Investing in Future Cultures

A cross-industry consultation exploring the emergent creative and economic possibilities at the intersection of performance, culture, technology and innovation

Index

Executive summary

Introduction

Where we are coming from

Linear ends, new collaborations begin Funding change by changing funding

Funding Innovation

Overview

Key Challenges

Key Drivers

First Steps Recommendations

Long Term Impact

Field Building

Overview

Key Challenges

Key Drivers

First Steps

Recommendations

Long Term Impact

Collaborative R&D

Overview

Key Challenges

Key Drivers

First Steps Recommendations Long Term Impact

Leadership in Ethics, Equity and Climate

Overview

Key Challenges Key Drivers First Steps Recommendations

Long Term Impact

This report was created by Annette Mees /Audience Labs

Image credits:

Cover page:

Still from “Current, Rising” (2021) Design: Joanna Scotcher, CGI: Figment Productions Hyper Reality Opera - concept and commission

Quote pages: Still image

By Fantasia Malware

Life of Saint Fiona Bianco Xena

Derisking Distribution

Overview

Key Challenges

Key Drivers

First Steps

Recommendations

Long Term Impact

Global Markets Overview

Key Challenges

Key Drivers

First Steps Recommendations

Long Term Impact

COSTAR in a Wider Ecology

Conclusions and Looking Ahead

APPENDIXES

External contributions: Ash Mann Tom Burton Gill Wildman Dr. Noshua Watson

List of contributors and participants

Round Table report (June 2022)

Royal Opera House

Executive summary

Conditions for accelerating change have been building for years. Across every industry, the effects of rapid digital innovation, shifts in behaviour and public expectations, and global sociological, economic and climate volatility are being felt and responded to. This “new normal” where change is much more rapid, continual and ubiquitous brings with it enormous challenges and opportunities.

The UK has a world-leading, vibrant cultural and creative industry that is responding to the changing technologies and audience needs with evolving business and production models and by initiating new formats and collaborations. There is also a new industry emerging at the immensely productive intersection between traditional culture, digital entertainment and technological innovation: a new and unique hybrid industry; a cultural innovation nexus.

The UK is very well placed to take a role as one of the leaders in this emergent field. Due to its energetic creative industries, a loose but interconnected ecology has started to emerge organically in the UK that is developing future culture and creativity. It is a diverse ecology of experts and creatives working across gaming, theatre, broadcasting, film, innovation design, engineering, technology and more. They work together to explore new technologies and new forms of storytelling to increase the value and extend the impact of the creative industries more broadly.

As in any young industry, there is a great deal of fragmentation. Too often high-quality and innovative work happens in relative isolation, and with massive disparities in access to resources and opportunity. Although there are many instances of successful collaborations across silos, there is no investment in the infrastructure to build an industry and identify, sustain and build on these one-off successes. With funding rarely extending beyond single projects or products, the benefits of work already being done across boundaries between cultural, entertainment and tech industries are frequently lost as soon as projects have been completed.

From November 2021 to July 2022, Audience Labs undertook an industry consultation to understand the opportunities and needs of this new industry, and the role AHRC, COSTAR and the wider UK funding ecology could play in its successful incubation and acceleration. We conducted expert interviews, commissioned positioning pieces, convened round tables and brought together key players from the digital, cultural and technological fields. Collaboratively, we established how best to marry the evident ambition and creativity of the digital-cultural nexus to the scalability and profitability of established cultural and creative industries.

We identified five key areas for investment: - Field building - Collaborative R&D - Leadership in ethics, equity and and environmental responsibility - Derisking distribution - Connecting to global markets

The sector is in urgent need of funders who understand innovation and change, and who can work with industry to identify shared R&D questions and help develop distribution infrastructures, as well as establishing the kind of forums and tech-sharing familiar from mature industries. The industry needs support and infrastructure to develop shared best practice frameworks, KPIs and reporting mechanisms that promote equity, ethical behaviour and environmental responsibility. Educators and industry need to work together to develop diverse young talent from across the UK. And we need to seize the specific and massive opportunities presented by digital to create global impact through international co-productions and agile repurposing for local markets.

AHRC’s COSTAR initiative is perfectly placed to take a central role in accelerating the cultural creative nexus into a successful industry that will transform the UK’s creative outputs and exports. It can coordinate a wider network of public and private funders to extend the impact of their initial investment and build longevity, legacy and value for the UK. We are confident the recommendations of our consultation will, when COSTAR comes into operation, ensure that this nascent ecology of fragmented, interdisciplinary projects can grow into a significant international industry. We believe the nexus is poised to take the leading role in the UK’s cultural future, in terms of both its financial and social impact and of its ability to extend this country’s unparalleled global influence.

Recommendations and Impact overview

Funding Innovation

Recommendations

• Undertake a value and measurement project: part of the work of building a new industry is helping to set up values, KPIs and value matrices that effectively measure success

• Establish clear roles in the COSTAR investment ecosystem both to support different strands and to develop the interconnectivity

• Facilitate conversations between funding bodies towards a more interconnected approach, co-finance testbeds for better future-proof innovation funding models

• Proactively design connecting programmes and support next possible steps: build in the flexibility to support and react to the successes of SMEs by means of timely business development support, such that emerging opportunities going to market or capitalising on investment can be exploited

Long-term impact

• Creating a sustainable and diverse innovation ecology in which SMEs can thrive and evolve

• Developing a sophisticated understanding of how to support and increase value and impact

• Providing a cohesive funding environment that will give the UK creative innovation industry an edge over other countries

Field Building Recommendations

• Establishment of an interdisciplinary task force to map industry priorities within the nexus, working towards a long-term investment plan for the infrastructure for coordinated field building and for the development of models of engagement between industry, COSTAR/AHRC and the government

• All COSTAR grants should include interdisciplinary gatherings aimed at practice-building and knowledge-exchange, such that each funded project drives forward the whole industry

Long-term impacts

• A more cohesive industry, with clear routes for innovation and exploitation for SMEs, and clear career paths for new talent

• A strong connection between government, funders and industry, leading to smart, focused investment, removing obstacles to growth, and reducing waste and ‘cli

-edges’ for innovations

Collaborative R&D Recommendations

• The establishment of an ‘industry taskforce’ helping AHRC/COSTAR recipients to build a strong connection to industry and ensure their programme is relevant to industry needs

• Establishing research and R&D clusters that attack R&D or mission-driven questions together and from multiple angles to ensure shared learning that is of value across industries

• High-quality capture and industry-appropriate methods of dissemination of learning across the COSTAR recipients

• Establishment of a COSTAR ‘Library of Technology’

• COSTAR should emphasise Problem-solving R&D, with a smaller but equally important investment in a programme of Exploratory R&D

Long-term impact

• UK thought leadership on ethical innovation and change management is expanded

• Data, insights and solutions that are of value to a wide range of industries, both in the UK and globally

• Value of the arts and humanities as a partner in innovation and change management is recognised across industries, funding bodies and policy-makers

• Mission-driven cultural innovation work develops sustainable, long-term ethical models, valued by audiences and with measurable impact

• A diverse and flourishing new industry is established with visible and aspirational career paths for diverse talent

Leadership in Ethics, Equity and Climate

Recommendations

• The inclusion of the development of ethical frameworks, equitable IP models, environmentally-conscious production models and diverse talent development KPIs within COSTAR

• Ensure principles and practices of shared standards and learning are valued by key players across industries

• Develop an infrastructure of gatherings around ethics, equity and climate as part of field building

• Facilitation of conversation between private, philanthropic and public funding bodies to co-fund mission-driven project investment

• Develop pathways for diverse talent development within COSTAR

Long-term impact

• UK thought leadership on ethical innovation and change management is expanded

• Value of the humanities as a partner in innovation and change management is recognised across industries, funding bodies and policy-makers

• Mission-driven cultural innovation work develops sustainable, long-term ethical models, valued by audiences and with measurable impact

• A diverse and flourishing industry is established with visible and aspirational career paths for diverse talent

Derisking Distribution

Global Markets

Recommendations

Co-invest

UK to host

international

Facilitate conversation

Long-term impacts

UK cements

strategic

impact of UK investment

distribution

Ash Mann Managing Director, Subtrakt

“The pre-pandemic world no longer exists. Audience expectations have shifted […] only by accepting and leaning into this shift, organisations are going to be able to position themselves for the increasingly uncertain future we are all moving towards.”

Introduction

Where we’re coming from

When a new field opens up, full of potential, there is one thing everyone can agree on: support is needed to grow that field. How that is best done is, however, a harder question. When that field is as new as ours – right on the sharp edge where evolving interactive technologies intersect with the creative arts – the prospects can be as bewildering as they are exciting.

History is a good guide. When cinema was born, it was not born in Hollywood. There had been experiments with moving images – zoetropes, phenakistoscopes, flip books – but the first film camera and the first films were invented in France by the Lumière brothers. Inspired by their mother's sewing machine, they invented a machine that moved perforated celluloid strips around a wheel using a needle and claw system. In 1895, they filmed workers leaving a factory to test the device: this was the first film to be shot and projected. The Lumières regarded their innovation as a piece of hardware to exploit, patenting the camera for their own use and sending operators across the globe to demonstrate it, but refused all offers from other filmmakers who wanted to buy or use it. They thus created for themselves a dead-end street.

By the time the Lumières stopped making films in 1905, their technology was being replicated and improved by many other people right across the globe – a network of photographers and engineers who opened film up to a wider public. In the US, there was activity everywhere, from Pittsburgh to New York. However, in the first decade of the 20th century, many filmmakers started moving to California. The move was driven by the needs and economics of filmmaking. Electric lights weren’t yet very powerful, so the best source of light for film exposure was the natural sunlight so abundant in California. Subsequent rapid and intense investment in film infrastructure such as studios and equipment like cameras, alongside investment in creatives, talent and technicians, working together in a close-knit ecology, gave Hollywood the edge and laid the foundations for the multibillion dollar entertainment industry of today.

