What is the role of artists in our increasing digital society?

I will come back to this question later, but first let’s talk about information representation, historical records and artificial intelligence.

Dr. Sarah Bay-Cheng, co-author of Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field, is a theatre historian who is most often found pushing the boundaries of how we define theatre and live performances by incorporating digital and interactive elements into the mix. She was appointed in 2019 as Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University, the alma mater of Mariel Marshall, founder of StagePage, a recommender system for the performing arts.

At Marshall’s invitation, Bay-Cheng gave a talk on August 21, 2020 on the topic of information representation in the performing arts. It began with an anecdote of a particularly lively discussion Bay-Cheng had with members of an international working group (on digital technologies in theatre and performance history and historiography, if you must know).

The discussion was a philosophical one about the difference between an “actor” and a “performer”. The question on Bay-Cheng’s mind was related to the creation of ontologies as it is used in computer science: how would machines understand that difference, if at all? And how would that influence a machine’s understanding of human descriptions of performing arts events?

Thought about in this way, getting the distinction between an actor and a performer just right becomes incredibly important. As Bay-Cheng elegantly framed it, this can be the difference between “something getting recognized and something becoming completely invisible”. In her talk, she discussed five distinct areas in the performing arts sector to underscore the importance of the act of translation from human text to machine language (and back again).

The first area is around the curation of information related to performing arts. Particularly information related to specific events and productions, and all of the nuances and details that go with it. Beyond the overwhelming volume of such information that is available for human consumption, machines are also “reading” and “interpreting” the same texts for their own purposes. Those very same machines are generating our social media feeds, all kinds of other information in human-speak and actively shaping what we perceive as the most relevant and interesting.

The second and third areas are criticism and history of the performing arts. For Bay-Cheng who is a historian, textual descriptions of performances are sometimes the only records that are available for performance that occurred prior to the existence of recording technologies. Today, historians and archivists are adapting their practices in response to the incredible amount of digital content and records that exist publicly around a variety of performances. This requires fundamentally rethinking how we archive, how we interpret, and how we disseminate that understanding in the digital domain.

This is all fascinating, of course, but what does it mean in practice? Why should those in the performing arts sector care? Let’s address this question before we talk about the last two areas in Bay-Cheng’s talk.

The Relevance of Information Representation in the Performing Arts

As you may already suspect, this isn’t only of interest to humanities scholars who must evolve in the context of a digital society; it has real world implications in the arts and culture sector. Daniela Rosu, a computer scientist and post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Social Services Engineering, specializes in co-developing the core of advanced computational systems in domains such as medicine and social science. She offered some real-world examples of challenges that the arts sector will need to respond to in the form of questions:

How might a machine use the publicly available audience responses and reactions to various shows to create a personalized “critic”? What kind of values would this machine have? What kind of art would it prefer over others? What if previews and synopses of shows are automatically generated based on such a “critic”, and directly influence audiences’ decision as to what shows they will attend?

Perhaps the most critical question of all: if machines have such a powerful influence over the careers of artists and their creations, are there artists at the table when these technologies are being developed?

The Canadian Performing Arts Sector’s Response

In the short-term, there is a critical need to keep up with the most influential machines on the internet: search engines and voice assistants. There are standardized web “housekeeping” practices that can be done to structure online public event information to improve their discoverability, such as setting up single web pages for individual events, to ways to improve the discoverability of event information when using event plug-ins for WordPress.

Many arts institutions are getting better at all this, having been introduced to it by organizations like Culture Creates, CAPACOA’s Linked Digital Future Initiative, Digital Arts Nation and independent consultants that work in this space. However, we are still a long way from ingraining these practices into individual artists and arts organizations who maintain a digital presence.

What Bay-Cheng’s talk emphasized is the more long-term and complex need to influence the way these powerful machines understand the arts. This is a priority area for the Canadian performing arts sector that Culture Creates, CAPACOA and their partners have worked tirelessly over the last few years to address. In particular, they have focused on the work involved in linking up existing data from different organizations with each other, and figuring out the best way to make them available to machines as linked open data.

