welcometosync.com @synchq
5
S G T N N I TH E LEAR L A V ’ T I E W U T DI G O S B T A R A E H T &
E W
E M O C L 4·5
This publication marks the close of the first two years of Sync and its activities exploring and curating new spaces where technology and the arts can meet and make.
What do we know now that two years ago we maybe didn’t? We need to recognise the difference between supporting the existing and encouraging the new; there are not As with all great adventures, enough safe and supported we’ve seen and learnt many spaces and frameworks to take risks; the embedding important things. In these of new ways of thinking pages we’ve distilled these and doing requires real down to five key points leadership from policy to — and we’ve asked some frontline practice; that we amazing people to share avoid the human element their own thoughts on of innovation practice these subjects, too. at our peril.
Underpinning all this, we have seen that the key to great digital work is a vibrant community of people making it possible — and that it needs support. Sync is incredibly grateful to those who have shown faith in our ideas and actions, especially Creative Scotland and of course the community of people and organisations we have worked with. We hope that you have found what we’ve done in our first two years to be different, valuable, provocative and playful.
N O C
S T N E T
TALENT DEVELOPMENT // GILLIAN EASSON
8·9
FRAMING INNOVATION // BEATRICE PEMBROKE
10 · 11
SYNC SO FAR: A TIMELINE
12 · 13
LEADERSHIP & POLICY // DICK PENNY
14 · 15
RISK & FAILURE // JON ROGERS
16 · 17
DIGITAL IS A HUMAN ISSUE // HUGH WALLACE
18 · 19
CREDITS & THANKS
20 · 21
6·7
Great digital work doesn’t appear from nowhere — it needs great digital people to make it happen. And for the arts in Scotland to be at the forefront of digital creativity there needs to be a robust framework of practical support, technological guidance, and space and time for idea generation.
In short, talent needs to be developed, and that applies as much to makers and creatives as it does the producers and facilitators who are working at the interface of arts and technology. As part of this process of talent development we need to better understand and promote the work of emerging practitioners in the digital sphere, elevating their profile in the arts in Scotland.
We also need to identify and encourage the growth of digital producers — people who can work with and get the best out of creative talent — generating opportunities for talented individuals who are often trapped in noncreative roles in the arts. And if we don’t address this need? The inevitable result is a digital talent drain, as those most progressive people working in the arts look elsewhere for opportunities.
1 #
T N T E N L E A T ELOPM V E D 8·9
Gillian Easson Independent creative producer Dundee
We have exceptional talent in Scotland but our talent development support is pretty patchy and traditional. In terms of digital development, most if not all support is geared to start-up and high-growth areas only. Within the arts, it’s all around organisational and audience development.
All ecosystems need a number of different conditions — the soil needs to be nourished and big trees need to be cut back. From Amsterdam to Vancouver, Bristol to Nottingham, arts organisations are piloting innovative ways of working digitally — we need more of that in Scotland too.
The most exciting digital/arts projects in Scotland tend to happen informally in small pockets, often on the fringes and led by individuals or small groups. That’s an exciting place to be, granted, but with no overall vision, strategy or support, it’s also pretty disheartening and doesn’t help drive Scotland to be a leader in this field.
Often arts organisations and digital companies/ independents are understandably focused on running the business, so there’s not much time to spend on developing relationships with new people, on new projects with new audiences. Good solid relationships and connections to audiences are really key to developing successful arts /digital projects — we need more people working across these worlds, to blur and push the boundaries.
What needs to happen? More doing and less talking; more trialling and less fear. We also need more visibility of innovative digital/arts projects — talking about what’s working and why, but also what doesn’t work.
In Scotland the quality of artistic production is exceptional and there’s no shortage of unstoppable digital talent — young digital natives are hungry to play and more socially minded/less money motivated than other generations. It frightens me in a good way to think what this generation will be capable of in a couple of years time. But are we ready to support that talent when it’s unleashed? At the moment, I think not. :
G N I M A N R O I F T A V O N IN There are certain spaces and collectives that have created a very rich environment to try things differently. These people understand the power of the network and collaboration and are making work with the web rather than just for it. They have open processes, curiosity, hybrid business models and tend to be on the periphery of mainstream arts discourse and organisations. Beatrice Pembroke Director, Creative & Cultural Economy, British Council London
Looking at digital innovation in critical design and social innovation practice is interesting — people like James Bridle and Superflux are blurring the lines between art, design and social change. Also important are crossdisciplinary networks or spaces that wouldn’t necessarily define themselves as ‘arts’ but have cultural innovation at their core. Edgeryders is a community practising real change and using digital intelligently; Makerversity is another example and is part of a bigger movement
at Somerset House that, while not necessarily focused on digital, represents a new way of thinking about cultural institutions. Innovation is defined very differently depending on your experience and background — groundbreaking for some is a cliché for others. Aside from hiring the best people and giving them the resources they need to make whole system change (as in the Government Digital Service), it’s also important to nurture digital confidence and behaviour change. It may be a slower, iterative process but it will provide a more fertile environment to sustain and enjoy the big changes you make with the radicals. Encouraging senior and middle leadership in the arts to appreciate that this is not just about websites is more tactical than ignoring or despairing of them.