When a new industry emerges, we often see this pattern replicated: early investment in facilities and people leads to the establishment of a mutually supportive ecology, which creates the conditions to lead the industry for a long time afterwards. Across the ecology, sustainable and lucrative businesses and careers develop, leading to a cross-pollination of ideas and practices that in turn enable the industry to grow exponentially. An example of this process from the last decades of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century is the global public investment in innovation districts: a region, city or district with a supported network of knowledge-producing organisations, such as universities, research bodies, teaching hospitals, cultural institutions and knowledge-intensive businesses. The initial public investment attracts innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, creatives, knowledge workers and investors, who collaborate, compare and compete, creating the conditions for growth.

In the digitally connected world of the early 21st century, where uncertainty, volatility and change are part of everyday life, a new generation of creators are building on the foundations of traditional culture, broadcasting and gaming to explore digital tools and platforms. Technology is proliferating and cross-pollinating. A far broader definition of what constitutes art emerges, unsettling traditionalists, but with a growing audience engaging with this wider spectrum of technologies and the cultural work utilising them. In the shift to digital space, ‘community’ is less dependent on geography, cultural borders are more porous, and the social value of art emerges as much from its tendency to innovate as from any focus on specific issues or themes.

Where traditionally communities of artists, creators and audiences gathered in a single building, district or location, we can now create networks of collaboration and innovation that are geographically dispersed. But they still need to be connected, invested in and facilitated. There is a long history of interdisciplinarity and partnerships between culture and advancing technology, but with the emergence of digital technologies we are collectively making a real jump forward in how we communicate and do things. As new tools and challenges emerge, different fields and di

and perspectives that, when combined, create a more complete picture of a problem and how to solve it.

In the UK, we find ourselves in the early days of a new industry; one that sits at the intersection of technology, innovation and culture. Seeing the transformation in each of their respective industries, an emergent, loose but interconnected ecology of people working across gaming, performance, broadcast, film and tech are starting to work together to explore new forms of telling stories and develop new technologies that increase the value and impact of arts and culture for individuals and society. It is an industry that spans commercial, semi-commercial and not-for-profit organisations and projects. The UK has a strong track record in the creative industries. In 2019, DCMS estimated that the creative industries contributed £115.9 billion to the UK, accounting for 5.9% of the UK economy. To be able to attain and maintain this degree of market leadership in these new emergent forms and markets, we require public investment strands that can empower transformation.

Currently, this nascent industry suffers from the inefficient allocation of resources and the lack of a good distribution network to supply and build on emerging audience demand. The hardware and distribution networks are still maturing. As the hardware gets cheaper and becomes more widely available, and distribution channels open up – creating familiarity and broadening access – the market will open up more and more. At this point we need a smart approach to public investment that recognises this key moment to develop a future profitable industry. To gather sufficient insight, IP, technical resources, talent and readiness for the UK’s creative industries to become a key player in these future markets requires significant collaboration between the public and private.

We need to invest in building the field so as to establish a healthy ecology of diverse players who are supported to work together to combat the restrictions and fragility of the current market. We need spaces and places for creative and innovative collaboration - where the stories and culture of the future can be developed. In these early stages, too much emphasis on competition, fast outcomes and commercial discipline undermines innovation; monopolies and protectionism have the same impact. Policymakers need to aim for ‘Goldilocks’ markets that simultaneously permit creative exploration, the establishment of ethical frameworks and the provision of sufficient economic support to reward the necessary risk-taking across the UK.

Linear ends, new collaborations begin

In culture, entertainment and far beyond, we are seeing linearity break down. The influence of digital micro-content, of asynchronous consumption and of the popularity of gaming/immersive experiences means that audiences now expect to be able to experience creative ideas and activities in non-linear ways.

At the meta level, industry models are changing in terms of:

1. Finance 2. Creativity 3. Exploitation

These changes are drastic and driven both by internal pressure (new artists, art forms, types of funding) and from without (competition, new industries, new markets). The UK’s strengths are its abundance of creative talent, ability to innovate and interdisciplinarity, bringing together highly skilled talent and working methodologies from different industries, while the development of new forms and new business opportunities attract innovators and entrepreneurs. Our field is emerging organically: it is not static nor exclusive; its boundaries are porous. We are defining a grammar in concert with our audiences. Sometimes they are ahead of us.

It is not possible to give an exhaustive list of those working in this distinctively collaborative space between storytelling and technology, but the plurality of talent and skills involved routinely spans:

- Cultural organisations

Universities and education providers

- Broadcasters

Funding organisations and content commissioners

Storytellers, artists and makers

Design and production studios/agencies/games studios

Hardware and software technology platforms, both new and established

Each constituency recognises and finds allies and collaborators in areas of work that are otherwise frequently siloed off from each other, working together to innovate and make a bigger or better impact on the world. We are seeing an unprecedented move from multi-disciplinary collaborations to a trans-disciplinary field; a new domain of practice that combines processes and ideas from other industries into new working practices and formats. To keep up with this development, and grow the UK ecology, we need an innovative approach to funding, investment and support. We need to support creative innovation beyond old-fashioned siloes, look beyond the short term and project-based funding, invest in the tangible and intangible infrastructure needed, and focus on developing the next generation of talent, bringing to an end the disconnect between the education sector and industry resource demands.

Funding change by changing funding

As AHRC prepares to make a significant investment through COSTAR, the organisation invited Audience Labs to facilitate conversations between key players from across sectors to gain deep insight into the industry’s needs. We spoke to over 70 people from across industries, including gaming, broadcast, theatre, performance, music, technology, digital production, SFX, funding, academia and policy. We talked to global companies, large cultural venues, small independent producers and individual artists and many working at scales in between.

All of the respondents and contributors generously brought their expertise and experience of working in or with the creative industries in responding to a rapidly changing technological environment. Significant social change is also happening at unprecedented speed all around the world, bringing with it enormous opportunities as commercial practices and distribution models evolve. Established industries are having to redefine their business/production models and their roles in and impact on their communities and new collaborations and a trans-disciplinary industry is emerging.

Harvard Business Review in “What It Takes to Lead Through an Era of Exponential Change” neatly describes this constant change as the ‘new normal’:

‘Conditions for accelerating change have been building for years. Advancements in information technology, automation, human interconnectivity, Artificial Intelligence, and the network effects among them, created a new reality where change is much more rapid, continual, and ubiquitous. Covid-19 and its derivatives laid bare a “new normal” of change, marked by three dimensions:

• It’s perpetual — occurring all the time in an ongoing way.

• It’s pervasive — unfolding in multiple areas of life at once.

• It’s exponential — accelerating at an increasingly rapid rate.

This three-dimensional (3-D) change is defining our emerging future and, as a consequence, effective leadership will be defined by the ability to navigate this new reality.’

This new normal of change demands new forms of adaptive and iterative funding and support. Public funders like AHRC and its COSTAR programme have a key role to play in the development of a new industry rooted in innovation. When funding an incredibly innovative sector, there is the need to create funding models that are equally innovative. Funding must work at the same speed as the sector it aims to support. It is the only way to ensure a high return on investment.

This report, based on a wide-ranging and in-depth industry consultation, brings together the requirements and recommendations under six headings:

• Funding innovation: next to the traditional project investment the industry needs investment in business, distribution and talent. Innovation funding needs to prioritise mitigating risks and removing points of friction rather than setting creative briefs or trying to define practice. Supporting the emergence of collaborations and talent to arise more fluidly and work towards a mature sustainable market.

• Field building: Facilitate exchange and collaboration between multiple industries to connect fragmented players, to establish industry-driven needs for investment and resources, and to develop access paths to market and commercial investment. Provide space for creative, intellectual and technological brokerage.

• Collaborative R&D: Enable diverse stakeholders to work together on collective R&D issues and challenges , identified by industry. The R&D needs to be practice-based with clear objectives, limits and desired outcomes and connect exploratory R&D with Problem-solving R&D and project R&D stages. This way of working will enrich the entire

and prevent duplication

and investment and uncover the skills and jobs of the future, too, informing a recalibration of training.

• Ethical practice: As both cultural and technological industries struggle with reframing and reworking their impact on society and the planet, this new industry has a role to play in improving outcomes for cultural and technological innovation by creating shared frameworks, missions and challenges with regard to ethics, equity and climate. This includes work around value and measurement.

• Derisking distribution: Investment in business and distribution development: enable collaborations between existing spaces and channels, provide resources to mitigate risks for distribution and market development.

• Working with a Global Market: The UK creative industries don’t stand in isolation and will want and need to create pathways to export to the international market.

After expanding on each of these ‘pillars’ of our research, the report considers COSTAR’s position in the wider ecology and finally looks ahead to the future.

“Valuing the arts and culture as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account empowers creators. It allows them to clearly define value on their own terms, how they intend to create value, who it is for, and how that value will be measured. For those who seek funding and those who seek to fund the arts, it will connect money to artistic value in ways that allow the work to flourish.”

Dr Noshua Watson Managing Director, Interwoven Impact

Funding Innovation

Overview

The UK creates remarkable creative work and has developed exceptional new technologies and applications for technology. But there is an urgent concomitant need for more investment in an infrastructure that genuinely grows these sometimes piecemeal achievements into a profitable new industry; for active ongoing activity to break silos; and for collaboration and collective R&D beyond individual projects. In short, we must establish a landscape where cross-sector, interdisciplinary collaboration and understanding is normal, stimulated and understood, not the exception.