In this process, there is a constant need to translate human language, which is full of nuances and shades of grey, to computer language, which is quite rigid and clearly defined. We do this by creating taxonomies and ontologies, which is the lens through which machines know what meaning to give certain words, concepts and relationships between them.

Taxonomies are no means perfect representations of the world, and nor are they intended to be. As Rosu elegantly puts it, there is no “one taxonomy to rule them all”, rather we need a multitude of taxonomies to reflect the needs of different domains and perspectives. When we put together multiple taxonomies across domains, we get an ontology, which identifies and distinguishes concepts and their relationships.

As important as it is to get the representation of performing arts information “right”, small and medium sized organizations simply do not have the capacity or bandwidth to engage in this work in a meaningful way. Yet, having a diverse representation of artists and patrons involved in the process is probably one of the most critical success factors. It is the only way to ensure that the art world as artists and patrons see it is represented in the world of machines. By extension, it is also the only way to make sure that the machine works for us, not the other way around.

The Next Generation of Artist-Innovators

The last two areas in the performing arts that Bay-Cheng highlighted, namely theory and education, are areas in which the sector can develop and evolve to improve its readiness to engage in the creation of taxonomies, ontologies and other advance technological solutions for the performing arts.

Theory is about the way we see things, how we frame or approach a problem. Bay-Cheng’s own cross-disciplinary approach as a digital humanities scholar, informed by her artistic practice, exemplifies how different theoretical lenses can can help us articulate emergent problems and develop innovative solutions to address them.

From an education perspective, this kind of thinking needs to be built-in to the way we train the next generation of artists and creators. This is a much greater topic that requires its own separate post, but this is not about helping students “keep up with technology”. Rather, it is about equipping our future artists to play an active role in our society, one that is now irrevocably digital.

Mariel Marshall is an example of such an artist. In addition to being co-founder of StagePage, she is also a core member of the ground-breaking performing arts group bluemouth inc. In her pursuit of creating a recommender system that will leverage the latest research and technologies to help audiences discover performing arts events, she has been pushing her own boundaries of what it means to be an artist in a digital society.

PAIR W3C Group: Bridging Artists and Machines

By bringing together a computer scientist and a digital humanities scholar, both of whom have an interest in the arts as a domain and as a practice, Marshall has assembled an interdisciplinary team that has the expertise and skin in the game to facilitate the creation of taxonomies that represents the values and interests of the arts.

Together, they have created an open community group under the umbrella of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international community that develops open standards for the internet. Envisioned by Marshall and Rosu, and chaired by Bay-Cheng, the Performing Arts Information Representation community group is dedicated to addressing the challenge of translation between artists and machines.

The goal of the group, as Marshall states is to: “collaboratively create digital infrastructure to support performing arts online tools. Imagine having an expert arts curator in your pocket, or a ‘Netflix’ or ‘Spotify’ for the performing arts. These tools are possible, but only if we work together to build a representational model that speaks to the current methods, modes and ways of making art.”

The group is still in its infancy, with their first meeting slated for November 9, 2020 at 2pm EDT. They are seeking participation from organizations and initiatives that are already engaged in similar work, as well as creating opportunities to engage artists and patrons at the community level. If done right, this can be a tremendous opportunity to figure out how we can bring artists into a technology creation process in a meaningful and reciprocal way.

Being an Artist in a Digital Society

To return to the question at the start, what is the role of artists in our increasingly digital society? My answer (and yours) is perhaps not very different had I taken out the word “digital” from the question.

For me, one important role of artists is to help us examine the contours of our world more closely by engaging the public through encounters with their art. Artistic experiences can reflect our most deeply held values and assumptions, and also open us up to new perspectives and possibilities. The importance of this has been brought into relief in a world that’s becoming increasingly fractured and divided.

As to how artists are supposed to fulfill that role when digital technologies are thrown into the mix, Marshall and others like her offer a direction and a vision. Fundamentally, it is about finding and building common grounds between artists and machine through the world of data. This project is one of many that is contributing to a nascent yet growing community of practice in Canada around arts data literacy. Our collective success will hinge on our ability to put artists first in the process, and develop viable business and governance models to sustain this effort.

