also had specific support for R & D in separate programs whose purpose lies in the testing, documenting, learning, sharing, and iterating of new ideas?In thinking about anything at all comparable in U.S. private sector arts grantmaking, what comes to mind are the reports and publications about what the grantmakers are learning, not so much about what the grantees are learning.

In an environment in which the purpose of a grant is to learn, organizations have full permission to innovate, to fail, and to iterate. When the knowledge gained is shared, other organizations have access to data and results, and they’re encouraged to adopt and use tools and practices that work. Some of the Digital R & D Fund projects have been major flops, with audiences, or technically, or otherwise. And some are delivering very promising results. All learning is welcomed.

At a time when it seems especially important for cultural organizations to be able to try new things and iterate, Nesta’s approach is both sophisticated and refreshing. I’d love to see R & D approaches modeled locally, regionally, or nationally. What is stopping U.S. grantmakers from building similar efforts in our country?

Be the orchestra: thinking far beyond putting concerts online

Recently I went on an excursion with staff from Philharmonia UK, the London orchestra founded in 1945.  The Philharmonia was then in week twelve of its thirteen-week iOrchestra project that engaged residents of rural south-west England in large-scale digital installations created to encourage exploration of orchestral music in very new ways. The installations travelled in three regions, and in each of them, the Philharmonia also scheduled a free live orchestral concert. In the months preceding, Philharmonia sought out local music, education and civic leaders and organizations as collaborators. iOrchestra’s goals are not only to provide deep arts experiences in local communities, but also to help strengthen local networks of people engaged in community-building through music.

The installations themselves were customized specifically for this summer’s project. MusicLab is cleverly built into a shipping container and outfitted with hands-on learning activitiemusiclab1.s for participants of all ages (mainly focusing on school groups and families with children). MusicLab’s multiple activity stations offer participants the experiences of composer, performer, producer, and conductor. Visitors can record themselves singing tunes of increasing complexity, try one of four instruments while being coached through video exercises featuring Philharmonia players, watch and listen to video segments of films featuring orchestral music, and work in teams to create layered soundscapes based on samples of all the notes that specific orchestral instruments can produce.

The day I visited MusicLab it sat on the edge of a very green park in Bodwin, Cornwall (population 14,700) and was full of a class of 30-odd boisterous elementary school children. They didn’t need help figuring out what the Lab elements were for, diving in to try everything with the energy children bring to new toys. Philharmonia education staff were ready to help if needed, and when the hour-long visit ended they led the group in a conversation about what was learned. Participants each got a location-sensitive badge to use when they returned; the badge gives information about how to log into the iOrchestra website to register and engage further. Those who register are eligible for prizes for further music experiences, and of course the data provided is helpful to the Philharmonia’s staff as they learn how participants use the digital tools and experiences. Many children come back multiple times after an initial school visit.

The Lab is relocated every week or two, pulled by a semi-rig to a new village. While parked it’s open six days per week; admission is free. Philharmonia prepares for the Lab’s visits through outreach to community organizations, schools, and through traditional media, informed by a detailed audience engagement plan (it weighs in at over 100 pages). It’s well worth mentioning that all the Lab’s interfaces, exercises, and graphic elements are elegant, open-ended, and self-explanatory platforms for exploration and learning.

Later that afternoon we traveled to Truro, a drive of about 30 minutes. Truro is a larger town. It’s the main shopping destination for Cornwall, and is home to a 19th century cathedral and charming downtown area where Cornish pasties, fish and chips, and fresh local ice cream are serious temptations. Smack in the middle of the town square Philharmonia had erected an enormous shapely tent and within it located a creation called “re-rite,” a media installation based on a video-captured studio performance of The Rite of Spring.

To describe re-rite is challenging.  It’s Philharmonia’s effort to help visitors “be the orchestra” – to step inside the orchestra as it is performing and experience the orchestra as the musicians do, physically and viscerally. Philharmonia calls it “a huge walk-through digital experience,” and “a musical journey.”

photo (9)Picture this. The white tent’s outer skin is taut and within it is a maze of large “rooms” separated by porous cloth “walls” that also are projection surfaces. It’s dark inside – blacked out. Each room is dedicated to a different instrument or instrument family – seven monitors and twenty separate projections in total. There are speakers everywhere.

Once the installation is activated, the orchestra tunes up and the performance begins.  Philharmonia players of each instrument family appear before you, projected larger-than-life within the distinct rooms. Wandering around the rooms, you can hear the entire orchestra, but the instruments you’re nearest are also the loudest, as though you are seated with that section. In front of each instrument family there’s a music stand (with light stands of course), several chairs, and the score for that instrument. Visitors can sit and listen, but also are encouraged to follow along with the score or even to bring their own instruments and play along (which people do). You also can don the tails set out next to the conductor’s podium and score, and conduct along with Esa Pekka Salonen, while watching yourself live on camera.