Cultural and creative practitioners in the field are seeing significant changes, driven in part by technology but also by shifts in audience behaviour, methods of distribution and the formation of cross-disciplinary practice. We are no longer simply able to make new things differently as and when the ideas surface: we have to look at the foundations, the models of business which are the spaces in which all these considerations come into play, and that underpin our field’s longevity, legacy and value. It’s no longer just about thinking about what we do, but how and why we do it.

We need to work towards a diversification of funding models: alongside the traditional focus on projects and products, we need to be developing talent, creating innovations, investing in distribution networks and audience development, and removing obstacles to commercial exploitation. We need to be working with other, longer-established sectors to explore distribution through established venues and networks, as well as borrowing development models from them and from other countries.

A large part of current funding streams emphasise market-readiness to the exclusion of other values. Funding for R&D and for the space, the technology and the active work would ideally come from the same source. At the moment, work in this field often has to satisfy the different reporting criteria for multiple funders, which is unsustainable for a single R&D project.

Instead, we should be assessing the value of R&D and innovation projects under the following five criteria:

Exploration/new insight Innovation

Artistic merit Societal impact

Market-readiness/economic sustainability

As R&D programmes showcase prototypes and work in progress, they can already be seen to be ripe with possibilities, but after the end of funding programmes many creative SMEs experience a ‘cliff-edge’. Teams who have been under pressure to deliver shiny new demonstrations, suddenly find themselves left on their own to take their innovation through the next steps. Funding programmes must work proactively to prevent the emergence of these cliff-edges to enable new ideas to progress and thereby harness the massive potential value created by those engaged in creative R&D.

As a growing industry in the digital age, we share a strong desire to work ethically, towards social equity and to mitigate the climate crisis. These considerations are talked about but underdeveloped in the commercial sector, due to it being under constant pressure to create innovative products here and now. Public and private funding bodies – notably AHCR through COSTAR – have a distinctive and necessary role in building the ethical foundation of the industry, in developing diverse talents and diverse audiences, and in contributing to thriving communities and a healthy planet.

Key challenges

• Coherent and coordinated investment is needed to overcome market failure in the next 5-10 years

• Myopic funding streams aimed at project and product need to be replaced by the investment in infrastructure for collaboration that will allow a healthy long-term ecology to flourish

• Small SMEs often experience a ‘cliff-edge’ after a funding round that leaves them carrying unmanageable risk. This in turn leads to a high turnover of people leaving the industry, due to financial unsustainability, burnout or talent drain to other industries

• Lack of investment to realise the legacy of innovation and transfer it into scaleable ongoing practise leads to too many ‘one-offs’

• Creating space for ethics in a fast-moving space

• Cultural and creative industries and traditional broadcasters are not equipped to seize the opportunity to evolve due to:

Lack of financial resilience and access to investment capital to undertake risk and fund significant innovation and change

Lack of in-house expertise to undertake the work or even develop good briefs for external expert collaborators

Lack of digital literacy at board and executive level

Key drivers

• 20th-century funding structures are finding themselves unable to support rapidly changing 21st-century industries coherently

The emergence of business and distribution models, not bound to local/national audiences but able instead to reach global audiences, which are nascent and/or poorly understood

The economic pressures of rapid technological development

First steps

to underdeveloped ethical

As COSTAR prepares its multi-stage, multi-year strategy, it can and should work towards a diversification of funding models. That includes developing a sophisticated approach to its own funding position and facilitating meaningful, intentional coordination of conversations between the wider funding ecology and industry and ROI stakeholders.

The funding call can be written in such a way as to emphasise diversity of KPIs, putting an expectation on recipients to generate value in many directions. COSTAR should support recipients clearly to define different types of value, how they intend to create that value, who benefits from the value thus generated, who it is for, and how that value will be measured.

Alongside these initial steps, huge benefit can be gained from generating a project that works with industry experts to codify a new approach to value and impact measurement for public investment in innovation within the creative industries.

COSTAR can earmark resources explicitly to support and facilitate interconnectivity between different work packages, so as to encourage collaboration, insisting that recipients establish staged pipelines for their work.

Finally, AHRC is well placed to bring together other key players in the funding landscape – including both public bodies, like Arts Council England, BFI Film Fund and KTN, philanthropists and private bodies, like Epic MegaGrants – to create an alliance able to facilitate coordinated funding pipelines. These will avoid cliff edges and ensure proper investment in ethical and climate-conscious frameworks.

Recommendations

• Undertake a value and measurement project: part of the work of building a new industry is helping to set up values, KPIs and value matrixes that e

ectively measure success

• Establish clear roles in the COSTAR investment ecosystem both to support

erent activities

erent strands of of work and to develop the interconnectivity between the

• Facilitate conversations between funding bodies towards a more interconnected approach, co-finance testbeds for better future-proof innovation funding models

• Proactively design connecting programmes and support next possible steps: build in the flexibility to support and react to the successes of SMEs by means of timely business development support, such that emerging opportunities going to market or capitalising on investment can be exploited

Long-term impact

• Creating a sustainable and diverse innovation ecology in which SMEs can thrive and evolve

• Developing a sophisticated understanding of how to support and increase value and impact

• Providing a cohesive funding environment that will give the UK creative innovation industry an edge over other countries

Field Building

Overview

Conversations across our sector repeatedly identified a need for meaningful, intentional coordination that would connect fragmented players; bring to the surface best practice so it can be shared; and identify R&D questions and needs across industries. The ‘glue’ that holds this industry together is currently held informally by a loose network of people, often in hybrid roles within organisations without a mandate or resources to build the industry as a whole. There is strong cross-sector agreement that the current situation of sporadic project grants and efforts by organisations to scale up in isolation have proved insufficient to alleviate market failure and establish a healthy, sustainable ecology that is ready to compete in a global market.

To learn more about how other sectors create alliances for change, we commissioned research from Cassie Robinson. Cassie looked at the approaches and methodologies of organisations involved in making change happen, from the Library of Things to Civic Square – organisations that are moving beyond traditional ways of working deliberately to build more cooperation and collaboration. They are ‘structuring their end goals, leadership and means to become more movement-like’ and ‘generating impact through open and social models of adoption and adaptation [that are] distributed and autonomous, globally networked but deeply embedded in place.’

The key finding from Cassie’s research was that we should make use of a practice called ‘field building’. Field building is a well-established methodology used across other sectors. Many definitions exist, but in essence ‘field building’ is creating collaboration among diverse, interdependent organisations towards common goals: whether that goal is to solve a shared set of problems, to establish new insight and knowledge, or to apply and progress common practices. Field building can happen at both the smaller and larger scales, encompassing the work that must be done to convene a multiplicity of collaborators, to formulate a shared vision, and to help the network act on that vision to create change.

Ilya Prigogine, a physical chemist and Nobel laureate, has said that: ‘When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system…’

Key challenges

• Our emerging and interdisciplinary industry of innovators and entrepreneurs is fragmented and to develop will require shared places and spaces, beyond individual projects

• Rapid changes in technology, business models, and artistic and social development reveal a constant stream of new needs, especially with regard to skills, methodologies, and professional and ethical frameworks, with further unforeseen questions certain to need answers in the near future

Key drivers

• Need to rapidly establish shared priorities, frameworks and methodologies, and investment priorities across a fractured, emerging field that lacks a shared vocabulary

• Lack of insight in rapidly developing industry needs, which is needed for smart government investment

First steps

With COSTAR seeking to make an impact with investment in the field, the first step is to look at infrastructure that is not just bricks and mortar but rather a networked ecology.

By investing in field building, COSTAR can support the connective tissue between industries, and uncover shared questions and mission-driven themes. By avoiding the trap of offering unconnected and sporadic project grants, COSTAR can instead provide the meaningful and intentional coordination which is required to establish a healthy, sustainable, diverse ecology that is ready to compete in a global market. The aim is to invest smart, developing pipelines that work for industry and start building towards long-term networks that can deliver return of investment.

The work undertaken by Audience Labs – facilitating a series of conversations, commissioning research and thought pieces, and organising gatherings – has already laid the groundwork for this cohesive approach.

Through field building we can connect our fragmented sector into Prigogine’s archipelago, with its capacity to ‘shift the entire system’.

Recommendations

• Establishment of an interdisciplinary task force to map industry priorities, working towards a long-term investment plan for the infrastructure for coordinated field building and for the development of models of engagement between industry, COSTAR/AHRC and the government

• All COSTAR grants should include investment in field building, interdisciplinary gatherings aimed at practice-building and knowledge-exchange, such that each funded project drives forward the whole industry

• Within one or multiple COSTAR Lots coordinated talent development strategies and the building industry placement programmes should be undertaken

Long-term impacts

• A more cohesive industry, with clear routes for innovation and exploitation for SMEs, and clear career paths for new talent

• A strong connection between government, funders and industry, leading to smart, focused investment, removing obstacles to growth, and reducing waste and ‘cliff-edges’ for innovations

“The focus of field-building work is on shared missions, shifting systems and making progress together, not simply on scaling up an organisation or intervention. This is a practice that builds out networks, relationships, spheres of influence and collective power around a theme, mission, practice or place. It involves working with many moving parts, supporting those involved to find a shared compass, greater alignment and deepening interdependence.”

From the conclusion of Cassie Robinson’s Field Building research Commissioned by Audience Labs to inform this consultation

Collaborative R&D

Overview

Creative R&D and practice-led research are at the heart of innovation. Currently R&D and project development are closely linked, with R&D happening within the context of individual projects. This situation has led to solutions to multiple problems being developed in many different contexts, yet most of those problems and questions are shared across the sector. When someone is making a bicycle and someone else a car, it makes sense to invent the first wheel together, then adapt it to each different vehicle. This sensible way of doing things, however, demands a new way of approaching both R&D itself and investment in shared and collaborative R&D.

