The sections being live streamed are two hours of the rehearsal in the afternoon, 2pm – 4pm, and the evening performance and discussion which will start at 7.30pm and end by 9pm. There will be an attached moderated chat room, linked twitter etc., and you can view it all through the website for Stellar Quines’ next show ANA. Do join them online or in person!

HiBROW.tv has launched, with over 9 hours of High Definition (HD) arts content, filmed by documentary and film maker Don Boyd, curated by culture sector professionals. The website aims to become a social network (using the power of ning) for people who love a quality, high-brow cultural experience – for a certain clientele, the “high art” demographic, a brilliant website that aims to programme 7 hours of fresh content per month from all over the world.

Digital 2012, the national conference for the creative and digital industries in Scotland is about to launch its registrations. Co-produced by Interactive Scotland and Rudman Consulting programme AmbITion Scotland, Hannah Rudman will be opening the conference on 29th March at an evening networking party at the SECC before the conference commences on 30th March, also at SECC.

Nesta Scotland have launched their Digital R&D Fund this week – part of the digital programme of support for Scotland, alongside AmbITion Scotland (and Sync) – if you’re a Scottish arts, cultural, creative, media or digital company, this call for proposals is worth checking out.

Literature

Between 2008 and 2010, total revenues and sale units grew for the publishing industry as a whole, while e-book revenue for trade publishers increased by 1274% year on year. And the data does not even account for the e-book sales surge in 2011, and the falling price of e-book readers. But what about a more interactive digital experience of literature than just reading a digital text?

The Heart & the Bottle, an interactive children’s story for the iPad – see the right hand window.

The Waste Land iPad app – the full published text by T.S. Elliot; audio performances by many famous voices, including T.S. Elliot himself; a visual performance by Fiona Shaw; commentaries; notes; etc. If only I was doing my A Levels now!

And what of art organisations focussed on literature? Edinburgh International Book Festival’s mobile site was a great 2011 development, and their listings are available (via the Festivals Edinburgh API http://api.festivalslab.com) too. Watch the case study:

Expect to see more transmedia pieces like Dreams of Your Life – Hide & Seek’s latest online story – an experience that supports the cinema Carol Morley’s extraordinary documentary, Dreams Of A Life.

Performing Arts

This year saw the most adventurous digital experiment come from National Theatre Scotland, co-produced by me as Envirodigital – watch the case study here – http://www.fiveminutetheatre.com An entire day was filled with five minute pieces of theatre webcast back-to- back online to the world. 24 hours was also filled with a continuous, 24 hour long show created by the Scottish people for a global audience of everyone, that was only available to experience online. For more on this crowdsourced project, check out the AmbITion webinar case study, link above. The project received critical acclaim and is being heralded as best practice for the live online experience of theatre.

Hide & Seek and The Royal Opera House’s Show Must Go On app

has the player assuming the role of a stage manager at a variety of different productions.  Produced in collaboration with The Royal Opera House, The Show Must Go On is a game that puts the player in the shoes of an intrepid stage manager struck down by a terrible case of bad luck! Split into five mini-games, the player is required to retrieve the sheet music, assemble props, build the set, light the show and dress the chorus; with just moments to go until curtain up. This app is a fun and easy introduction to four famous shows.  The ROH has got its head round its content being presented playfully!

Android-theatre: “Sayonara” is a show starring an actor, and an android actor, created by Hiroshi Ishiguru, the roboticist, whose work explores humanity. Can you tell which is the droid from the trailer?!

Visual arts

A new generation of artists and designers reimagine the masterpiece, using technology to create new visual experiences.Currently exhibiting in London you can also explore all the artists and final works at the Remastered online hub.

Art Finder http://www.artfinder.com/ brings social media to art, as well as the fabulous tool of on the spot identification. Point your phone at an artwork, and ArtFinder will identify it, along with contextual information about the work, the artist and their contemporaries.

The Walker Art Centre have repositioned themselves via their website as Content Channel.

Check out the augmented reality powered Virtual Public Art Project – the current works are on display on VPAP’s website

In March, the launch of Google Art Project set a new standard for the online art world.

Paddle8 emerged as a new destination for examining, understanding, and acquiring unique artworks.

Music

Only Björk could have conjured a heady mix of sound and science as she released her new album Biophilia as a series of 10 iPad apps .

