Digital Works

A conversation with CEO and Creative Director of The Space, Fiona Morris. The Space was founded in 2013 by Arts Council England and the BBC and is now an independent not-for-profit organisation. The Space's primary goal is to enable the arts, culture and heritage sector to engage audiences using digital and broadcast content and platforms. Over the last 6 years The Space has commissioned 300+ digital projects from arts organisations around the UK. Fiona and I discuss what makes a successful digital project, how digital programming requires a shift in thinking, the importance digital skills, rethinking value propositions, investment, and the meaninglessness of the word 'digital'.

A chat with Maaike Verberk, Managing Director of DEN, the Dutch Knowledge Institute for Culture & Digital Transformation. We talked about digital transformation, the importance of being open to new ideas, the value of really understanding your audiences, the traits of organisations where good digital stuff is happening, and loads more.

A great chat with Hilary Knight. We talk about the importance of team culture, the value of trying to be entertaining, the rigidity of the career paths into leadership positions in the cultural sector, the strategic importance of digital ambition, and loads more.Hilary is a Senior Consultant at AEA Consulting and is the former Director of Digital at Tate. Prior to joining Tate, Hilary worked in a variety of digital and commissioning roles at the BBC and Channel 4.

Dr Richard Misek is a Senior Lecturer in Film, School of Arts at the University of Kent. He is a film-maker and researcher, and was the Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council project, ‘Digital Access to Arts and Culture Beyond COVID-19', in partnership with Arts Council England and digital arts agency The Space.It's through this research project that I first became aware of and got in touch with Richard, and we discuss the findings of his research, the structural problems around the economics of digital cultural activity, the accessibility benefits of working in this way, and much more.You can find out more about the research project via the project's website https://digiaccessarts.org/ 

A conversation with Nick Sherrard about experimentation and innovation. Nick is a Partner at Label Ventures, which is a venture studio in Edinburgh. Nick has held a number innovation and strategy-focused roles in the commercial sector as well as production and administration-focused roles in the cultural sector. We talk about risk models, nurturing a culture of innovation, new approaches to partnership and funding, and why some organisations might deserve to die.

Our first returning guest! Another brilliant conversation with Kati Price. Kati is Head of Digital Media and Publishing at Victoria and Albert Museum in London and was one of the first guests I had on the podcast back in early 2020 (that chat is now our most listened-to episode).We reflect on the turmoil (and progress) of the last two years, the impact that the pandemic has had on the thinking around digital in the cultural sector, the challenges everyone is facing around retaining and hiring people, the importance of good leadership, and what she is excited about for the future.Oh and Beyonce, we talk about Beyonce too.

A lovely chat with Nicholas Triantafyllou. Nicholas is the Director of Information Technology at the National Theatre and has previously held technology and systems-focused leadership roles at the Southbank Centre and the Barbican.We explored the importance of collaboration, what good leadership looks like, the challenge of getting things done in big institutions, how NT At Home happened, and lots more.

A conversation with Annette Mees, Annette is an award-winning artistic director, creative producer and cultural strategist.Annette used to be Artistic Director of Coney (an award-winning company of adventure and play which put the audience at the centre of every experience), she ran Audience Labs at the Royal Opera House. She is currently Artistic Director of Audience Labs & Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Culture and Creative Industries at King's College London, and is also the Chair of the FutureEverything a year-round cultural programme, that brings people together to discover, share and experience new ideas for the future.We discuss the use of technology in cultural experiences, we also discuss Current, Rising which is a hyper-reality opera that Annette made whilst at ROH (I discussed this project in Episode 018 with Eva Liparova, who was a producer on the project, listen to that conversation).

Back after a bit of a break with a chat with the Sydney Opera House's Head of Digital Programming, Stuart Buchanan. We chat rave culture, the Royal Court Theatre's website in the 1990s, employing digital to explore new ways of engaging with artists, wrangling institutional dynamics, responses to the pandemic and loads more.Stuart has worked with organisations such as ABC, Disney, SBS, Sydney Festival, The Guardian, MONA, Royal Court Theatre and TED, and as founder of digital cultural agency The Nest. He has presented radio programs and podcasts on ABC Double J, FBi Radio and London's Resonance FM, and is the curator of the New Weird Australia music initiative.