To create a healthy functioning ecology, we need learning to be captured and shared with other practitioners. We need R&D not as project-development, nor as an open exploration, but instead as a process that has freedom to explore, deviate and fail but also clear objectives, limits and desired outcomes. The collective approach to R&D will enrich the field and prevent duplication of effort and investment. This kind of R&D will help uncover the skills and jobs of the future, too, informing a recalibration of training.

Key challenges

• Coordination of shared learning and data as the only way to ‘keep up’ with rapid developments

• A discrepancy between fast-moving industry and slower-paced academic research timelines

• The need to merge methodologies and vocabulary to tease out best practice across industries

• The need to derisk public and private investment ahead of project development and production

Key drivers

• Rapid hardware and software development demands shared learning to maintain speed and momentum: this is the only way to ‘keep up’ in international markets

• The need to create a sector-wide advantage for the UK ecology amid rapid international developments

• The need to establish culture and creative industries as a valuable partner with strong ties to the wider innovation and STEM economy

• Rapid change means there is a constant stream of emergent needs with regards to skills and methodologies. These need to be met to stay ahead

First steps

Set up industry-driven challenges that require collective R&D. Through consultation and ‘idea boxes’ – an ongoing insight-gathering exercise to establish shared questions –we will encourage the industry to outline and then discuss the questions that are currently at play for them. This approach can be light touch: it is a matter of creating sessions at cross-industry events, combined with active outreach, a series of ongoing in-person sessions, digital conversations and an open ‘idea box’ to which people can send their ideas. Once momentum gathers behind a particular question or a key area for R&D is established, interested parties can work together on them as a consortium.

Project-specific R&D – which aims to solve a specific project problem or question ahead of market deployment – is the space where almost all activity has taken place over the last decade. COSTAR will, by contrast, have the most impact by focusing on two different, interrelated funded R&D phases:

Problem-solving R&D or directed R&D is central. This involves a carefully structured R&D question with a clear outline and aimed at repeatablity and scalability in different project contexts. Progress reports should indicate what's possible now, impossible now and, perhaps, what you would like to be possible in the future.

Exploratory R&D is a smaller but equally important strand of investment. Here the focus is on developing productive questions. It brings early investment focus, by ensuring the right questions and framework are established, and the right expertise is in the room – these are the elements that make Problem-solving R&D successful. The outcomes are moments of clarity or small-scale prototypes that will in themselves provide new insights, but will also lead to new ideas/starting points for further development.

Clear pathways must be established from Exploratory R&D to Problem-solving R&D and finally implementation and exploitation. Innovators need to maintain their speed and momentum to stay relevant, especially in an internationally competitive market, which means that bureaucracy must be kept to a minimum - this is a key reason why dependence on funding from multiple streams for a single project is rarely successful.

In setting up COSTAR, we need to build a strong connection and enable dialogue between public organisations and industry. First, we need to ensure the research questions are at some level useful to and relevant for industry, so that the results of research can be leveraged. Second, we need the practical experience and expertise of industry experts to help accelerate insight.

R&D questions and needs should drive the technology set-up for different locations. Each R&D question or theme will demand a unique range of technology that will enable the discovery of new and different uses. On one hand, to understand the opportunities presented by and limitations of particular technologies, you need the right up-to-date kit; on the other hand, certain R&D questions lean towards the unexplored applications of cheaper, more established technologies that are more likely to be sustainable for tours and longer installations. We need to build a responsive infrastructure that can evolve in tandem with the emergence of new technologies and new research questions.

One solution would be a COSTAR ‘Library of Technology’, shared across different physical locations. This central warehouse could be used by all COSTAR-affiliated organisations to create ‘pop-up’ technology environment spaces, designed to be suitable for the needs of any R&D programme. Alongside that, R&D-specific loans/hires/ sponsored technology can be brought in. There is long-established precedent for loan agreements with hardware companies to create R&D set-ups using their tech, in return for which the researchers report on possible future uses of that technology. Each of these ‘curated technology set-ups’ can be used multiple times by multiple teams.

Having an accessible repository of research will be essential for us to be able to understand what has gone before and/or is happening elsewhere in the sector – thus you will be able to find work that is closely linked to what you're working on. The research must mix the academic and the practical, but always be presented in an accessible style so it can inform and support R&D and the development of practice. It should be noted that industry moves at a faster pace in this area than academia, and indeed often can’t cope with being slowed down by organisational and university demands – their timescales are simply totally different. The applicability of research in innovation is timelimited - due to the speed of technology, slow methodologies run the risk of falling victim of 'rapid obsolescence' before it can be applied by industry. Certainly, good documentation must be built into publicly supported R&D, making sure findings, insights and potential future uses are captured for everybody’s use.

The R&D infrastructure will also serve as a supporting pillar for field building (discussed in more detail above). This is because it actively connects practitioners, making it easy not only to find someone with previous experience, but also – with a personal connection already made – it is easier to call on them directly to address further problems.

Recommendations

• The establishment of an ‘industry taskforce’ helping AHRC/COSTAR recipients to build a strong connection to industry and ensure their programme is relevant to industry needs

• Establishing research and R&D clusters that attack R&D or mission-driven questions together and from multiple angles to ensure shared learning that is of value to across industries

• High-quality capture and industry-appropriate methods of dissemination of learning across the COSTAR recipients

• Establishment of a COSTAR ‘Library of Technology’

• COSTAR should emphasise Problem-solving R&D, with a smaller but equally important investment in a programme of Exploratory R&D

Long-term impact

• UK thought leadership on ethical innovation and change management is expanded

• Data, insights and solutions that are of a broader value to a wide industry, both in the UK and globally

• Value of the humanities as a partner in innovation and change management is recognised across industries, funding bodies and policy-makers

• Mission-driven cultural innovation work develops sustainable, long-term ethical models, valued by audiences and with measurable impact

• A diverse and flourishing industry is established with visible and aspirational career paths for diverse talent

“Cross-industry collaboration is about bringing kind of different perspective. The different lens and different insights and different kinds of approaches that creatives can bring can further develop their creative practices a certain way, and also create new imaginings of what the technology can be.”

Freya Murray Google Arts and Culture Lab

Leadership in Ethics Equity and Climate

Overview

We live in a time of increasingly rapid change, with social unrest, global pandemics and the climate emergency, as well as economic turbulence, posing challenges across the world.

To return to Harvard Business Review’s definition of the ‘new normal of change’, the volatility of our current circumstances is unusual inasmuch as:

• It’s perpetual — occurring all the time in an ongoing way

• It’s pervasive — unfolding in multiple areas of life at once

• It’s exponential — accelerating at an increasingly rapid rate

To lead and make change during an era of exponential change takes collaboration, coordination and a cyclical and networked approach to convening and learning.

As climate change unfolds, in particular, it will touch almost all aspects of global society: economic capabilities, political agendas, social demands, technological innovation, public values. The economic and social dimensions of climate change are recognised as driving more attention towards sustainable business models and distribution channels, and, especially in the younger generation, towards the ethics of business, social equity, and environmental costs and impacts.

Simultaneously, the proliferation of digital technologies, resources, capabilities and audiences has driven an increasing commercialisation of culture, in the context of which advocacy for ethical, equitable and artistic value can be lost. This has consequences for the personal lives and career trajectories of creatives, for the priorities and survival of arts and culture organisations, and for our economic and societal vitality.

Culture is an expansive, fertile space in which to ask questions, to be uncertain, to subvert and not to know. In these scary and uncertain times of shift, such a space is of immense value. Culture is perfectly equipped to hold space for nuance and compromise, as well as providing strong levers to enact attitudinal and behavioural change. Culture provides space for the collective exploration of imaginative solutions, creativity and empathy. It has an immense societal value as a medium of exchange and dialogue.

Interdisciplinary projects are uniquely placed to work across silos. We need to build networks of projects, with our focus extending beyond creating single works in isolation. Digital technologies are a means of delivering culture to new, diverse and widespread audiences, and thus a way to enable inclusivity. We need to move on from the focus on technology disseminating existing culture to working out how it can be used to get more people to participate in culture, as both creators and audiences.

These considerations are underdeveloped due to the constant pressure to innovate and evolve. While many organisations and actors throughout the arts and culture value-chain are independently taking steps to assess their own strategies, little work has been done across sectors to build an holistic picture of what is emerging, to facilitate collaboration, and to set up good practice and effective value/impact targets. Establishing ways to navigate and contribute to a changing world is not just beneficial, but necessary. COSTAR, in collaboration with other public and private funding bodies, has a distinctive and necessary role in creating the ethical foundations of the industry, in the development of diverse talents and diverse audiences, and in contributing to healthy communities and a healthy planet.

Key challenges

• Commercial pressures often sideline artistic, ethical, equitable and climate considerations

• Mission-driven innovation is needed to connect siloed industries and disparate funding bodies - a mission can create a critical agenda overlap between otherwise discrete sets of priorities. Creating real value, impact and economic sustainability is hampered by the prevalence of one-off projects with short-term pay-offs

• Innovation involves financial risk, but who should carry, manage and mitigate that risk is unclear: this is especially the case for public goods, including social equity and climate innovation

• How can technological and social innovation be balanced with the desire to create work of experiential richness and the need to create work with realworld relevance?