Classical TV.com is the best populated site for US performing arts online: Opera, Ballet, Jazz, Dance, Musical Concerts and Theater (sic . If its “classical” and you want to find it, come here.

The Columbus Symphony Orchestra introduced a device called the ‘Concert Companion’ which enabled patrons to read something about the piece they were hearing as they listened to the concert.

The Virtual Orchestra Project’s Youtube Channel continues to produce performances of work crowdsourced from individual musicians all over the world.

Social Media, marketing and audience development

Its become easy to get real value from Social Media Analytics, and possible to get lead generation through tools such as awe.sm, and the UK’s so dash

Following on from blog based WYSIWYG content management system interfaces, its now extremely easy for any one to create a website – wix.com & about.me are great tools for the web-technologically challenged!

Tweetseats have been trialled by The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and in another city in the US, the lights dim, the orchestra tunes and the audience is told to “please turn off your cell­phones.”Except in the “Tweet­Seats” at Cincinnati Sympho­ny Orchestra concerts in Mu­sic Hall. That’s where iPhones, Blackberries and tablets light up and concert­goers start tweeting live along …

Google+ has enabled the organization of groups of people with video chats and content creation for the groups possible. Location based technologies like QR codes have also seen a rise in use in 2011.

Fundraising/support development
Our crowds are officially in the cloud! Crowdsourcing has become mainstream in 2011. Arts and cultural organisations have crowdsourced creativity – see the fivemintheatre.com note above, and of course many museums have crowdsourced curation of exhibitions.

We’ve also been crowdsourcing cash – Angelshares Scotland is another new realisation of crowd funding technology has emerged on the cultural scene. This tool is about fundraising but its also explicitly about reciprocity as well as engagement and participation:- giving rights and digital rewards to a small group of people who are likely to invest in and then shout loudly on their own digital networks about what they get receive/experience, and who are engaged enough to want to contribute to the development of a show, perhaps artistically, definitely in terms of audience development. Differentiators from other patforms that makes this particularly attractive to the arts – Gift Aid can be added to pledges, and you can redeem your campaign even if  target isn’t reached. Watch the case study: Don’t forget that your performance on Google serch rankings influences the 20-35 age group, who will go to Google to get information about your cause (see The Case Foundation presents “Millennial Donors Report 2011,” a survey and summary of the motivations and preferences of the Millennials when it comes to making a donation).

And we’re crowdourcing capacity! The Washington Post mentions how the Dead Sea Scrolls project by Google opens the door for “amateur detectives to seek clues that elude scholarly academics.” Additionally, this large and growing list of volunteer management software is used to greater effect as more and more arts organisations make the most of the goodwill towards them in relation to people’s times.

Ticket Sales

Tessitura built a smart phone app to achieve sales through mobile devices mobile called Cloudtix.

2011 saw Dynamic Pricing upsurge in take up – this website is a great resource for anyone thinking about pricing: http://www.thinkaboutpricing.com/

Facebook pages can also now sell tickets through Ticketforce’s app, which helps you achieve sales through social media channels.

Other channels for distributing and monetising digital content

The general public’s change in media consumption means that we’ve seen many more arts organisations streaming performances live, whether to ballparks or online via services like Livestream.com

Ofcom earmarked locations for the UK’s local channels pilot – if you’re in one of the 22 cities and are an arts and cultural organisation, get thinking about what content you have appropriate for that opportunity.

Digital programmes/projects for arts and culture
Specific digital development programmes and projects that assist the arts and cultural sector to make the most of digital opportunities have made an impact on the landscape this year.
AmbITion Scotland (http://getambition.com) has been enabling holistic digital development across artistic, operational and business model practices since 2007 and continues in Scotland until 2014. AmbITion provides funding opportunities and brokerage (for digital content experiments, kit and software, specialist consultancy), on and offline training and learning events, and an online network of professionals seeking to collaborate and exchange knowledge.

Technology in the Arts – a brilliant information service from the US’s Carnegie Mellon University – thanks to them being content partners of AmbITion, we’ve been able to share their work in the UK.

Culture Hack Day Culture Hack is a movement inspired by the hacker ethos of doing things in the simplest way possible with the maximum effect. Culture Hack enables technology, creative and cultural sectors to try new things out in the short space of time, creating experimental products and ideas away from day-to-day business pressures and agendas.