Like many artistic creations, this will be an ever-evolving work-in-progress, and you are invited to be a part of it.

Click here for more information about the PAIR W3C community group. Registration is now open for the first public meeting on November 9, 2020. We are hoping participants with a variety of backgrounds and experiences will attend.

To learn more about arts data initiatives in Canada, check out CAPACOA’s Linked Digital Future Initiative for in-depth research reports, data literacy workshops and so much more. Connect with Culture Create as they build a national knowledge graph for the arts. Follow Arts Impact AI as they engage artists in conversation to explore social issues around AI. For those who are looking to orient themselves a bit first, check out Digital Arts Nation.

Special thanks to Dr. Sarah Bay-Cheng, Frédéric Julien, Tammy Lee, Mariel Marshall, and Caitlin Troughton for feedback on early drafts.

Finding Common Grounds between Artists and Machines was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Do you want to develop strategic digital knowledge, but you’re not sure where to start? Do you prefer hands-on learning experience with a group of peers? Then this series is for you.

In the two years since publishing my last posts on what makes a digital initiative strategic, and reimagining partnerships in the arts, I’ve been busy putting those ideas into practice with a few of initiatives and in numerous conversations. Again and again, I see that people want to engage with digital strategy, but few are clear on how to start.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Why is digital literacy strategically important? Consider the overarching objective of “digital transformation” and what it means to you.

From a technological point of view, there are many “unknown unknowns” that can affect the success of digital initiatives. Happily, we are not the first sector to tackle these challenges, so there are lots of examples to learn from, if we know where to look and what to look for.

A big part of digital transformation has to do with the people and the culture in your organization. The sooner this shift begins, the better — because it’s not something that happens overnight.

The impact of your strategic digital initiative will be amplified exponentially if you can identify ways to work with other organizations. It’s essential to carve out the time to get to know each other, and seriously think about different ways of doing our work and pooling resources to reach common goals faster and more effectively.

So what strategic role does digital literacy play in achieving the above? It provides you with the context necessary for making informed decisions, and understanding potential business implications.

In a previous post, I suggested that digital literacy requires getting hands-on. Deciding what to do and how it aligns with your strategic objectives, however, is not always obvious. Should you go take a 3D printing course? Hire a consultant to come up with a plan? Network at social entrepreneurship events? Apply to an incubator to develop your vision?

All this talking we’re doing about digital is not nearly as effective as just diving in and dancing like no one’s watching, so I’m trying something different.

To help arts organizations break through the “unknown unknowns”, I want to share some digital literacy project ideas designed to help you achieve specific strategic outcomes.

This exercise has proven extremely effective in moving conversations ahead. This process offers concrete examples of what digital literacy encompasses and where it leads. It is also a great starting point for developing an understanding of your specific digital literacy needs, and how these align with your strategic objectives.

As an extension of this work, below are two digital literacy project proposals structured around a design thinking process and peer-to-peer learning model. This is an experiment, so I welcome your feedback!

Strategic Knowledge Exchange

Learning objectives:
sharing and learning from participants’ failures and successes

Strategic objectives:
allow strategic potential to emerge through the process

Under the guidance of a facilitation team, a group of 5 project leads will come together and explore opportunities for strategic collaboration. The sharing of knowledge through presentation is intended to establish rapport while ensuring the insights are shared with the sector more widely. A 3-day retreat is to create an environment for roundtable discussions, facilitated meetings, with relevant business, tech and other expertise at hand to ensure practical outcomes that goes far beyond general support for each other.

Download PDF version here.

Prototyping and Design Thinking

Learning objectives:
experience a miniature prototyping and design thinking process

Strategic objectives:
assess readiness of participants for collective strategic (digital) initiatives

Under the guidance of a facilitation team consisting of a digital strategist, design thinker, and tech lead, a community of interested stakeholders will come together and work out what it might be like to work together in a one-time prototyping project. The shared experience of articulating their common challenges, identifying critical factors to address that challenge, and testing that assumption through prototyping, will inform whether they proceed together going forward, and if so how.