Key drivers

• Global change in priorities for the creative industries necessitated by economic turbulence, social unrest, global pandemics and the climate emergency

• Audience expectations of brand ethics shifting, especially in the younger generation

• A change in expectations concerning impact across the funding landscape

• The culture sector is looking for economic and impact models to:

• model change

• explore imaginative solutions to long-term problems

• encourage collaboration with other public and private organisations

• create communities with a sense of purpose and belonging

First steps

For the industry to function ethically, there is a need first to develop shared tools and guidelines. This includes ethical frameworks, environmentally friendly production models and diverse talent-development KPIs. To this end, models and learning from other industries can be adapted and adopted.

There is also a need to provide space for mission-driven projects and partnerships. COSTAR can open up a space for a growing interdisciplinary community of leaders from culture, innovation, science and beyond who want to gather, imagine, learn and work together, to facilitate collaboration, and to start establishing good practice and value/impact targets. In collaboration with other funders – both public and private – it can set mission-driven challenges and explore impact evaluation.

Recommendations

• The inclusion of the development ethical frameworks, equitable IP models, environmentally-conscious production models and diverse talent development KPIs within COSTAR

• Ensure shared standards and learning is valued by key players across industries

• Develop an infrastructure of gatherings around ethics, equity and climate as part of field building

• Facilitation of conversation between private and public funding bodies to co-fund mission-driven project investment

• Develop pathways for diverse talent development within COSTAR

Long-term impact

• UK thought leadership on ethical innovation and change management is expanded

• Value of the humanities as a partner in innovation and change management is recognised across industries, funding bodies and policy-makers

• Mission-driven cultural innovation work develops sustainable, long-term ethical models, valued by audiences and with measurable impact

• A diverse and flourishing industry is established with visible and aspirational career paths for diverse talent

“Significant technological and social change is happening at unprecedented speed all around the world. This is driving serious discussion about reframing our narratives around our purpose, developing new priorities, new behaviours, new disciplines and new meaning – and artists and venues alike are redefining their roles and impact onto their communities. We need to have a better set of tools to empower this transformation, find new resources and create platforms for thought leadership.”

Tateo Nakajima

UKIMEA Portfolio Leader for technical services, ARUP

Derisking Distribution

Overview

As the example of the film industry demonstrates, distribution is key to any successful industry, to reach audiences and create a return on investment –equally in financial terms and in terms of impact. Currently, the distribution channels for immersive, hybrid and digital culture are nascent and receive no notable support. Financial security and risk is higher when establishing new forms and new distribution channels in comparison to other forms that have developed mature distribution networks: film has its cinemas, plays have their theatres, visual art has its galleries and museums. An investment that develops and derisks distribution networks would create quick results and have a big impact on the whole sector.

Key challenge

Underdeveloped infrastructure is a key obstacle to achieving audience reach and

sustainability for the sector

• Not enough homogeneity in project production processes yet to create standardised touring solutions yet

Key drivers

• Venues and organisational infrastructures are often set up for traditional art forms without the in-house expertise to adapt to new art forms. These new forms are therefore perceived as risky

The economic pressures in the culture and entertainment sector

First steps

hard for venues to invest or take risk

Rather than building infrastructure this early in the game, smart investment lies in supporting collaborations and intersections with existing infrastructure. Taking work to existing spaces in cultural institutions and underutilised spaces in and around buildings (FOH, courtyards, rehearsal spaces), and working with local councils on activation of high streets and place-making initiatives and with digital channels and platforms that already provide audiences with access should all be encouraged.

Recommendations

“Creative micro businesses experience a cliff edge. This is the point where the support stops as the programme ends. Teams who have been under pressure to deliver shiny new demonstrators find themselves left on their own.”

Gill Wildman Director, Upstarter

Connecting to Global Markets

Overview

The UK creative industries don’t stand in isolation: digital economy, products and audiences are not restricted by geography. In the shift to digital space, ‘community’ is no longer a matter of physical location, cultural boundaries are less constraining, and the social value of art emerges as much from its capacity to innovate as from its focus on specific issues and themes.

A far broader definition of what constitutes art consequently emerges, which may be unsettling for traditionalists, but has the huge advantage of more formally recognising a wider spectrum of work as valuable culture. This includes a broader definition of curation, which can now reach into new kinds of digital artefact, into micro-heritage and into rapid-response collecting, dramatically expanding cultural R&D. The possibilities this presents for broadening audiences should be self-evident.

Considering the future and the development of digital opportunities for the culture sector is by its very nature an international conversation. For UK creative innovation to flourish, it has to think of the work – in the R&D, production and distribution phases – in an international context that allows the UK creative industries to:

• undertake long-distance production that allows for new partnerships

• access international funding and investment streams

• open up new markets and access new audiences

In conversation with directors, innovation leaders and programmers at international venues, we established three dimensions of collaboration:

Artistic commissioning and co-production

Co-production is a recognised form of co-investment and collaboration in many sectors, most notably theatre and performance. There is a recognition that digital tools create new opportunities for internationally dispersed creation and distribution models that are underused at the moment. There is an appetite across international audiences for innovative digital and hybrid experiences. By co-commissioning, development costs can be shared, audience interest is amplified by brand association with prestigious international cultural organisations, and the co-producing consortium can benefit from cross-pollination of marketing and digital audience-building.

Distribution consortiums allow for ‘polymorphic touring’

One of the advantages of digital production is its plasticity. Digital assets can shift and change and can be personalised in response to locations, cultural differences and the current preoccupations of local audiences. A collaboration that is geographically dispersed can be made to look different in different places. Polymorphic touring leans into those possibilities: while it retains its artistic kernel, it remains open to incorporate elements established in dialogue with each hosting institution, audience and location. (The term ‘polymorphic touring’ was coined in the first of our international Round Tables.)

Currently projects are not being made with the needs of venues in mind. This consortium driven shared brief ensures viability and reach.

Collective development of standards

There is a lack of standardisation for IP, business models and audience engagement initiatives - this inhibits development both of cultural value and greater economic resilience. As digital has the potential to flow frictionlessly over borders, a greater coherence in models and better pipelines to transfer IP and business practices from one territory into the next would support market growth.

Key challenges

• Funding is often focused on national impact, despite the huge opportunities that exist for hybrid and digital creative industries to access international markets and audiences. For many organisations, SMEs and projects a purely national market is not big enough to sustain them. It is vital for global networks and markets to be recognised and supported in funding briefs.

• Few festivals, symposia or marketplaces yet exist where the global cultural innovation community can meet to exchange knowledge across silos, acquire or book work, and establish new partnerships

• There is a lack of expertise in existing cultural infrastructure (venues, cinemas, museums, public buildings) when it comes to touring new forms of work

• The lack of a coordinated approach is restricting the ability to build markets and outlets for innovative cultural forms, with investment often being made in individual products rather than distribution infrastructure

Key drivers

• Emergent technologies are allowing geographically dispersed teams to work and create together in new ways

• A ‘big niche’ is developing: communities as physical entities become less important as global communities who share interests are now able to access platforms that speak directly to their tastes and economies. This opens up a large, geographically dispersed audience to previously ‘niche’ forms

• Institutions with strong ties to their respective communities are using digital tools to benefit from exchange with and support from allied organisations in other communities and countries

• The advent of micro-patronage and crypto-funding models and venture funding for culture simultaneously lessens reliance on and expands the impact of investment by traditional funders

First steps

COSTAR-supported projects will want and need to export to the international market. By hosting and supporting the emergence of international distribution conversations and consortiums, COSTAR can be proactive in creating pathways for the future exploitation of work it supports, and these pathways can then be exploited by the wider UK sector.

Recommendations

• Co-invest in an initial international touring consortium for selected COSTAR-supported projects

• UK to host an international symposium to facilitate conversation on new forms of international co-production and distribution

• Facilitate conversation between international funding bodies towards co-investment in international co-productions

Long-term

• UK cements

international market turns to more hybrid and digital cultural

strategic

• The impact of UK investment

COSTAR in the wider ecology

COSTAR is a well-timed intervention in a potentially valuable expansion of the creative industries. The size and duration of the investment can create the muchneeded interconnected activity that can help address the current market failure, break down remaining silos in the field and confirm the UK as a thought leader and major player in a rapidly expanding global market of hybrid and digital culture and events.

New models of working are required for the 21st century, in industry, in supporting infrastructure and in funding. These technologies and markets – changing at dizzying speed – demand a higher degree of flexibility and responsiveness than we have been used to, and a sophisticated approach to multiple forms of R&D is required. There are quick wins to be made by investing in field building, shared infrastructure and facilities, collective R&D, distribution consortia and talent development. These are not separate elements, but supported together will form the pipeline to a successful, functioning ecology.

COSTAR is not alone on this journey, of course, but it is uniquely well placed to be the connector between industry, the wider funding landscape and government. By working with key stakeholders, it can expand and extend its resources and ensure the impact of investment reaches further and further.

Recommendations:

Creating diversity of scale and geography in the funded portfolio

The field has a great diversity of scale at work. Small individual artists and small creative agencies are often quick to adopt and adapt technologies and at the vanguard of new developments, big technology companies have access to and develop the newest cutting edge technologies, cultural institutions often don’t have in-house innovation expertise but facilitate the connection to audiences. COSTAR can be a key connector between different size and scale of teams and geographies.

Establish a membership model

COSTAR will host and generate a wealth of essential knowledge and much-needed connections for a wide variety of national and international organisations in the field of culture, technology and innovation. Through membership models COSTAR can monetise its thought leadership and a growing body of insights and good practice.

Co-investment in R&D topics with other funding bodies

COSTAR will be uniquely placed to identify and advocate for industry needs. It therefore can connect other art and innovation funders, public and private, national and international, to fund collective investigations. Problem-solving R&D and Exploratory R&D lend themselves especially well to this model. Co-investment in mission-driven project constellations with ‘mission-specific’ funders

When working on impact-driven work towards change, for example on climate, equity and diversity, COSTAR can work with funders of social innovation and social impact

Co-investment in talent development with key industry players

Many large technology, innovation and digital production companies have been dealing with a shortage of talent, with many of them already working on and investing in talent development. COSTAR can bring together different interested parties and host talent-development schemes within its wider activity.