NESTA’s digital R&D fund competition – 8 projects emerging from the Digital Research & Development Fund for Arts and Culture is a partnership between the Arts Council England, Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and NESTA to support arts and cultural organisations across England – watch out for news of a Scottish fund in early 2012!

Festivalslab & and Culture Hack Scotland have been working on opening up the data of arts and cultural organisations, bringing them and the data into contact with geeks, hackers, techies and digital media companies to enable crowdsourced and collaborative innovation in 2011. More of that in 2012 too!

The Space – a pop up digital channel by ACE and the BBC to coincide with the Cultural Olympiad, The Space will host the best digitised “traditional” content, and newly imagined hybrid digitised work.

All in all a fascinating 2011: some of these digital developments increase reach, scale, impact, access to work creating massive opportunity; some create new economic models for better sustainability; some challenge our traditional notions of participation with an artistic experience or piece of work. Conventions and practices which are socially embedded rituals are being impacted, our perceptions of proximity and intimacy are being altered and our organisations are in need of capacity, capability, and confidence.

Please highlight your favourite digital developments from the arts and cultural sector to me by leaving a comment below. And so to 2012!

In a country with a deficit as bad as it was in 1945 after Britain had endured six years of world war, it is not surprising that innovation is seen as an essential component of helping Britain regain economic stability and achieve growth. Government and its arms-length agencies are investing heavily in innovation, hoping to unleash radical, transformatory creations. The nation’s universities are incentivised to innovate jointly with private and publicly funded businesses. NESTA’s research and development programmes further catalyse the notion of knowledge exchange for innovation. Innovation Lab and Culture Hack activities are increasing, opening up possibilities and encouraging cross-sector collaboration. Discovering the new, radical and transformatory is the focus of funding which is underwriting the risk of the research and development. Developing collaborative relationships that enable nascent products to become economically viable is another purpose of current innovation investment. The innovation-specific investments available for the creative and cultural sector are explicitly for stimulating radical innovations (defined as bleeding-edge nascent products and processes that the world needs – or does not know it yet needs).

The creative and cultural sectors contain many organisations and individuals whose cognitive and imaginative capability to create the new, radical and transformatory is immense, so the investment appears on the surface to be well directed. However, the cultural sector specifically is further behind the curve in terms of their preparedness to embrace the opportunities of digital innovation than are organisations in the science, health, technology and biotechnology sectors. Funding for radical innovation is only relevant to organisations that are already skilled at innovating and who are ready for cross-sector collaborating. In the cultural sector in the UK, this is a relatively small percentage of cultural organisations, usually those who you would expect to be further ahead, because they’re bigger and have more leverage.

Many current products, processes and business models were designed during the industrial economy, and a large proportion of the cultural sector is still operating with the legacies of the nineteenth century industrial era. What the cultural sector needs now is additional innovation support to incentivise not just the creation of brand new products, processes and businesses, but also improvements to current products, processes and business models to make them progressively more suited to the digitised knowledge economy of the twenty-first century. Confidence, capacity and capability all need to be built, and organisations need to recreate product and services to be fit and relevant for doing business and making art now. But funds for this type of organisational development have dwindled. I celebrate the funding for radical and open innovation, but investment must not be diverted to innovation funds that only support radical innovations, at the expense of organisational development that might support a larger percentage of our industry. Innovation has to be for everyone. Successful radical innovations demand a sector-wide grounding in creative intrapreneurship – entrepreneurship within an organisation – and incremental innovation. It is that broader landscape of a collective mindset understanding the opportunities, aspiration and excitement of a radical innovation that creates a ripe environment for it to happen.

What we now need is a more nuanced understanding of the different types of innovation, and we need to offer support for all types:

• Incremental innovation uses existing forms or technologies as a starting point. It either makes incremental improvements to something or it reconfigures it so that it may serve some other purpose. For example, North Uist’s museum and arts centre Taigh Chearsabhagh worked to develop its social media and website presence by building in-house digital skills capacity. This has enabled them to become more open and dialogue-focused online, which has resulted in new conversations with new global audiences.