Download PDF version here.

Both of these can be easily adapted to achieve your strategic digital outcomes, so feel free to circulate and use as a conversation starter with your team and collaborators.

As a bonus, here’s a reflection activity to help you get started. As you review these project outlines, consider the following:

What appeals to you (or not) about these projects?
How would you adapt it to what you or your organization currently need?
What questions do they raise that might lead to an interesting conversation?

Thanks for reading. If you need ideas on how to adapt them, leave a comment below or get in touch!

Thanks to Jessa Agilo, Lynn Briand, Akou Connell, Lindsay Fisher, Frédéric Julien, Mariel Marshall and John Sobol for their comments and feedback.

Other Articles in this series:

• What makes a digital initiative “strategic”?
• Reimagining Partnerships in the Arts

What makes digital knowledge “strategic”? was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Below is a visual summary of the conversation, and some reflections.

This visual summary contextualizes the initiatives that were outlined during the online webinar on April 18, 2018. Interesting synergies emerged between projects, and visualizing them in terms of the stages of the projects, the people and organizations involved, and how they fit within Canada Council’s Digital Strategy Fund gives way to new insights.

I chose to stick with the structure of the session, which was based on the Digital Strategy Fund’s three major components. Visualization based on geography, sector, budget, longevity, would all offer important and critical perspectives, but that would require much more background research to achieve.

It will be worthwhile to update this visual summary to include the projects from the first round of the Digital Strategy Fund, and to offer additional context. In the mean time, here are some of my own initial thoughts.

1. Strategic Digital Literacy Initiatives do not exist in a vacuum.

I was really surprised that none of the digital literacy projects existed solely in that category. They touch on public engagement or transformation one way or another, and in some cases, both. To me, this suggests that perhaps our need for digital literacy has moved from the level of “know how” to the level of “know why”.

Simply learning about technology is no longer enough. We need to know why we are learning about it, and then, how to apply that learning strategically.

2. Transformation does not take place in a silo.

Those in the early exploration stages have yet to articulate a clear plan, or didn’t have a chance to discuss it during the webinar, so their final placement on this diagram would very likely change. What is fascinating is that the transformation initiatives that are further along invariably cross over into public engagement.

It is true that many arts organizations ultimate serve a larger community, but the visualization suggests that the vision for transformative initiatives should make clear the impact beyond the organization itself.

3. Strong partnerships are the cornerstones for developing cross-sectoral solutions.

This might be confirmation bias, as all the facilitators of the webinar are directly or indirectly involved with the two partnership-based initiatives that participated in the webinar. However, I have a strong hunch that many of the digital transformation work we are engaged in are leading towards a cross-sectoral digital strategy across the arts, culture and heritage sectors.

What’s Next?

To get there, we need to overcome numerous technical and social hurdles, none of which are trivial by any means. We need to identify shared priorities, alignment of values, and take responsibility for keeping the conversation going.

As the co-director of the Digital Arts Services Symposium, this will be a major priority at the next edition slated for March 18–20, 2019.

Only by pooling our respective strengths and resources do we have even a chance to help future generations of arts and culture movements in Canada to not just survive, but thrive, in the digital age.

What do you think? Did this visualization generate new insights for you? How can we better visualize the various strategic initiatives? Let’s keep talking on twitter @bemusednetwork @artspond @CAPACOA @digitalASO.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Where are we now? A visual summary. was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The topic of digital transformation makes us uneasy. The issues are complex and finding the right people to help implement digital strategies can be a fraught process. It is not surprising that arts organizations have mixed feelings of excitement and doubt when opportunities like Canada Council’s $88 million digital strategy fund arise.

In such a climate, there are in fact practical steps that individuals and organizations in the arts and culture sector can take to understand and embrace the changes and the work that these times demand.

The first step in any new direction involves asking the right question: What makes a digital initiative “strategic”? What can arts services look like when they go “digital”?