Tom Burton Head of Interactive, BBC Studios

“Culture is the space for public imagination […] We can speak to more people, more effectively and with greater certainty of our future if we address the uncertainty in how we go about it. Build organisations that through virtue of being less siloed and operating in a shared space, address contemporary and more diverse thinking”

Conclusion

The UK’s world-leading creative industries are, in the words of the government, “at the heart of the nation’s competitive advantage”. However, as for many industries, there are major changes on the horizon. These are shaped by a range of national and global trends: rapid digital innovation, shifts in audience behaviour and expectations, and sociological, economic and climate volatility.

The UK is very well-placed to take a role as one of the leaders in the emergent field operating on the cultural innovation nexus. Due to its vibrant creative industries and innovation sector a field has emerged organically which is looking at future forms of culture and creativity. World-leading projects have already been made and the opportunities for growth are evident and manifold. Although this work provides a growth opportunity, as well as providing opportunities to meet the radical economic, cultural and social challenges the world now faces – we are currently experiencing market failure in the sector due to an inefficient distribution of resources, access to the right expertise and technologies.

As in any young industry, there is a great deal of fragmentation. Too often high-quality and innovative work happens in relative isolation, and with massive disparities in access to resources and opportunity. Although there are many instances of successful collaborations across silos, there is no investment in the infrastructure needed to identify, sustain, learn from and build on these successes.

The industry consultation undertaken by Audience Labs has pointed towards how AHRC and COSTAR can invest to create the cohesion that is currently lacking. Dominant funding models tend to focus only on the delivery of single products, IP and discrete projects, rather than on the processes that can help build the industry itself. To realise the potential of a new world-leading field within the creative industries, the UK needs to build an infrastructure to connect and support the sector at this critical point.

Mature industries have structures that facilitate collaboration across the key players. Funders have a big role to play in establishing a mature and sustainable industry, developing a field that has social and cultural impact, provides models for economic success, and opens up diverse and sustainable career paths for the next generation. This report provides a starting point and key recommendations that will see rapid gains in developing connections and operational models across silos. This kind of brokerage must mend any disconnect between academic research and the more rapidly evolving needs of the industry. It must create spaces for collective R&D and create forums where ideas and expertise can be exchanged and built on.

As new forms of storytelling and culture emerge over the next decade, the UK has all the ingredients to consolidate its position in and share of the international creative market. We can’t chase quick fixes and force-fit process and solutions from existing formats onto new technologies. Instead we must work, learn and develop together, as an industry. We need to establish, adopt and implement standards with regard to ethics, equity and climate change. We can establish and develop new ways to assess value and to measure outcomes that allow for ethical innovation with impact and ensure a diverse workforce that is open to the broadest possible range of the country’s talents.

Our industry consultation has shown that to do so will require a sophisticated and connected approach to R&D aimed to drive the industry forward; collaboration between educational establishments and industry to ensure the right talent is being developed; and the establishment of networks of venues and distribution for our new work, both nationally and internationally. All cultural products require a distribution infrastructure to attain full profitability – with accessibility bringing audiences who, in turn, challenge the creators to make better and better work.

The timing could not be more perfect for AHRC’s COSTAR initiative. COSTAR is very well-placed to play a key role in developing future cultures and a profitable new industry for the UK. To do so it has to create the much needed connections, uncovering industry needs to create interconnected pipelines from early R&D to distribution. As the industry develops, so must its support structure. COSTAR and AHRC have to develop mechanisms to stay informed and responsive to the innovation and industry it supports. By establishing COSTAR as an ecosystem with clear interconnected objectives and by placing it at the heart of facilitating conversations we can provide the UK with an advantage in this rapidly emerging global market.

There are challenges to be met , but by investing in the nexus of cultural innovation, a bright future is there to be seized.

Appendix

The Future is Hybrid

Standing in 2022, looking back over the past few years, the pandemic changed many things, for example it meant that I could stop having to argue why ‘digital’ was something that cultural organisations needed to think about and proactively engage with. I have been leading and working on digital projects for over 15 years. As managing director of Substrakt I work with cultural institutions of all shapes and sizes and across the world, from Shakespeare’s Globe to the American Repertory Theater, Turner Contemporary to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Malmo Opera and more. We design and build websites and digital products alongside providing strategic consultancy, training and support services. The pandemic meant that overnight digital channels became more or less the only way that cultural organisations could engage with artists and share work with audiences.

Encouragingly the past two years saw much digital experimentation from cultural organisations of all size around the globe. From immersive binaural audio experiences and hand-made puppetry workshops through to generative artworks, interesting mash ups of immersive theatre, film and online gaming and a livestreamed Glastonbury

But as organisations have been able to welcome visitors and audiences back in-person the pre-pandemic status quo has tried to aggressively reassert itself. This is completely understandable after the chaos, sadness and difficulties of the past two years.

But unfortunately the certainties (such as they were) of the pre-pandemic world no longer exist. Audience expectations have shifted. Audiences that cultural organisations previously relied on have not returned in the same numbers, and at the same frequency. Indeed, for some, the habit of cultural attendance has been broken all together. We believe that it is only by accepting and leaning into this shift that organisations are going to be able to position themselves for the increasingly uncertain future we are all moving towards.

Reflecting on what might come next I feel that hybrid experiences will form an increasingly important part of the way that all cultural organisations make and share work. The pandemic emphasised that arts and culture organisations are more than their buildings - they are their work, their artistic community and their audiences and the gathering of these people for dialogue and connection. Buildings and physical space are a tremendous asset for this but every cultural organisation can also expand into the digital realm. Technology and creative R&D can open up venues to a broader community, and help to transform how and where culture is made and experienced.

The arc, rhythm and shaping of the audience experience in hybrid and digital experiences are different to traditional forms of culture, and the context of these experiences is similarly altered. The format of arriving at a cultural building and moving through it in a way that is defined by the physical geography of the space, and the social cues and norms of cultural attendance, do not easily map onto digital experiences that may be being experienced asynchronously, by people on their own devices, in multiple different locations, on their own or in crowds of people (who may be doing something else entirely).

Suddenly the way in which people find out about a show becomes a much more obvious part of the experience itself. The technical infrastructure of that digital experience dictates the quality of the audience experience, the commercial model is completely different, the language you need to use to describe this type of experience may not be widely shared (or even understood) at this point.

Everything is nascent, everything is interconnected.

Much of the digital culture we have seen and experienced over the past two years has not addressed this. Experiences have started with a youtube link and culminated with a ‘this livestream has now ended’ message. The communality, liveness and exchange of cultural experience has been flattened by a lack of thought, and an anxiety to ‘just make the thing happen’, the business models are either still emerging or have been proven to be wildly optimistic and unworkable.

To enable this transformation from a mostly physical venue to a hybrid venue - our experience tells us that we need to think about four things simultaneously:

• Artistic development- what do we want to make digitally, who do we want to make it, and what makes it good

• Production and process - what are the tools available, how do we use them, what is the production process, and what are the expertises and skills we need in our team to create good work.

• Distribution and digital infrastructure - what are the tools we need to present the work in an accessible, sustainable and exciting manner suited to the artistic expression AND the audience needs

• Monetization and audience reach - how do we bring audiences into the work and make it meaningful for them to do so, expanding on arts and culture’s impact and do that in a financially sustainable manner

We believe that it is only by giving these areas of considerations equal importance that truly excellent work and experiences can be conjured and shared with and become meaningful to audiences, and it is only through the creation of truly excellent work that any sort of viable commercial model can be developed. In other words; if the work is bad you can’t develop a viable industry, if the audience can’t access the work, it can’t become meaningful to them. All these four elements are intertwined and mutually support and amplify each other.

What we often see is that funding programmes or institutions try to approach ‘digital’ in only one way. They are driven by monetization without having a good offer, or they invest in on-off projects that don’t have a sustainable route to market, or they aim to reach a new audience through digital marketing rather than a genuine culturally relevant offer.

We know that the sector is still reeling from the trauma of the past two years (and, in many ways, the decade preceding that), the appetite for experimentation and risk is limited, leadership and boards are looking for a sure-fire thing to rebuild depleted reserves with limited resources.

But we believe that it is only by proactively exploring the opportunities offered by digital and hybrid working that the sector will flourish again. There is no one-sizefits all solution, some will expand more into the digital realm than others, some channels, formats and models might suit one type of art-form and audience more than others. Every venue, every artist, every production is unique. But there will be shared questions and shared solutions across the board.

There is a need for a framework that will guide organisations as they tentatively start to move into this space. Working for this canvas requires a radically interdisciplinary, collaborative and integrated approach. We need to see investment to facilitate investigations that provide (some) scaleable answers to the questions that we know many organisations we are working with are starting to ask. We need to examine the systems, processes and skills needed to create this work and share it with audiences.

The pandemic punched a hole in our established norms, but we believe that this has created an exciting space, opportunity and imperative for cultural organisations to rethink how they serve and engage with artists and audiences. Digital is an integral part of the fabric of our society, organisations need to seize this chance to actively engage with what this means for how cultural experiences are made and shared. The opportunities are only just beginning to be understood, let’s be part of shaping what our collective future looks like.

This article was commissioned by Audience Labs as part cross-industry consultation commissioned by AHRC exploring the emergent creative and economic possibilities at the intersection of performance, culture, technology and innovation.