There’s still a fear of failure and hesitation to reveal how we work behind the scenes. We focus on the end product but people are also interested in process — we should see this as part of what the arts and innovation is about and acknowledge the mistakes we make along the way. To really bring innovation in, though, we need to get to the heart of who makes up the arts institutions — there’s still a massive need for diversity. Let’s celebrate the talent we have but ensure we’re also opening up and making new connections and learning from here and overseas. :
It’s the latest buzzword, but what really counts as innovation in the arts?
Often used to cover a wide spectrum of projects and ideas from the highly conservative to the genuinely progressive, the majority of so-called innovation funding available today is actually supporting organisational development. Rather than being truly innovative, it is enabling arts organisations to use digital to do what they’re already doing, just a little bit better.
The result is hardly surprising — low levels of business model innovation, in part due to the vested interests of established arts organisations. Instead, we should be funding the kind of work, projects and people that have innovation in their blood. ‘Innovation’ should mean defining future systems, rather than just propping up old ways of doing things.
Let’s support digital ideas and actions that reflect the kind of pioneering spirit that will see the arts leading the way rather than following the pack. Let’s support people with vision who want to explore new frontiers, whether in their own creative practice or in new ways of organising. Crucially, let’s recognise that sometimes the most innovative ideas disrupt, rather than prop up, the status quo.
10 · 11
2 #
First Culture Hack Scotland (CHS), hosted by Edinburgh Festivals.
Sync starts as part of Creative Scotland’s Digital Development programme. Its brief is to continue to develop the approaches tested during the Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab but with a wider remit across Scotland. The team is made up of those involved in the first Culture Hack Scotland.
First set of five Geeks-in-Residence start.
Sync Session event with senior arts leaders.
May 2011
h Marc 2012
June 2012
er Octob 2012
er Octob 2010
st Augu 2011
April 2012
st Augu 2012
mber Dece 2012
Start of Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab. Rohan Gunatillake and first Geek-inResidence Ben Werdmuller initiate Festivals API project — the biggest performing arts open data project in the world.
Several projects that started as CHS hacks are live during the summer Edinburgh Festivals, including the mobile site of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Culture Hack Scotland 2 (SyncHack) takes place over one day at Citizen M, Glasgow.
Sync curates day of CultureTech programme in Derry.
Issue 1 of SyncTank magazine, bringing together articles from the Sync website, is published.
SYNC S
Chris Sharratt joins as SyncTank site and magazine editor.
Geeks-in-Residence 2013 cohort announced.
Trilogy of Sync policy provocations published by Guardian Culture Professionals.
ry Janua 2013
June 2013
mber e t p e S 2013
mber Dece 2013
ar y Febru 2013
July 2013
mber Nove 2013
ry Janua 2014
SyncTank issue 3 is published.
Policy-maker sharing events in London & Edinburgh.
Sync give presentation at International Festivals & Events Association Europe conference, Rotterdam.
SyncTank issue 2 is published. Culture Hack Scotland 3 takes place over two days at Whisky Bond, Glasgow.
SO FAR
Sync team sharing event in Bristol.
Close of this phase of Sync.
h Marc 2014
It is too much to expect the innovators and early adopters in the digital/ arts space to also articulate the wider context — to be advocates and leaders when they don’t necessarily have an overview of the sector or even the remit.
Leadership and developing good policy is a job in itself, and at the moment the position is vacant. t an organisational level A we need people with a sectoral development brief who can make policy that is clear, ambitious, informed and measurable.
Crucial to this is the development of a more mature articulation of this space, rather than bucketing everything into ‘digital’ — a term that is becoming increasingly meaningless the more thinly it is spread.
3 #
‘Digital’ intelligence is a key part of this. In order to grow an arts sector that can lead on the digital innovation agenda, an understanding of this space is vital and should, therefore, be part of the recruitment requirements when organisations are hiring for senior positions.
P I H S R E D A LE LICY O P & 14 · 15
Public policy-making agencies in the arts are constantly torn between supporting the established arts and wanting to promote innovation — there is a tendency to stand back as something new emerges, then intervene heavily, redrawing the rules of engagement to fit the established processes. Of course public policy is behind the game, it always will be, and frankly should be. Dick Penny Managing Director, Watershed Bristol
If you support the arts properly, new technology will look after itself — the arts are by nature innovative and will use whatever tools and resources they can get their hands on to explore new ideas and experiences. Fetishising digital is just another example of the funders demonstrating that they know what they are doing and trying to lead the sector.
We should fund the people pushing the innovation and let them decide which tools are most appropriate — digital will feature heavily but so will other technologies and methodologies. It’s all about the human interface and experience, that’s where the sustainable value lies. We can’t expect digital to always be a proxy for innovation. Is the work relevant? Is it engaging people? Is it creating new value? These are much more interesting questions than is it digital? If you are in the middle of exciting stuff you are not too bothered if it’s visual arts or theatre or combined arts or digital — just, is it good, is it engaging? Am I excited? Are other people excited?
