Arts debate

New digital age brings new responsibilities, says Marcus Davey, Director of The Roundhouse

22 April 2007 by Marcus Davey 0 comments

Marcus Davey, Director of The Roundhouse, joins the arts debate by asking what new challenges and responsibilities are brought to publicly funded arts organisations in an increasingly digital age.

A number of months ago I was asked to say a few words about responsibility, at the start of the arts debate, in a session at Arts Council London. We had recently opened the Roundhouse and we were on a wonderful wave of success and optimism for the future. I am not only glad, but also relieved to say that the wave is still surging. However, stepping away from the headlights of opening and having had a chance to reflect and review, think about the future and further engage my limited brain capacity on to this issue, I feel I could have added more to what I said then.

My talk then mainly focussed on the basic needs, requirements and legal responsibilities, for adding value and delivering value for money. I outlined that public funders, from the Arts Council England to the DfES, local councils and regional development agencies have very clear guidelines for what they expect in return for public investment. I also explained how we responded to public funder’s priorities, from access to diversity which enable a broader availability of publicly funded work, to arts or educational priorities which develop the art forms themselves. In this short piece I wanted to outline my initial thoughts on how publicly funded arts organisations respond to opportunities in our new(ish) digital world.

In the past few years our society has changed quite considerably from one where people consume to one where people participate, take part in the action and where they are not just spectators happy to observe. We have at our disposal, for the first time, the ability to have mass creative and artistic collaboration. The internet and, in particular, sites such as YouTube have shown that something new is possible. And through them we have seen a great surge of creativity, of people sharing, producing work with a great feeling of freedom to allow others to take part as well. The question that all organisations must ask is how can they respond and lead in this new world? And yes, lead may be a strange word, as YouTube is about democracy and not a leader saying what is right or wrong for you – a kind of Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the digital world. But perhaps this is a perfect role for arts organisations, for them to demystify what must, to many people seem something that is not for them. So how can this work. I suspect we are only at a very early stage in digital development and soon we shall be organising society in a totally different way, in a way that will have to be more democratic and more responsive, and these new developments should represent a great opportunity for the arts. As many more millions of people start to create they will want to participate and that surely is the moment when we can lead and outline a longer, more sustainable and deeper creative journey. We should be at the forefront of these developments, exploiting them, just as any successful business will be, to make sure that money invested in us is enabling us to be relevant, accessible, diverse and excellent in what we do.

In the next 10 years it is probable that CDs will no longer be produced. Downloads are already overtaking in some areas of music sales. Arts organisations are and will hopefully remain trusted portals and editors of artistic work. We should invest now to make sure we do lead the way and make our work available, creative, involving and meaningful and by doing this enable the artists themselves to develop the arts into the digital age. This is fertile ground for us to exploit and in doing so we should add huge value to the publics money invested in us.

Marcus Davey 19 April 2007

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