This contribution was written by: Ash Mann - Managing Director, Substrakt

Ash Mann is the Managing Director of Substrakt, Strategic Director of Creating Impakt and is a Board Trustee of Northern Stage. Ash has worked in and with cultural organisations of all sizes on a diverse range of digital projects over the past two decades. He produces the Digital Works programme of content and events - hosting the regular Digital Works podcast. In 2021 he founded the Tech in Culture EDI Alliance which aims to support, share and accelerate best practices around Equity Diversity and Inclusion in the cultural sector.

Finding New Models

I’ve alway been fond of a provocation rather than a question. I’m not making a water tight case here. I don’t pretend that in 800 or so words that I can make up every analogy, that you couldn’t change my mind or affect the viewpoints expressed. What I do think, and I know others do as well, is that the subject below deserves more consideration. I hope it provokes thought and discussion.

So first up where are we at? As cultural and creative practitioners we sit at a growing intersection between practice, audience and sector. Driven in part by technology but also shifts in audience behaviour, methods of distribution and the formation of cross disciplinary practice. This creates uncertainty and fragmentation but also breeds new possibilities. Embracing that uncertainty is about challenging our assumptions and biases, broadening the different possibility spaces they define, in which we grow, and we can access. But we are not going to do that just by making new things differently, we have to look at the foundations, the models of business which are the spaces in which all these considerations come into play. Underpinning our longevity, legacy and value. It’s not just thinking about what we do, but how and why we do it.

Now for the provocation, one that surfaces time and time again; We don’t invest enough in developing and operating new models of business for cultural creative organisations that are fit for purpose and deliver impact in this environment. We retrofit to outdated models, mostly fund projects, but not people, or exploring, re-evaluating and iterating how we might operate. Or who we work with, where we work and how we define, deliver and measure value.

Our peers in the commercial sector meanwhile whilst far from perfect hungrily consume and assimilate a myriad of influences, applying their creativity and smarts to how they create opportunities and drive value, with an admittedly privileged, troubled but notably more agnostic than idiosyncratic approach.

That isn’t to say there isn’t good thinking and practice happening out there, but that it can be opportunistic and happen in-spite of not because of the ecosystem we operate in. It is often siloed, and as a consequence rarely has a wider impact and understandably lacks the scope to take a truly sophisticated and wide reaching view. And of course our creative output is the way in which we explore and put things into practice but isn’t it horse before cart and myopic if that’s the predominant way in which we are briefed or able to tackle this challenge?

So let’s assume at this point you are nodding your head at least a bit. What can we drill down to, tackle and discuss, what levers, considerations do we have and maybe could gain some momentum in starting to explore and define these new models?

We need to strike a better balance in funding, go beyond projects to deliver a diversity of value and success by investing in people, practice and the space we need to re-think, innovate and define how we work. And this isn’t just about trying to change the familiar cultural faces. It’s also about the smaller agile organisations and bringing into existence those we need to see. They can define this new model, approach, and collectively have an impact in collaboration with others.

We need to think beyond our silos and explore and define models in a wider cross sector and international context. Our community is small but it’s global, our audience the same. Our methods of distribution are fragmented, finance is complex, with myriad competing interests often defining the work instead of the audience. And we are an immature market so we (funders, producers, venues) need to adopt a coordinated, global outlook and form the community and models that enable us to tap into a wider market and audience.

Equally the cultural sector does not likely hold all the inspiration and answers for its own challenges. We need to look outside of our sector. Not just for inspiration and cases of how we tackle models of finance, operations and distribution but also to opportunities to operate at a mutual intersection. Diversifying our sources of revenue, audiences and opportunity.

We need reassess how we extract, deliver and communicate value. Dare I say be a bit more aggressive. Yes what we create and it’s impact on our audience is paramount but what other services, products or assets do we have sitting in front of us? Ones that perhaps those in other sectors are already exploiting. We should define shared values across sectors, recognising what we deliver, particularly for the commercial sector. We have to measure and communicate our success in terms others can buy in to. Not just so we can speak to those in other sectors, but also so we can collectively communicate the inherent value we bring as a sector, to drive funding and support.

Most of all we need to work together to facilitate this body of work. Nothing I’ve said here is the job of one part of the ecosystem. Each of us has a role to play. Whether that's funding and supporting the work and organisations necessary or being open, sharing knowledge, data and results to grow a market and iterate models rather than owning a slice of a smaller less effective one.

Culture is the space for public imagination. We are privileged to reflect back to people the world they live in, to enter into and create dialogue. We can speak to more people, more effectively and with greater certainty of our future if we address the uncertainty in how we go about it. Build organisations that through virtue of being less siloed, operating in a shared-space and addressing contemporary and more diverse thinking as businesses own their own futures, defining and shaping the spaces and culture we operate in.

This article was commissioned by Audience Labs as part cross-industry consultation commissioned by AHRC exploring the emergent creative and economic possibilities at the intersection of performance, culture, technology and innovation.

This contribution was written by: Tom Burton - Head of Interactive, BBC Studios

Tom is a multi-award-winning Interactive Director, Executive Producer and Industry Leader. He’s worked for the past 20+ years at the intersection between technology, creativity, and innovation. Multi-disciplined, he has worked globally across commercial and cultural sectors with individuals and organisations from Oculus, Google and Magic Leap to AHRC and Arts Council. Delivering large scale live experiences and ground breaking immersive content to individual artistic pieces. He's founded theatre collectives to teams within large organisation's. Is currently Head of Interactive at BBC Studios and also consults and mentors with organisations and artists. He’s was nominated as a BIMA100 Challenger and New Thinker, advises BAFTA on the immersive industry, chairs the immersive council at BIMA and has spoken for Apple and RCA to Design Week and NYCs Future of Storytelling.

“We do everything to avoid uncertainty but the irony is that’s the only place we can go if we’re ever going to see differently.” Beau Lotto

Avoiding the cli

edge of creative R+D

Even the best R+D ideas take a lot longer to get into any market without financial support and the right form of business vehicle. At Upstarter we see creative founders running out of money, and taking a wrong turn due to an unhelpful funding opportunity. Or taking years to make it happen. Or they get worn down so much that they give up. There is a huge untapped potential that simply does not get a chance to blossom. It just falls off

We have recently lived through a golden age of creative R&D programmes. Though I am sure for many it does not feel so golden. What if we could increase our ability to boost exciting R&D ideas? What if we increased our ability to create successful products, services and experiences in the world. Create more value. And in so doing create new creative companies and the sector?

Recent inspired R&D programmes and initiatives have produced and nurtured some truly great ideas. Think Audience of the Future, Clusters and other funded programmes. I’ve been lucky to be close to this action through a long term collaboration with Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio, and UWE, and other academic partnerships. Back in 2016 I supported the REACT Alumni, later creating a programme for South West Creative Technology Network in 2019. This brought business development to SWCTN's immersion, automation and data R&D explorations. Now in the Bristol + Bath Creative R+D part of the Clusters programme I get to work with Crack, Stormjar, Trigger Stuff amongst many other pioneers. In my work I see how people on creative R&D programmes are highly skilled in identifying whole new applications of technologies with the power of their creative approaches. Over time a perspective gets built around the nature of local creative R+D ecologies, and directly key stages of their development.

I am always uplifted by new emergent ideas, where they are full of potential and promise. Coming from the corporate R&D innovation and consultancy world, I have experienced what well-funded and resourced R&D looks like. A combination of dedicated time, space, talent and roadmaps of dynamic development, all focussed on building out the idea into a delightful product, service or experience.

As R&D programmes showcase prototypes and work in progress, we see that they are ripe with possibilities. But what actually happens when the programme ends? I see creative micro businesses experience a cliff edge. This is the point where the support stops as the programme ends. Teams who have been under pressure to deliver shiny new demonstrators then find themselves left on their own to take the next steps. This is often without a clear idea of what they need to do, and through no fault of their own.

One way of compensating for this cliff edge as a funder is to consider the path of their development in your process - where do they go next? It is possible to minimise this cliff edge by designing-in the means to consider how creative business people can move these ideas forward. This approach means extending your focus to the 'what’s next' part - where do they get to with you. How does this connect with their next stage? Do they want their idea to be bought by a company with deep pockets? Or do they want finance to make the business scale by creative-friendly VC or impact investors? Essentially, how do we help them to get into the place where their idea, offer, market and business model is clear and appealing?

In some creative R&D programmes, valuable support comes in the form of timely and tailored creative business development. This is the kind of work I do right now for B+B Creative R+D, part of the Clusters programme. The work starts with where the companies are in their business development journey, with what they feel they know about how business works. Working on R&D programmes allows me to introduce business thinking as the R&D is being prototyped. I get to bring in experienced creative founders: inspiring pioneers who share their distinctive and hard won approach to business creation and growth. In Upstarter we help our companies grasp traditional business components with a creative mindset and adapt them for their own journeys. We wrap our work with peer support and challenge creatives to find their own way of approaching making a business: a vehicle to support their idea and their part in it.

Funders can build on this thinking and expand their work in a few ways at the early stages of a new programme, including:

• identify the edges around your programmes, what else is on offer to people with project ideas like this - this will be different in each location

• actively design the connection between your programme and their next possible steps

• design temporary connecting programmes where they do not yet exist

• invest in business development work as well as for the R+D work

• build into your programmes the flexibility to react to and support SMEs with timely business development support to exploit emerging opportunities going to market or capitalising on investment opportunities

Being close to creative R&D action is an exhilarating experience. It’s a privilege to observe how hard teams work within these funded programmes. If we could more successfully enable the progress of these ideas, we could harness the massive potential value created by those engaged in creative R&D. To do so we must prevent the emergence of cliff-edges by closing that gap between programmes ending and successful next steps. By thoughtful planning in how we design our programmes we can avoid the cliff edge.