To address these questions, BeMused Network and ArtsPond launched the Digital Arts Services Symposium (DASS) in 2017. The most animated discussions emerged around finding practical solutions to address recurring issues in digital initiatives. More specifically, people wanted to know how to navigate the development cycle of strategic digital initiatives from the ideation stage to sustained growth.

Months after the symposium, we continue to get requests for slides to be shared at conferences and board meetings to engage more people in this important discussion. People want to figure out how to turn their vision into reality, and how to find the right tech resources that they can trust with a plan.

To share this important conversation with more people, below are three ideas that resonate the most to those that are in the early stages of developing strategic digital initiatives.

I hope they will help you articulate your vision, or at least, ask better questions.

3 mindsets that could make or break your strategic digital initiative

Let’s get one thing clear: There is no digital magic bullet to solve your organization’s problem. Whatever is trending in pop-technology circles are most likely not relevant to what you want to do, so don’t chase that shiny penny.

Instead, embrace digital as a medium for experimentation, and accept iteration as a critical part of the process. Focus not on delivering digital products or services, but on creating a solution to your problem that can leverage the scalable nature of technology, and ultimately maximize the value of the resources you have.

Embracing a spirit of experimentation.

So many arts administrators are artists at heart. They understand the artistic impulse and the creative process, but securing a grant requires a different set of skills having to do with measurable outcomes, accountability, and knowing how to navigate funding institutions.

After years of writing grants this way, we have an opportunity to actually write a grant proposal that is all about experimentation with the digital medium. The language and structure of Canada Council’s digital strategy fund strongly suggests this.

They have released a proportionally smaller amount of the funds to start, using the first round of applications, I suspect, to ascertain what type of proposals are being submitted. It gives them a chance to evaluate how successful their communication has been at soliciting the types of proposals they are looking for.

An iterative design and development process is a given in any digital project. It is important to have an idea of what you want to build by the end of the project, but it is even more important to accept that the idea will change.

I am not suggesting that funding bodies no longer care about outcomes, but a hallmark of success in the digital realm is about how flexible and open you are to change. In other words, how much do your trust the process to address the problem you set out to solve, even though the solution was not what you thought it would be?

Not delivering the digital artifacts of what you proposed is not the same thing as failing to address the problem you set out to solve. We just have to adopt the artistic mindset, and understand that technology is the medium, not the answer.

Your digital strategy may include tactics such as building a website, or an app, or even some non-digital components designed to engage people. However, an iterative process means you will re-evaluate existing and new tactics, while remaining anchored by your strategic vision.

One can appreciate Canada Council’s strategic digital fund through this lens. They have restructured their organization to bring in people who are trans-disciplinary, open to critically reviewing their own process, all to improve the chance of success in address the problem of digital transformation in the arts. Each round of funding is not only an opportunity to review the applicants, but also how well they are doing against their own strategic vision.

So in summary, as you craft your proposal, embrace your inner artist. Trust the iterative process. Redefine failure. As Seth Godin so aptly puts it, “An artist is someone who does something that might not work.”

2. Develop projects that are collective in scope.

We develop projects focused on the organization that we work for. That is how we have fostered a culture of competition rather than collaboration in the arts sector that is ineffective at best, and toxic at worst.

The current interest in digital strategies is fostering an openness to at least talk about collaborative projects. There is still a ton of organizational baggage to shake off, but the people that align with such values (at least the ones I’ve spoken with), are excited about the possibility of change, and are in it for the long haul.

Prof. Catherine Moore raised an important point during the symposium that is worth repeating here: rethinking how we operate often requires us to decide what we will stop doing.

We associate our identities with what we do, because it is what we engage with every day. The overarching mission and vision of the organization is revisited much less frequently, and we don’t devote nearly as much time imaging the different ways in which they can be realized.

Developing a collaborative project requires a high level of trust between stakeholders and the project delivery team. It is hard enough to cultivate it in just one of those areas, never mind synchronizing it all.

However, there is a common ground that we could all work from: by pooling our human and financial resources, and finding those with whom our interests align, we could fundamentally transform the way we operate, and ultimately, sustain ourselves.