Policy should be there to support the innovators and risk takers, not trying to lead them. And if you have a great idea and want collaborators to help you develop and test it, then come to Bristol and work with us — it’s the best collaborative risk and innovation culture in the world. :
& K S RI URE L I FA What other options to we have but to embrace risk and failure? The alternative is to freeze our society and slowly crumble into the dust of certainty as we watch the rest of the world grow and become the future that we might only silently dream of.
Professor Jon Rogers Chair of Creative Technology, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design Dundee
The only failure is not to do something or not to talk about something so that others can learn from the insights that you gained. I don’t think I’ve had anything that didn’t fail — eventually. I’m more worried about not failing — that sense of a lack of rigour that comes from ‘didn’t that work well’.
Funders have an incredibly difficult job to make decisions based on risk and failure. The safest thing would be to fund nothing; the highest risk they can take is to increase administration. Supporting projects with uncertain outcomes is incredibly difficult — openness and transparency (which is absolutely the right thing for funders) often requires clearly defined criteria of success and failure, with measures in place to mitigate against perceived failure. The importance of failure isn’t fully understood and this isn’t about any particular research funder — it’s something inherent in our culture. Our academic dissemination routes are unchanged in 50 years; our large institutions are dying under the weight of bureaucracy and lack of speed and agility.
I love the body of work that I’ve been involved with at the National Insitute of Design in India. There is no direct funding for this work, we have no written aims and objectives and we have no end-date. What we do have is a shared passion and vision for our research practices. We believe in finding opportunities as they arise and we believe that people and the work we are doing is far more important than any funder. This, I think, is a sustainable approach — to know what you are doing and why you are doing something, to collaborate with people that you have shared values with. And to work in an environment where risk and failure are celebrated as part of being human. :
Real innovation, like anything that is truly creative and groundbreaking, is a risky business — outcomes are often unclear, processes are untested, timelines and budgets are difficult to predict.
For this reason, new and progressive work often requires different metrics to allow it to have a fair chance to succeed. Failure is a real possibility — a possibility that needs to be actively embraced if we are to allow ideas to grow and projects to prosper.
We need to be more open about the risks and uncertainties associated with testing new ideas, and more willing to provide safe and supported spaces to make and test new work and develop new ways of working.
There needs to be a dialogue about all of this, too. Frank, open and inclusive, questions around what constitutes success and how to learn from failure need to be part of an ongoing R&D conversation between funders, makers and producers.
16 · 17
4 #
Digital technologies have changed the way we experience, understand and navigate the world around us. What is most important about this change, however, is not the technology itself but the people who are affected by it.
While that may seem an obvious point, it hasn’t stopped many in the arts being fixated on products and technology, with a corresponding lack of attention being paid to the human issues that come with rapid and dramatic change.
In reality, a lot of the barriers to innovation practice are in fact human rather than technological — ‘digital fear’, often brought on by a lack of understanding, is a real and tangible issue within many arts organisations. The most commonly reported organisational issues of lack of time and lack of money are a proxy for these human barriers and the inability of arts leaders to prioritise innovation work.
5 #
As digital tools and digital thinking change society and impact our behaviour, an understanding of these human issues becomes all the more important. The danger for the arts sector is that if it does not properly address the cultural, human significance of digital it risks fading in relevance.
A S I L A E T I U G S I S D I N A M U H 18 · 19
Hugh Wallace Head of Digital, National Museums Scotland Edinburgh
Speaking from my experience — and good fortune — of working with lots of people in the arts, I think the ‘human factor’ is something we all strive to bring to our projects. But it’s a thing that can be easy to pay lip service to and difficult to realise.
involved even if it results in a ham-fisted end product. It would also help to bring in consumer/market research specialists to complement academia (‘research’ in our sector can be too narrowly seen through educationalists’ eyes).
Generally, everyone wants what they do to be consumed and enjoyed by real human beings. We’ve all got so much better at involving people in our processes, designing our stuff iteratively, and sharpening our outputs as a result — but on tight budgets and timeframes it’s often the precious human element that gets squeezed out in favour of just getting something delivered.
As part of this process we need to encourage debate amongst the decision makers as well as the digital folk, to help reframe what’s valuable and worth striving for — we need to position digital as a mindset rather than just a medium.
But it’s too important to be sidelined, and those funding digital R&D need to insist on a people-focused approach being part of the process. They should overly emphasise it, reward those who get people
Digital has always been a really good connector. I think we can underplay some of the simple things that help bring people closer to institutions: smooth transactional processes, relevant and timely communications, well-placed calls to action, all of which can build a nice gateway to further engagement.
Rushing in with all of the objects, ideas and people stuff doesn’t always meet people where they are and can be quite assumption-driven. Unfortunately, silo thinking and organisation structures get in the way — there’s an inherent danger in seeing technology/ systems as the fix for cultural issues. :
Sync team Rohan Gunatillake Erin Maguire Devon Walshe Suzy Glass Emmie McKay Chris Sharratt Thanks to Gillian Easson Beatrice Pembroke Dick Penny Jon Rogers Hugh Wallace Designed by Rydo Edited by Chris Sharratt Published by Sync September 2014 www.welcometosync.com
​
Sync is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland
E Y B D O O … G W O N R O F 20 · 21