Visitors also can watch the performance on two video monitors while listening through headphones, each with a talk track. In one, musicians comment in real time about what it is like to play the piece. “Just think of running 100 yards as hard as you can, and while you’re still short of breath, holding a teacup – that’s what this passage is like,” says one. “We follow Andy here,” says another. “We watch Andy and then we play. That’s what I’m doing.” In the other video, Esa Pekka Salonen offers his own talk track, describing what he is thinking and feeling while conducting the piece. “When I think of my conducting since I started more than 30 years ago, the trajectory has been really simple: I do less and less. It’s one of the problems with being a young conductor. You don’t really trust the players because you don’t quite trust yourself so you’re conducting too much,” he says at one point when his movements are constrained and much is being accomplished through eye contact.

photo (10)The installation is as beautiful as it is absorbing, and in the best possible way – you don’t notice time passing. Once the piece is over, the loop begins again. The orchestra tunes, and they’re off and running. In Truro, re-rite ran on continuous loop many hours per day, open and free to the public

I was there for the Truro opening when Loic Rich, the town’s mayor, said this about the experience. “The Rite of Spring’s pagan orientation resonates here in Cornwall and as I saw the images, heard the music, and walked through the tent it reminded me of Stonehenge or Avebury. It seems so appropriately connected to our landscape.” Moragh Brooksbank, of the Arts Council England South West spoke next. “This project is dazzling in its scope and scale. We have an international orchestra working at the most local level. This exemplifies our goal of great art for everyone and shows how we can use digital to spread a love of the arts.” The Philharmonia offered free shuttle service in the region so people who needed transportation could experience re-rite.

I’ll be writing more about the Philharmonia’s adventurous media efforts, how they’re imagined, structured, funded, and sustained. But in the meantime, check out the iOrchestra project on-line, follow the project @iOrchestraUK and if you can, go to a future installation and be the orchestra.

Congratulations to Esa Pekka Salonen and the musicians of the Philharmonia for this intriguing work, and for their eagerness to create it. Can we experience these installations stateside soon, please?

 

 

 

New digital culture report from Media Impact Funders

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Late last week Media Impact Funders (MIF) released a report I helped create titled Molto + Media; Digital Culture Funding.  The report consists of data MIF commissioned from the Foundation Center documenting private sector giving to cultural organizations in the U.S. for media purposes, and nine profiles of organizations doing exemplary digital media work.

It’s great that media funders are exploring the increasingly blurred line that once divided media and cultural organizations. In prior generations, cultural organizations needed “the media” to write about, broadcast, and serve as vehicles for advertising and marketing their work. Today, artists and cultural organizations can do all these things themselves. We’re probably at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the unleashing the potential of cultural organizations to use media capabilities. Media Impact Funders is out to convince other grantmakers to learn more about why they should help.

The report’s good news is that private sector giving to digital culture is already increasing. Media grant spending to cultural institutions increased from $18.9 million in 2009 to $26.7 million in 2011, and the number of grants increased from just below 150 to more than 200 over the same time period. Museums received the largest share of digital media grants to cultural organizations, and orchestras the smallest.

One of my roles in the report was to help identify and profile the nine organizations featured. That gave me the opportunity to interview people involved in building digital media capabilities, and to learn about their challenges and results.  In choosing the organizations to profile, we asked for nominations from leading funders and also did our own research. We chose organizations that had big budgets and much smaller ones, and that represented a range of geographies and arts disciplines. We also wanted to profile multi-million dollar efforts and ones that are very low cost. We were not trying to be comprehensive or even representative. But we are trying to start a larger conversation about what private sector funders are doing in cultural media and whether it’s enough.

Themes emerged that were common to the otherwise disparate group of organizations.

  • Sharing is a defining element of media today. But securing rights to share completed and in-progress works of art, whether performances, visual artworks, or text, can be cumbersome and expensive.
  • U.S. arts groups lag global colleagues from countries and regions, like the E.U., that have prioritized and deeply funded open content projects.
  • Opening up curatorial and production processes can be challenging to curators, directors, and producers whose role in organizations has been authoritative, not facilitative. Public interaction around content creation and curation challenges traditional definitions of these “expert” roles in organizations.
  • Artists are using interactive tools in resourceful and inventive new ways, directly engaging with people, and bypassing traditional channels of marketing, distribution, and fund-raising. This in turn is challenging the roles that organizations once served in these realms.

What’s compelling about the work? Old notions of cultural production and distribution are being transformed by easy access to digital platforms for public engagement — and people’s compelling urge to share what they “like.”  Right in their pockets, hundreds of millions of people carry the tools to design, record, compose, draw, film, photograph, listen, curate, edit, critique, and share.  Creative organizations and individual artists can build capabilities that foster reciprocal relationships, stimulating creativity and building an engaged community of “fans.” Cultural institutions are gaining a broader public purpose, as platforms for this engagement. Art wins because more people are making it, sharing it, and talking about it.

MIF showcased the new report at a gathering for grantmakers and cultural organizations at the Curtis Institute of Music on Saturday night. Beyond Curtis, whose first attempts at on-line course offerings have drawn nearly 50,000 enrollees, the groups profiled are the Children’s Theater Company (Minneapolis),  Fractured Atlas, The J. Paul Getty Trust, On The Boards, Opera Philadelphia, Sundance Institute, Trey McIntyre Project, and WQXR.  I hope you will take the time to read about their work and share your thoughts.

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