In this episode we chat with Heart Of Glass CEO, Patrick Fox.Heart Of Glass are a St Helens, Merseyside-based collaborative and social arts agency. They work "with artists and community groups, young people, asylum seekers and refugees, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, older people and communities of all kinds" to "support each other – and learn from each other – on creative journeys of enquiry and exploration."We chatted about how the organisation's use of digital has shifted over the pandemic, how you can create digital serendipity, the digital divide, and much more

A really enjoyable chat with my pal, Drew. We compare and contrast the similarities and differences between the banking and cultural sectors.Drew in his own words is "a serial entrepreneur turned banker; a sheep in wolf's clothing. He recently left Barclays where he was Director of Digital Strategy since 2019. He was previously the Head of Platform for the Standard Chartered Virtual Bank in Hong Kong. He joined Standard Chartered as Director of Fintech Strategy and Engagement in 2016. Before renting his soul, he founded and led a financial inclusion payments company in Indonesia, a financial services Cloud services company in Hong Kong, an oil and gas technology infrastructure company in Papua New Guinea, a data analytics startup in Berlin and a zip line in Singapore." 

A lovely chat with Wise Children's Technical Director, Simon Baker. We talk about Simon's career, the DIY approach that Wise Children have taken to their digital activity, why the "bodge it" skills you learn doing audio are useful in a digital context, the potential of audio experiences for storytelling, understanding signal flow, and loads more. 

We're back! A conversation with theatre producer and digital product manager, Eva Liparova about the 'hyper reality opera experience' that she worked on with the Royal Opera House last year. This was a fascinating conversation which explored remote creative teams, technologists and theatre practitioners working together, creative uses of new technologies, how you design audience experiences and expectations and lots more.

We sit down with Robin Cantrill-Fenwick, CEO of Baker Richards, to discuss the findings of their Culture Restart audience sentiment tracker. We explore how audiences are feeling about returning to in-person cultural experiences (whenever that may be), emerging insights around pricing and distribution of digital content, segmentation models, and consumer psychology.

A conversation with one of the Directors of Storythings, Matt Locke. We discuss digital audiences, attention patterns, formats, shifts in behaviour, and loads more.Matt has held senior positions at Channel 4 and the BBC, been a curator of a gallery, set up and run digital art programmes, and attend Glasgow School of Art in the early 90s. He has a fascinating perspective on content and audiences and his blog is well worth a read https://howtomeasureghosts.substack.com/

In this episode I speak with award-winning cultural studies scholar, Dr Kirsty Sedgman. We talk about the audience experience - particularly within a digital context, theatre etiquette campaigns, excluded audiences, the democratising potential of digital, and how we understand the 'value' of cultural experiences.

A conversation with Sadler's Wells' Head of Content & Audiences, Ankur Bahl. We chat about structuring digital teams, spending time focusing on storytelling, choosing the right content approach for each platform, the initiatives Sadler's Wells has tried during lockdown (and how audiences responded), and their plans for the future.

We sit down with Linda Spurdle, Digital Development Manager at Birmingham Museums Trust to talk about their recent Cut, Copy, Remix project which came about after they opened up access to their image library. The Cut, Copy, Remix project saw them working with artists including Cold War Steve, the Black Hole Club to reimagine images from the Museums' collection.Linda is a brilliant interviewee, honest and refreshing in her candour about what did, and didn't work, and why.You can see one of the images Cold War Steve made for the project here https://www.thesocial.com/bennys-babbies/

Aled is Head of Membership Strategy at Condé Nast and has previously worked at the Guardian and ITN. He also founded the payment solutions startup, PayTogether. We talk about fostering a culture of innovation, risk taking, structuring digital teams, digital businesses and loads more.

We sit down with Opera North's Director of External Affairs, David Collins. We look at how strategic thinking that has been developed over recent years has underpinned how they have used digital to respond to the current crisis, keeping audiences engaged, retaining a connection to local communities, the nature of opera in the 21st century, how the organisation has arrived at a clear sense of purpose and self, fostering a culture of experimentation, and loads more.David also wrote an article to accompany this conversation which you can read on Substrkat's website https://substrakt.com/journal/guest-post-digital-strategy-and-responding-to-the-covid-crisis-at-opera-north

A conversation with the Donmar Warehouse's Director of Marketing, Abby Corfan. We discuss what life has been like at the Donmar during lockdown, our discussions focused mostly on the two big digital productions the Donmar has been involved with; a reworking of Adam Brace's play, Midnight Your Time, and their involvement in the National Theatre's NT At Home initiative with their 2014 production of Coriolanus.We talk about the challenges (and opportunities) presented by reimagining work for digital delivery, communicating what this new type of work is, recreating shared experiences, donations, remote working, and much more