There’s a concept I have taken from Netflix’s Culture Deck that has been shared over 17 million times since 2001: loosely coupled, highly aligned. It’s an idea worth reflecting on.

You keep the values of your organizations and run it your way, but if we are highly aligned, there is no reason why we should not do everything we can to collaborate, and work towards something that’s bigger than any one of us.

Sidenote: If you enjoyed the deck, this article of her departure from NetFlix in 2016 also a great read.

In summary, it all just comes down to trust and openness: Trust in collaborators and service providers. Be open to reinvent yourself and your organization to better realize your mission. If these two ingredients are not there, it’s never too late to start cultivating them.

3. Develop “digital literacy” to increase your competitiveness

Digital literacy has layers, yet we use the word as a blanket statement for what we need in order to better understand what technology can do for us. So let’s break it down, first with the idea of “literacy” which we are probably familiar with.

The best way to develop our literacy skills is to read and write. That’s why we encourage children to spend time at the library, we take great pains to cultivate in them a love of books, and teach them how to organize their thoughts in the written form.

Digital literacy is no different. Instead of reading and writing, it is all about learning and creating. Instead of “books” (which take a number of forms these days), there is a multitude of formats and media. Make a podcast, create a vector graphic, manipulate a photo, cobble together a blog, create a VR installation, learn 3D modeling.

Learning to use an online word processing service, email newsletter service, online ticketing service and the likes don’t really count. You are learning to be a user of a digital system, rather than learning how to create digital assets.

Just as you wouldn’t confuse the ability to use the library catalogue with actual literacy skills, don’t confuse your ability to use online services for actual digital literacy.

The benefit of understanding digital literacy in this light is three folds.

First and foremost, you won’t get bogged down in deciphering terms and jargon. Remember, you are not trying to become a technologist. You just need to understand it enough to be able to work with them.

Secondly, you get over the fear of failing to create digital things. Just like creating art, it’s best to just dive right in and get messy. Who cares if you get it wrong, or what you created isn’t “useful”. Neither is the point.

Lastly, you begin to grasp the scope of what is digitally or technologically possible. Let me share a quick anecdote to explain what I mean:

Early on in my foray into creating digital arts services, I worked with a developer who assured me that anything I wanted was possible, so I should not limit myself to telling him what I wanted to achieve. That’s easy enough, I thought.

Until one day, after too many exchanges where we both hit a wall in agreeing on the scope for a pilot project, he said to me: “What you’re asking me to do is like asking me to code a button that will blow snow out of the screen every time you click it.”

It gave me a good laugh, and it was a turning point for me. Having been told so long that anything is possible with technology, of course there are limits to what it can do. It’s just that on a human scale, we don’t often run into those limits, but non-technical folks don’t have a sense for what they are.

Engaging in the creation of digital artifacts deepens our understanding of what those limits are, just as reading helps us understand the limits of words, however powerful they can be.

This understanding calibrates our expectations of what is realistic and possible given common constraints such as time and budget, making us more confident in how we work with those who builds technologies.

Building a Community of Practice

One of the biggest takeaways from the conversations for me was how many people were wrestling with the same problem, and the energy that gets ignited when we get together and address it. It’s a task that is daunting, but exciting at the same time. It has made me realize that we need more than an annual symposium, we need to build a community of practice.

As a follow up to the symposium, we are in the early stages of forming a Digital Arts Services Alliance. It is created in the spirit of fostering meaningful connections within the ecosystem in the arts, for a sustainable future. This has been my vision for the BeMused Network since the beginning, and I am excited to continue my work in collaboration with ArtsPond in this trajectory.

The alliance will be all about connecting arts leaders and pioneers with technologists, designers, and researchers who understand the arts and culture sector, and are invested in its success as much as we are.

If this is a conversation you’d like to be a part of, drop me a note, connect with me on LinkedIn, or following this medium publication for more updates.

Thanks to John Terauds and Jessa Agilo for reading earlier drafts.