This article was commissioned by Audience Labs as part cross-industry consultation commissioned by AHRC exploring the emergent creative and economic possibilities at the intersection of performance, culture, technology and innovation.

This contribution was written by: Gill Wildman - Director, Upstarter

Gill Wildman is director of Upstarter, a strategic designer working with extensive experience in new product and service development with new technologies. She works with many academic collaborations, cultural R+D partnerships and funders to advise, design & deliver productive work for creative R+D. She has worked on REACT Alumni in 2016, South West Creative Technology Network in 2019, bringing business development to its immersion, automation and data R&D explorations, and now in the Bristol + Bath Creative R+D part of the Clusters programme. Upstarter is her creative and social business incubator - a side hustle turned established business. She has designed many innovation processes, workshops and labs. With her agency Plot, she has consulted for BBC, Nokia, Oculus, Microsoft, IKEA, Facebook and many others. She holds a PhD in Strategic Design Practice from RMIT Melbourne.

What the Arts and Culture Are Worth

We’re above it. We couldn’t survive without it. It pains us. We resent it. Yet money is the first yardstick we reach for when we try to measure the success of Art with a capital ‘A’.

The proliferation of digital technologies, resources, capabilities and audiences has increased the association of cultural relevance with commerciality. But we also struggle in this new context with how to use money, apply it, or distribute it in ways that create artistic value. This has consequences for creatives’ personal lives and career trajectories, arts and culture organisations’ priorities and survival, and our economic and societal vitality.

How do we declare the value of the arts? We can recite all of the reasons why money does or doesn’t matter: The arts create a rich society. The arts are riches in and of themselves or conversely the arts are for/by rich people. The arts spring from, or reflect a rich society. These arguments resonate but are somehow lacking and don't seem to capture the full story.

What if to better understand the value of art in society, we have to understand money and value better? It is possible to question the closemindedness and short-sightedness of value for money thinking in the arts while more deeply engaging with the true meaning of money for the arts.

Economists ascribe three dimensions to money: - a store of value - a means of exchange - a unit of account.

We’re most familiar with the idea of money as a store of value and history is full of examples of people using “valuable” things like gold or silver or shells as money. A fiat currency has value when backed by a government’s resources, reputation and might. We use a currency to buy and sell things and we do our bookkeeping in pounds or dollars or whatever the local currency may be.

Even Bitcoin, millions of people view it as a store of value, even though we rarely use it to buy and sell goods and services besides other currencies or denominate business accounts or contracts.

We usually think about the arts and culture through the store of value lens. We decide what's valuable - what cultural institutions fund, what people pay to see, or what work has cultural or artistic credibility. But the arts also have value as a medium of exchange, as a means of dialogue and a way for us to communicate with each other. They also have value as a unit of account, but we get lost in using other people’s yardsticks, whether it’s money or attendance or followers.

If we were to look at the value of the arts in the multi-dimensional way that economists consider the value of money, what would that mean?

As a store of value, the arts could demonstrate excellence, prestige, novelty, profitability, attendance, sheer pleasure…however creators decide to define value in a way that can be compared to other things. As a medium of exchange, we could ask how the arts enable exchange, transactions, communications, and relationships that have value to individuals, communities and society. As a unit of account, we could ask how the arts create a record, artefacts, and knowledge.

Once we enrich our definition of the value of the arts, how do we decide how to invest in the arts? How do we combine the economics of how we use resources with the evaluation of artistic merit? Public policy evaluation specialist Julian King writes that in order to assess value for investment (of any resource, not just money), we need to ask, What did we put in? What did we get out? Was it worth it? And to whom?

This is where the multiple dimensions of artistic value conceived as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account truly bear fruit. Not only is it a question of how much attendance did we get for how large a grant, but what relationships were built? What was left behind?

Applying those monetarily-informed dimensions of artistic value changes the rubric of who “deserves” access to resources and who should be included in the decisions. This is where the opportunity for participation by people who aren’t usually part of the process emerges. Participation isn’t just a fuzzy emotional or social value that creators share, it then actually creates value in the currency that creators have defined. And using a multi-dimensional rubric of artistic value also allows creators to insist that their value be evaluated and tallied in their chosen currency.

Rather than shying away from money and evaluation, valuing the arts and culture as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account empowers creators. It allows them to clearly define value on their own terms, how they intend to create value, who it is for, and how that value will be measured. For those who seek funding and those who seek to fund the arts, it will connect money to artistic value in ways that allow the work to flourish.

This article was commissioned by Audience Labs as part cross-industry consultation commissioned by AHRC exploring the emergent creative and economic possibilities at the intersection of performance, culture, technology and innovation.

This contribution was written by:

Dr Noshua Watson - Managing Director, Interwoven Impact

Dr Watson is the founder of Interwoven Impact, a social impact analytics consultancy for content companies. Interwoven helps companies measure how their marketing, media, educational or research content creates social change.

She holds a PhD in Strategy from INSEAD specializing in Corporate Social Responsibility and a masters in Economics from Stanford University.

She has worked with clients including the United Nations, Rockefeller Foundation, Unilever, UK FCDO, Inter-American Development Bank and PwC.

Participants and contributors

Audience Labs would like to thank the many people across industries who have contributed their expertise and insight to this industry consultation. Especially Tom Burton who has worked closely with me throughout the process.

Adrian George ArtScience (Singapore)

Director Exhibitions, Public Programmes and Museum Services

Alex Hocevar The Hocevar Group (Canada) President

Alex Wills Disguise Chief Experience Officer

Ali Hossaini

King's College London

Artist & Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Engineering

Ash Mann Substrakt Managing Director

Beatrice Pembroke

King's College London Executive Director Culture

Ben Lane Arts Council England Senior Manager, Business Innovation

Ben Lumsden Epic Business Development Manager

Bengi Unsal ICA Director

Caroline Cooper Charles Screen Yorkshire

Cassie Robinson Independent

Chris Michaels

Chief Executive

Strategic Design, Funding Strategy, Emerging Futures and

The National Gallery Director of Digital, Communications and Technology

Christopher Smith AHRC Chair

The National Ballet of Canada

Christopher Sonneman

Director of Technology

Cimeon Ellerton-Kay Social Convention Founder and Exec Director

Clare Reddington Watershed CEO

Daisy O'Reilly Weinstock Good Innovation

Director of Big Bets

Dan Tucker Independent Immersive Producer & Curator

Elena Simperl

King's College London Professor of Computer Science

Emma Cooper Innovate UK / KTN

Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Manager

Eva Liparova Independent Senior Product Manager & Producer

Fran Sanderson

NESTA Director, Arts & Culture Investments and Programmes

Freya Murray Google Arts + Culture Creative Director

Ghislaine Boddington B>D>S / University of Greenwich / Digital Planet Creative Director / Presenter

Gill Wildman Upstarter Director

Graeme Earl King's College London

Professor of Digital Humanities & Vice Dean - External Relations

Hannah Chalklin AHRC UKRI Investment Manager - (Research) Infrastructure

Hasan Bakhshi

NESTA Director, Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre

Henry Southern HarrisonParrott Manager Tours and Projects

Hilary Knight AEA Consulting Senior Consultant

Ian Dodgeon OKRE Director

James Golding Epic Games Technical Director

James Smithies King's College London Professor of Digital Humanities

Jeffery Garner Independent Innovation Investor

Jessica Taylor Independent Consultant / Former MD PRELOADED

Jo Lansdowne Pervasive Media Studio Executive producer

Joanna Zylinska King's College London Professor of Media Philosophy + Critical Digital Practice

Jonathan May Marshmallow Laser Feast Executive Producer (maternity)

Jonny Kanagasooriam BBC Sounds Head of Content Strategy

Jules Chappell Kokoro CEO

Kate Pullinger Bath Spa University

Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries

Kati Price V&A Head of Digital Media

Liz Barber RADA Business development

Lottie Donovan Independent Fundraising Consultant

Luca Viganò King's College London Playwright, Vice-Dean (Enterprise and Engagement)

Mark Atkin Crossover Labs Creator/Curator

Mark Cranwell Block 9 Managing Director

Myriam Achard Phi Gallery (Canada)

Chief, New Media Partnerships and PR Noshua Watson Interwoven Director

Paul Tam West Kowloon (Hong Kong) Executive Director, Performing Arts

Rod Dacombe King's College London Reader in Politics / Director of the Centre for British Politics

Ruth Pelopida Arup Associate Director, Arts Culture & Entertainment

Sacha Golob King's College London Reader in Philosophy, Co-Director Centre for Philosophy and Art Samantha King VIVE Arts Head of Programme

Sarah Brin Media Molecule (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Business Development Manager

Sarah Ellis RSC Director OF Digital Development

Seth Honnor Kaleider Artistic Director

Sharon Clarke Raucous Artistic Director

Shehani Fernando Independent Immersive Producer/Director

Simon Whalley Framestore Executive Producer

Sol Rogers

REWIND / Magnopus Global Director of Innovation

Stella Kanu LIFT Executive Director

Stuart Buchanan Sydney Opera House (Australia)

Head of Digital Programming at Tao-tao Chang AHRC Head of (Research) Infrastructure

Tarek Iskander BAC Artistic Director

Tateo Nakajima Arup Arup Fellow, UKIMEA Region Portfolio Leader for Technical Services

Toby Co

ey National Theatre Head of Digital Development

Tom Burton BBC Studios Head of Immersive

Tom Higham York Biennale Founder and Creative Director

Ulrich Schrauth

VRHAM! Festival Virtual Reality & Arts / BFI XR and Artistic Director / Curator

Vanessa Brassey King's College London Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts (CPVA)

Zoe Rasbash Pervasive Media Studio Environmental Emergencies Action Researcher