Online culture and creativity: Are we including or excluding?
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I don’t think I’ll be the only one who found arts and culture a bit of a lifeline during lockdown. Taking part in online art classes at work, tuning into National Theatre at Home, and jumping on board the national obsession with Normal People brought escapism and personal connection during a challenging time.
Although I’m grateful to have had these experiences, I am also aware that I was lucky to have had them. I’m fortunate to own a laptop, to have access to a reliable internet connection, and to feel confident using the internet. This is not the case for everyone.
In the UK we have a ‘digital divide’ between those who don’t have the access, skills, motivation or confidence to access the internet, and those who do. 2.6 million people in the UK are offline, 11.7 million don’t have the ‘Digital Skills for Life’, and 17 million people only use the internet for limited purposes.
So with lockdown prompting many arts and cultural organisations to host their work online for the first time, it’s an important time to consider how online experiences can be designed to be equally accessible and enriching for all.
Let’s Create: a digitally inclusive future for the arts and cultural sector
In our report Digital Inclusion and Exclusion in the Arts and Cultural Sector (produced in collaboration with Arts Council England and Common Vision), we outline what arts and cultural organisations need to think about in order to make their online delivery more inclusive.
We see our report as building on work already in progress within the sector. Many of the findings in our report align with the expectations set out in three of the Arts Council’s four Investment Principles: Inclusivity & Relevance, Ambition & Quality and Dynamism. Linking the findings to these principles was key to ensuring our recommendations aligned with current ambitions for the sector.
Inclusivity & Relevance
The Inclusivity & Relevance Investment Principle outlines that organisations need to demonstrate how their work includes, and is reflective of, their community — with a key focus on reaching under-served audiences:
Everyone has the right to lead a culturally rich life, and it is essential to ensure that everyone is able to access enriching arts and cultural experiences, whether they are engaging in person or online.
Our findings highlight that digitally excluded audiences should be recognised as part of the under-served groups that organisations have identified and are striving to reach.
Digital exclusion and social exclusion are closely linked, and it’s crucial to ensure that online delivery does not compound the barriers that underserved audiences already face in accessing arts and culture.
Arts and culture is the perfect ‘hook’ to encourage people to get online for the first time
Ambition & Quality
The Ambition & Quality Investment Principle requires organisations to demonstrate a commitment to producing high quality work through a continuous cycle of improvement, investment in training, and consultation.
Our report also recommends a collaborative approach to ensure that high quality, inclusive, online experiences become the norm across the sector.
You can make the best digital product in the world, but that won’t mean anything to the people who can’t experience it. It’s therefore important to ensure that expertise held by organisations already delivering inclusive and accessible digital experiences is shared across the sector.
It’s also very important for organisations to have a dialogue with their communities offline as well as online, using a variety of engagement approaches, to understand what may be stopping people who are less digitally included from engaging with arts and culture online, and to support them to overcome these barriers.
Dynamism
Within the Dynamism Investment Principle, the Arts Council explains that ‘effective governance and leadership will be critical in inspiring positive change and growing teams that are happy, inclusive and able to draw on the widest possible range of ideas and experiences’. Our findings support this.
If the sector is to achieve equality of access, it is vital for organisations to focus on leadership and investment to develop the inhouse digital inclusion skills and prioritisation that can support the effective use of technology by staff and volunteers. Alongside this, building partnerships will give access to wider experience and resources not always available internally. In turn this will build an awareness of the external digital inclusion landscape and further opportunities to test and develop improved working methods for communities in which you work.
How the arts and cultural sector can support digital inclusion
Embedding inclusive digital practices within the sector can achieve positive social outcomes that extend beyond arts and culture. Arts and cultural organisations play a crucial role within their communities, and as a result, they can also play a vital role in promoting digital inclusion within society.
Arts and culture is the perfect ‘hook’ to encourage people to get online for the first time. By supporting people to access arts and culture online, organisations can help people to realise the value of the internet to their lives, and support them to build the digital skills and confidence they need to access online products and services elsewhere.
What next?
If you’re inspired to make a change, but don’t know where to start, check out our practical checklist which can help you identify what more you and your organisation could be doing to promote digital inclusion.
You can also access the report on Digital Inclusion and Exclusion in the Arts and Cultural Sector by Jane Mackey from Good Things Foundation.