Digital and Creative Media Narrative

OUR NATIONAL PORTFOLIO, 2018-22:

Digital and Creative Media Narrative

Digital technology is transforming the way that art and culture is made and shared, leading to a rapid expansion in creative media – those artistic and cultural works, experiences and content that are created for digital platforms or are distributed digitally.

The Arts Council supports digital change and innovation across the arts and cultural sector. We encourage all our National Portfolio Organisations to take a planned approach to their work with digital and creative media, and to increase the quality and amount of digital content and experiences available to audiences.

We ask them to think about: creative content, where digital media and technologies are central to the creation of new artworks and cultural experiences; about captured content, where existing works of art and culture, such as performances and museums’ collections, are captured and distributed digitally to reach wider audiences; and about cultural learning content, such as a video of a talk by a curator that is produced and circulated digitally to increase people’s knowledge about art and culture.

We want to extend the availability of art and culture through broadcasting and through online platforms, but also through the imaginative use of digital technology in specific places – from media venues and galleries, to festivals and outdoor spaces.

Over the next four years, the new National Portfolio will have more organisations that we believe will make a strong contribution in creative media; there is also more evidence of organisations of all types and sizes thinking how they can improve their digital offer.

Between 2018 and 2022, all National Portfolio Organisations that receive funding of more than £250,000 a year from the Arts Council will be required to have digital policies and plans showing how they will use digital technologies to help contribute to our goals. This will help organisations to reach more people, improve their use of data and deliver better value for our investment.

Creative media work is prominent in the experimental activities of many of our National Portfolio Organisations. We are seeing a growth in the use of digital technology to enhance live performing arts and in new kinds of interdisciplinary work that combines art, technology, science and design.

Creative media is playing an increasingly important role in plans to reach new audiences. With more emphasis on ‘capture’ and on making art and culture available online, digital distribution complements touring as a way to reach remote and underserved audiences, while offering more for those already engaged. To do so effectively, organisations need to ensure that their captured work is conceived, packaged and targeted appropriately for the audiences they want to reach. We expect that Culture UK, our new partnership with the BBC, will help support more National Portfolio Organisations to develop best practice in this area.

Digital is now an established element in the work of many organisations delivering outdoor arts activity, with organisations like Abandon Normal Devices using drones and other new technologies in the work they produce for festivals. In museums, there are examples of exciting digital practice in small as well as large organisations – in the Tank Museum and ss Great Britain, as well as in major museums in Bristol, York, and Leeds. However there is also a general sense that museums are ‘behind the curve’ when it comes to adopting digital technology.

Libraries are admitted for the first time to the National Portfolio and are showing strong ambitions around digital – particularly in relation to supporting their communities to become ‘digitally included’. There is evidence too that digital is being used more as a supportive and a creative component of organisations’ work with children and young people.

There is less evidence of organisational plans to develop digital skills or to use digital to support business models. We would like to see more emphasis too on collaborations outside the arts and culture sector, with universities and technology companies who can bring new knowledge, resources and skills. We hope to see this signalled in the digital policies and plans that National Portfolio Organisations in funding bands 2 and 3 will have to produce to secure their funding agreements.

A number of Sector SupportOrganisations will play a useful support role for digital – for example Creative Skillset, Culture 24, Collections Trust and the Audience Agency. We will encourage them to work collectively to achieve a stronger impact.

More information: artscouncil.org.uk/NPO