Going digital in the south west

One of the Arts Council’s priorities until 2011 is a digital development programme, which has the following key areas:

1) More people engaging with arts digitally – a new push to strengthen our mission and a new strategic approach to production, distribution and consumption with a substantial research and policy development eg ’value’ from investment, baselines.

2) Building digital capacity of regularly funded organisations (rfo’s) and artists – sharing good practice, technology knowledge transfer networks, improving business functions eg marketing, education, organisational development, balance commercial exploitation/public access.

3) Campaigning for the arts within national Broadcasting and Media Policy Reviews - gathering evidence, analysing deficits/new opportunities for new arts entrants into converged media landscape - a push into new partnerships with audio-visual media industries and creative venture capital models - Arts Council appropriate intervention, new and re-structured BBC/Channel 4 partnerships.

4) Improving our own role, capacity and profile – a re-developed website, training/skills, ICT systems, exploiting our digital assets eg Film Collection.

5) A major three year digital research programme examining public engagement, markets and art form development to inform new policies.

6) Championing the arts in national media policy debates and reviews before digital switchover in 2012. At Arts Council England, South West we want to enable everyone to have the knowledge about what technology is available to them.

There are new and exciting ways to use new technology and interactive broadcast media to promote your creative business, much of which is free and will help you to improve your reach and competitiveness in the global world of the digital age.

Some of our regularly funded organisations are developing new ways of communicating using social media, such as blogs; through social networks like Myspace and Facebook, using video clips, e newsletters (visitors to the website can subscribe to receive an electronic newsletter), or Podcasting, which are audio files which can be downloaded from the internet onto your computer or portable audio device.

These are free and can give you access to people you might not reach with conventional marketing tools.

Find out more here about what digital activity our regularly funded organisations are involved in and other digital activity happening in our region

You can also download a copy of a report published recently for the Arts Council, called 'read:write Digital Possiblities for Literature'