• Process innovation is when a process or service is improved, and this creates the opportunity to innovate a new development. For example, Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre improved its online box office system to become a fully functioning Customer Relationship Management system that now enables all sorts of possibilities for different communications and services for customers. The capability built up in the team through this development has resulted in them having the confidence to experiment with QR Codes – a matrix barcode that mobile phones can use to link a user to content.

• Regulated innovation is when the aims are fixed, rather than open. Innovations happen because a regulation – to follow a methodology – is imposed. For example, AmbITion encourages organisations to develop a holistic digital strategy following a specified methodology.

In Scotland, an understanding of these different types of innovation is growing. Digital organisational development programmes like AmbITion are supported by Creative Scotland to work together with NESTA Scotland’s digital research and development programme and Culture Hack Scotland’s radical innovation programme. Thus we ensure that we work cross-sector, together with the digital technology and interactive industries through events like Digital 2011. This mixed ecology of development opportunities, delivered by distinct programmes that work hard to join up opportunities for the participant organisations, ensures a healthy landscape for all forms of innovation. This can only strengthen the creative and cultural sector’s economy, audiences and art.

This article first appeared in Arts Professional, Issue 246.

“We have developed partnerships with NESTA, and Culture Hack Scotland, and will launch an integrated, comprehensive programme of support for digital development early in 2012. This will address the spectrum of needs of organisations at varying stages of development in terms of digital capacity, knowledge, and skills. The programme will:

· Support capacity building around skills, infrastructure, and knowledge in adopting digital technologies

· Address and reflect the further digital technology development needs of organisations with the capacity and interest to innovate and significantly enhance organisational sustainability through further integration of sophisticated digital technology

· Support the further organisational sustainability of those exploring progressive business models, or at a more advanced stage of developing creative content*

*note: support for the development of creative content is available through other Creative Scotland Investment Programmes including the Innovation Fund which will open again in April 2012 (this also sits within the Cultural Economy Programme and aims to ‘invest in distinctive and engaging digital interactive media content’).
”

Watch out for more news in the new year!

St Kilda Remothe Access centre
St. Kilda has dual UNESCO World Heritage Site status, but is geographically really tricky to get to (66km E of the rest of the Outer Hebrides in the Atlantic Ocean). Encouraging large visitor numbers is neither feasible or desireable, so The St Kilda World Heritage Site Remote Access Centre will be built nr Uig on Lewis, where St Kilda can be viewed on days with favourable conditions! Digital technologies will be key to the Centre achieving its aims. New Media Scotland’s current exhibition at Inspace #Beholder interprets the experience of St Kilda using various new tecnologies, exploring the possibilities of digital technologies to achieve this. A new smartphone app is also being created.

The Scottish Ten
The Scottish Ten (a groundbreaking international 3D scanning project to digitally document Scotland’s five World Heritage Sites and five international ones) team are travelling to China next week to sign contracts with the Chinese government to enable the project to document the Eastern Qing Tombs. Check out the fabulous resources available already: created from using cutting edge technology to create access to and records of places of significant cultural interest. The project proves for me that quality 3D experiences can give better access to some elements of a unique site than can be provided in real life (want to fly over the rooves of the houses of St Kilda to take a look at the roofing? You can with this resource, you couldn’t without a helicopter on St Kilda!) The project is led by ‘The Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation LLP’ – a new collaborative organisation set up by Historic Scotland, Glasgow School of Art and CyArk, so investment in building those relationships cross-discipline and sector really adding value to this project.

Now eighteen months old, Museums & Galleries Scotland Remembering Scotland At War’s Online Museum and social network is now well populated and active.
Remembering Scotland At War is a fantastic opportunity to ensure that the memories of war are never forgotten. At the core of Remembering Scotland At War is the creation of over 200 online exhibitions focussed on the themes of World War II and subsequent conflicts. It is both a pioneering online museum and a social network particularly aimed at ‘capturing memories’. It has been developed by Museums Galleries Scotland to showcase and encourage personal accounts from civilians, younger and older veterans, and currently serving military of how conflict has affected them. The fascinating exhibitions provide an insight into the incidents, locations, people and themes of war. Each rich media exhibition has a collection of associated items, including oral histories, diary extracts, newspaper articles, old photographs, archive film, documents, paintings, and photographed objects.