What makes a digital initiative “Strategic”? was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“We look at rapid technological change as a threat, but not a victor. Yet, we know that we still need humans to surprise us, to delight us, and to provide serendipity.” — Prof. Catherine Moore, University of Toronto, Faculty of Music (DASS Keynote Speaker)

When I started thinking about BeMused Network as an arts service organization during a conversation with Jessa Agilo of ArtsPond about a year ago, I proposed casually that we should have an event geared towards such organizations.

After all, if there is any type of arts organization that can benefit the most from our unique experience of building an online platform that specializes in serving Canada’s arts sector, I think it would be them.

An off-handed comment. A new perspective. That’s all it took to plant the seed for the inaugural Digital Arts Service Symposium coming up on Nov 30 and Dec 1 at Heliconian Hall.

The Human Factor

Many of the “aha” moments in working on BeMused Network stemmed from a human contribution.

When I finally realized I wasn’t trying to build “a website”, but a full-blown web application. When I reached out to other sectors and found supporters outside of the performing arts world. When I met Prof. Catherine Moore, whose practical advice regarding the digital innovation gap in the arts would actually hold water in the business and technology sectors.

What was common among all those experiences was that they were serendipitous. They came about as a surprise. Most importantly, they were realized not (entire) because of technological intervention, but rather of human.

A practical conversation.

I have always known that we needed to have a meaningful conversation in the arts to address our challenges. It wasn’t always clear what it would be about, how it would happen, or to what end.

Sure, we could talk about the challenges and opportunities that technology presents artists and arts organizations of all shapes and sizes. Definitely about the incredible and seemingly insurmountable challenges that we bump against when we try to stretch our already exhausted resources.

It has always been clear to me that the most important conversations need to be about practical approaches to those problems. What was not clear was whether the sector was ready for it.

Making the digital leap.

BeMused Network launched as a practical response to address the complaints of both artists and patrons about online ticketing services. I co-founded the inaugural edition of the Digital Arts Services Symposium (DASS) as a response to provide practical support to empower arts organizations to take the digital leap.

This inaugural edition is the start of a practical conversation. A place where we can be candid about the realities of embarking on digital initiatives, at every scale and for every stage. A place to share what we have learned, and find collaborators and partners.

We are featuring panelists with both feet firmly planted in both the arts and culture as well as the tech world. The talks and workshops are designed to engage those who are embarking on a digital journey and looking for resources and support.

Let’s not be alone together.

The participants will drive the content in many ways. Bring questions, and be courageous enough to ask them. Some questions are tough to ask in a crowd. Bring them to us on the side. No questions are too stupid.

I am familiar with the feeling of being at the periphery of something you want to engage with, and a nagging feeling that you have a unique perspective to contribute, but can’t quite articulate.

I am also pleased to share that when you find others like you in such a state, wonderful and exhilarating things can happen.

Collaborating with ArtsPond and Prof. Catherine Moore in developing this event, as well as meeting the participants at our Ottawa event (in collaboration with CAPACOA), has been one such experience after another.

It has strengthened my resolve in connecting with such wonderful (and modest!) people, if only to get inspired by the work that others are doing, and in time, find ways of working together.

Let’s start with building trust.

Our biggest challenge is actually not technology or innovation. These are red herrings. Our challenge is cultivating trust. Between people and organizations. Across disciplines and sectors.

We need this trust to pursue the big and scary yet important work of embracing technology. Not towards some uncertain future where technology replaces us, but a future where we can do the best work that we can not yet imagine.

This is the most common theme that has emerged so far. I hope you will come and meet others like you, and realize that you (we) are not alone in our journeys. Maybe together, we could map out what we need practically to move forward.

Believe me when I say how easily the conversations flow, how freely we share, and how much we learn from each other, when we are driven by a common vision to bridge the innovation gap in the arts.

The Digital Arts Service Symposium is a two day event in Toronto on Nov 30 and Dec 1. If you’re debating whether this is for you, chances are, it actually is. I hope you will join us.

Details and registration at DigitalArtsServices.ca.

The inaugural edition of the Digital Arts Services Symposium is made possible with the support of the Ontario Arts Council, CAPACOA, The Heliconian Club, and contributions from ArtsPond and BeMused Network.