Featuring a conversation with podcast host, producer, consultant and writer, Hannah Hethmon. We look at the history of podcasting in the cultural sector, the elements of a good podcast, how podcasts could (and should) be approached by institutions, the unique relationship that can be achieved between a host and their podcast listeners and loads more.Hannah's book Your Museum Needs a Podcast: A Step-By-Step Guide to Podcasting on a Budget for Museums, History Organizations, and Cultural Nonprofits is still available to buy and Hannah's Digital Works #10 talk can be watched on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt7Ul_Lxzk4

We sit down with MCC Theater's Artistic Director, Will Cantler, and Digital Marketing Manager, Molly Barson, to delve into their recent digital production of Alan Bowne’s Beirut starring Marisa Tomei and Oscar Isaac https://mcctheater.org/tix/beirut-benefit-play-reading/. They speak openly about what they learned working in this way for the first time, what worked (and what didn't) and the surprises they encountered along the way. We discuss how to conduct rehearsals in quarantine, the benefits of live chat, the proportion of new audience members this reached, how to price this type of work, and loads more.

A conversation with cultural fundraising consultant and director of Apollo Fundraising, David Burgess. We talk about the state of digital fundraising in the sector, inter-departmental collaboration, the importance of human connection, behaviour psychology and much more.

In this special 'live' recording of the podcast (a Zoom webinar with an audience of around 100 folks from around the world joining us) Ash discusses the sector's recent pivot to digital with One Further's Chris Unitt (https://onefurther.com/about).This conversation came about following Chris's recent blog post https://www.chrisunitt.co.uk/2020/04/questions-about-the-cultural-sectors-pivot-to-digital/ which poses a number of questions around the how, what, why (and more) of the sudden surge in digital activity brought on by the Coronavirus crisis.In our chat, Chris references David Sabel's talk at our Digital Works #10 event back in April 2020 (you can watch/listen to that here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5yJt64rJpk&list=PLIvMezMER7izAGsQIheZWi4tOa24NcSVT).

A conversation with Louise Cohen, Head of Digital Content & Channels at the Royal Academy of Arts. We talk about the importance of strategy, how to embed strategies across an institution. Louise's background as a journalist, storytelling, the expansion of the RA's digital capacity, the content projects she's proudest of and more.Louise's work on content strategy at the RA won a GLAMi Award in 2017 https://www.museweb.net/winners-of-2017-glami-awards-announced/.

A conversation with the Victoria & Albert Museum's Head of Digital, Kati Price. We talk about the elements of digital success, Kati's work researching how digital teams are structured at cultural institutions, digital storytelling, Kati's career to date and much more.You can find more information about Kati and Dafydd's research on the Museums & the Web site https://mw18.mwconf.org/paper/structuring-for-digital-success-a-global-survey-of-how-museums-and-other-cultural-organisations-resource-fund-and-structure-their-digital-teams-and-activity/

This episode focuses on accessibility and inclusive design as we sit down for a chat with Robin Christopherson MBE, Head of Digital Inclusion at AbilityNet (https://abilitynet.org.uk/). Robin is a really inspiring interviewee and has lots of insightful things to say about the impact of accessible products and services.Robin mentioned a number of initiatives during our conversation including; the Tech4Good Awards, https://www.tech4goodawards.com/.We were slightly beset by technical gremlins and Ash having to self-isolate after returning from a trip to Italy but we've battled on. This does mean the audio quality isn't quite as crystal clear as it usually is but hopefully that doesn't cause any issues.

We sit down for a chat with Head of Digital at the Audience Agency, Katie Moffat to talk about her career, her thoughts about the usefulness of a digital strategy, bridging the digital skills gap, what defines a digital mindset and more.Cas and Ash also discuss the recently announced Digital Culture Compass (https://digitalculturecompass.org.uk/), Nesta's Digital Culture Survey (https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/digital-culture-2019/) and how artistic practice seems to remain mostly untouched by digital.

In this first episode we grapple with trying to be concise, talk about recent Ofcom research around how young people are engaging with the internet, Ash speaks with Mike Harris (former Tech Lead at the Royal Academy of Arts) as he reflects on his 2 years in the sector, Andy looks back on how digital has changed over the past 14 years and we talk about the importance of mobile experiences.