British Newspaper Archive
The next few days sees the online launch of a fabulous data archive owned by the British Library – more than 1 million pages of pre-1900 newspapers will be available at launch, building to 4 million digitised pages over the next 2 years at Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (the data is hosted in Scotland!). A brilliant way to increase access to a great treasure trove of material that previously needed the microfiche machines locked in libraries to read!

Funding Scotland and Angel Shares Scotland
Although not content projects, these new sites will be essential to ensuring the future of digital cultural content projects A couple of great new Scottish websites to help with fundraising have emerged too – fundingscotland.com provides grants and funding information and opportunities for charities, community groups and businesses around Scotland. Angelshares have launched a Scotland specific website, providing a crowdfunding platform for arts and cultural organisations with a difference – the website enables gift aid donations to be included, and lets projects collect the funds raised even when a target hasn’t been completely reached.

In total during Five Minute Theatre, a twitter trend was created (#fiveminutetheatre was the top trend in Glasgow on the day) and there were over 6000 hours of theatre viewed online. To put that into context: NTS’s July touring production, Knives in Hens is 1.5 hour viewer hours. 6000 viewer hours online is therefore equivalent to 4000 people watching  a one and a half hr production (that’s equivalent to  around a sold-out 2 1/2 week run at a venue like The Traverse – a midscale scale venue).

I talked to the international delegates about how to engage audiences internationally, but responsibly (in relation to protecting the environment) Watch the content from the day on demand here!

It was fascinating to think that Ron was recording the show in California whilst Maris called in from New York, and I from Edinburgh, using Skype. All of us were live “on air”, but contributing at very different times of our own day!

The online resource website that the podcast is part of is for an Americans for the Arts programme called National Arts Marketing Project – well worth a subscribe if marketing is your focus.

Listen here!

Also in this blog: an update on the digital developments of Sadler’s Wells, Timespan Museum, Arts and Heritage Centre, and Stellar Quines theatre company.

Recently, I had the chance to hear how London dance champions Sadler’s Wells’ digital strategy was going. Kingsley Jeyasekera has had a change in title: previously Director of Marketing and Communications, he’s now Director of Communications and Digital Strategy – a subtle change that hasn’t really affected what he and his team does every day, but it’s significantly affected the way the organisation considers digital  – its now an explicit part of Sadler’s Wells’ senior management responsibilities.
Sadlerswells.com is a website doing well. With 10,000 site visits a day, 75% of their ticket sales are via online sales. Kingsley reported that multi-buy does encourage multiple booking, and that giving website users the opportunity to pick their own seat does encourage people to book online.

QR codes on marketing posters for the summer production of Fela distributed around London and beyond encourages an immediate response via mobile phone – and users get rewarded with mobile optimised content, including a video of Jay-Z expressing how good the show is!
Kingsley’s team keep a close eye on their Google analytics, and track and archive the results. This tells them, for instance, interesting things like: the referrals to the their website from Facebook have increased 450% in the last 2 years. This data provides a great case for investing in further Facebook page and campaign development, and the new consideration of setting up social selling (coupons) via Facebook and possibly even direct selling via Facebook. “Facebook is social, so is theatre”, Kingsley grins!

Sadler’s Wells take time to create good quality video content – typically, any video created by them is watched 8000 times. The video content they create is all archived on their site and on their YouTube channel, where it creates lasting value – educationalists and students, touring companies and performers and dance aficionados all refer to the content later.

The 180,000 strong e-mailing list is communicated with twice a month, with a 45-50% open rate (good). Again Google analytics can tell the team what links are clicked, and they’ve noticed a pattern that a link to a video is far more likely to be clicked than a link to information.

Their approach to security and back up is as pragmatic as is their approach to Twitter. They protect themselves against server outage and other cyber-threats. With 75% sales online, the website and digital sales are business critical and must be protected. In relation to Twitter they have a simple mantra – “if it doesn’t fit with the aims of the organisation, don’t tweet it!”

Check-out Timespan’s new website: this development concludes a period of investment in Timespan’s core digital capacity (new kit, more operational activities taking place online) and digital capability (training – in how to work all the online systems and create content for the new online marketing channels). Now the fun starts: Timespan will be stepping up their own digital media creation, creating a virtual museum, and curating an artists’ online community. Great work!

Finally, take ten minutes to watch and consider theatre company Stellar Quines‘ case study video. The story tracks Stellar Quines’ learning as they try and blend capturing work digitally into their theatre making process.