Collaborative commissioning
Sarah Gillett is Director of Creative Strategy at Cultureshock. In this case study, on the theme of ‘civic engagement & social relevance’, Sarah explains the process they used to create and build interest in an online resource aimed at young people using an experimental artist-commissioning framework and online and offline methods.
This case study was sourced by Culture24 as a resource for our conference, The art of leadership.
In 2015 we were asked by the University of Lincoln to design and manage a website to mark 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta. This was to be a two-year project and was a digital-only programme to engage ‘young people’ in topics related to Magna Carta in today’s society – democracy, rights, politics – through art, film and literature. The project was called 1215 Today.
The main challenges for us were:
- how to build the visibility of a completely new online-only initiative
- how to seed interest among ‘young people’, as the idea had come from the university, not ‘young people’ themselves
- how to define target audiences beyond ‘young people’
- how to commission digital artwork that had a transformative effect
Research and strategy
Initially we did a big chunk of market research to find out which social media channels were being used by different age groups, how young people were using them, who they were communicating with, and what they were sharing. We also looked at youth arts projects, youth community groups and youth-focused initiatives within arts and culture organisations.
Based on this research we designed the website, social media strategy and an overall identity for the project in liaison with the project directors. During the initial discussions we all realised that we needed to get opinions from real young people right at the beginning, so we shared the designs with friends’ (and friends of friends’) teenage children to see what they thought. To be honest, their feedback wasn’t very useful because they found it difficult to explain what they did and didn’t like, so the process felt quite arbitrary.
Experimental commissioning
We were lucky enough to be working with Ann Jones, a brilliant project director who was open to trying out different approaches to engage communities. We developed an experimental, iterative commissioning framework through an Innovation Lab model, bringing artists, young people and creative technologists together in a room to investigate a question posed by an artist well before the concept for the artwork has been defined.
A good example of this was when we worked with activist artist Kathrin Böhm whose proposition was “How much space do you need for your future? And what kind of space will that be?” We put out a call on social media for participants, partnered with the University of Leeds’ Music Department who brought students and found Leeds-based creative technologists to join us for a full Innovation Lab day led by Kathrin – workshopping ideas and developing first prototypes.
We made the most of these opportunities to get lots of behind-the-scenes images and quotes for social media that we used during the day to engage a wider online community. We connected with everyone who was part of the Innovation Lab on social media and set up a closed Facebook group to create a safe space for further discussion. This created a collaborative environment that enabled new artwork to be developed in direct contact with its intended target audience.
Face-to-face
Quickly we realised that these face-to-face elements were key to the success of the project. The quality of the artwork was better, the audience engagement was better and the value of the project was better understood by everyone.
That’s not to say that it was easy. Throughout the project we tried to keep innovating, learning as we went along and refining our approach, tone of voice and identity.
Building content from the audience
About half way through the project we ran a call-out for young correspondents, editors, photographers and critics in order to get more content for the site and social media that was directly produced by the project’s target audience. This ‘Editorial Board’ was supported by our digital content editor, who gave them training and feedback in how to write compelling stories.
To join up the online conversations with the real world, for our final artist commission we ran a social media call-out for Lincoln-based young people to work with artist Hetain Patel for eight months. A Community Manager was appointed by the university to manage this group, organising artist-led workshops, cultural trips to London and other social gatherings.
Our best moment came at the end of the project when Hetain Patel hosted Lincoln’s first TEDxYouth event. He mentored young creative people to present their ideas under the theme ‘Creating the Future’ – we had brilliant dancers, poets, DJs, designers, educators and drummers taking part, and it was a truly inspiring day. From that point we asked each performer to write two sentences that really captured their vision of a positive future society, which they filmed on their smartphones and uploaded to Twitter with a special hashtag. To bring the project to a close we showcased the Vorb technology of Tim Kindberg, developed during our first artist commission, to present all the films in an interactive sphere.
Lessons learnt
We learnt how hard it is to engage young people in a project with a subject that they aren’t very interested in, particularly if it’s purely online.
Although we consulted young people in the artistic commissions, we found their responses were disappointing. For instance, there was no understanding of the power of Facebook and its influence in the posts you see on your feeds; there was no interest in protecting data; and there was no interest in learning about young people in other cultures and countries.
We also learnt that most of the young people we were working with did not feel confident in sharing opinion online – so while they would ‘like’ or ‘share’ someone else’s posts, they did not want to say what they thought themselves, for fear of being bullied or falling out with friends. Several said this had actually happened to people they knew.
Two things made the biggest difference, and only one of these was intentional. The physical elements that we programmed were a great way to share opinion, build trust and widen the perspectives of everyone involved across all our different communities.
The Brexit vote and Trump’s election were external influences that completely switched the relevance of our project from being seen as a historical, educational initiative to a project that was very much ‘of the moment’. Suddenly our communities wanted to talk about politics and society because it really affected them. We saw a massive rise in participation both online and offline.
Challenges
The two biggest challenges we faced internally in order to make the project a real success were:
- keeping young people engaged
- getting the best artistic results through a collaborative commissioning model
We found there was little self-motivation from the communities we were working with – mostly they were happy to sit back and listen to others. The TEDxYouth event in Lincoln completely turned that attitude on its head because the performers were absolutely driven and passionate about their subject.
To get great results from working collaboratively with artists, creative technologists and young people took much more time than we had originally mapped out. People spoke in different ways, used different words/language, and understood ideas in very different ways. We devoted lots of time to facilitating these conversations and shaping the artists’ development.
Impact
Kathrin Böhm’s commissioned work, spaceREC (an online map of free spaces for creatives to use alongside a sound map of creative studio recordings) expanded beyond Leeds and was taken over by an artist group in Lincoln.
Tim Kindberg’s Vorb technology has been used on Twitter Live, Encounters Short Film Festival, Afrika Eye Film Festival, and Oracle MBX at London’s ExCel and Bristol’s Planetarium.
We are now working with the University of Westminster’s Black Music Research Unit on a three-year research project. We have just delivered the first stage of the online aspect of the project, which ultimately will reach out to communities across the UK for images, film and stories for inclusion in the research.
Advice for colleagues
Know your communities – don’t develop something at arm’s length, develop ideas directly with the communities to build trust and participation. Then put a challenging programme in place with the very best artists to transform the way we understand the world.
Resources
To work with me to develop a specific arts-focused Innovation Lab model I brought in Abhay Adhikari who runs Digital Identities. Abhay also supported our social media / community managers in running social campaigns.