Bridging The Innovation Gap in the Arts was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thoughts from Canada Council’s Arts in a Digital World Summit

We are living in a critical time. Entire systems and sectors are imploding because the assumptions they were built on no longer exist. ~ Simon Brault, Director and CEO of Canada Council

Back in March, we were honoured to be invited as a contributor to Canada Council’s Arts in a Digital World summit in Montreal. I met many people with whom I had only communicated by email or phone, and many more whom I was happy to meet.

It was inspiring to hear BeMused Network’s founding values echoed by the keynote speakers, and to engage in two intense days of the kind of conversations we’ve been having for the last few years. I came away full of optimism for the future of the arts Canada.

Canada Council is priming arts leaders to address a complex but exciting opportunity that touches on evolving social, technical, economic and political factors. Most importantly, they have planted the seed of an idea; addressing it will require a collaborative spirit and an open mind.

It is through such dialogue that innovative solutions, which neither could come up with on their own, would emerge.

Coming away from the summit, I am more aware than ever of the blind spots we often have about technology. In particular, the assumption that technology simply exists to serve us has the danger of trapping us into a digital paradigm that would work counter to the artistic spirit.

Bridging the Paradigm between Consumers and Creators

Take for example the often-lauded successes of live-streaming technologies in the performing arts. A very expensive service that is affordable only by the most well-funded institutions. The success is often measured by views and subscribers, which might have value to the bottom line, but misses the mark when measuring the artistic value.

Just like all recording technologies that have come before us, live-streaming is simply another way to capture and distribute an artistic experience. It does not capture the thrill of being physically present (you can’t feel the vibe in a room on a screen), nor can the recording capture the unspoken interactions between audiences and performers.

To be clear, if the objective is to distribute a recording of a live event, this technology is perfectly suited for the job. However, to assume this is the right tool to develop new audiences or to create engaging experiences reflects a lack of imagination, or perhaps casts our role more as consumers rather than creators of digital experiences and technologies.

We are all experienced as consumers of technologies, but few of us are experienced as managers of technologies, and even fewer still as creators. Each of these roles offer very different perspectives, which can only be gained through opportunities for hands-on engagement.

Likewise, for technologists to develop solutions for the arts and culture sector, they have to directly engage with stakeholders in the sector. They have to empathize with their perspective on technology, and listen to what challenges and opportunities they perceive through their unique lens.

It is through such dialogue that innovative solutions, which neither could come up with on their own, would emerge.

To illustrate my point further, below are three ideas that came out of conversations with participants and contributors who dropped by our salon.

Each idea is rooted in a partnership between three stakeholders: an arts organization, a technology company, and an artistic community. The process would be iterative. The objective is to secure a more sustainable and viable future for the stakeholders involved.

1. Creating Virtual Artistic Experiences

Technology exists not just as a way to capture and distribute artistic experiences; it can also transform artistic practices. An encounter with MasterPieceVR sparked an interesting conversation about how theatre might be experienced in a virtual reality environment.

Performers and audiences could be in very different locations, bridging the geographic divide that often impairs access. Designing the experience of the “stage” and the “venue” from the performer as well as the audience’s perspective opens up many artistic possibilities, as there is full control over the environment in which the work is performed and experienced. These are just some of the more obvious points.

Pilot project idea: Commission works by Canadian playwrights specifically for VR, with training and professional development for the artists and producers involved. Develop partnerships with local communities and venues to deepen engagement between artists and audiences across a large geographic region.

2. Public Media 2.0 for the Arts

Newspapers and mainstream media will likely never go back to reporting on local and independent performing arts. It is really up to the arts sector to create something for the public and create their own alternatives.

Getting acquainted with the folks at Vubble inspired ideas of what it would take to create a public media portal with all the editorial rigour that we are losing to click-bait, and channeling that to reinvigorate public interest and awareness of what’s happening in Canada’s arts sector.

Pilot project idea: Rethink what arts and culture editorial means in today’s digital world, and curating (as well as creating) content that is relevant to a subset of arts organizations (let’s say, opera) to help them engage their existing audiences. The process will improve the content creation capacity of all involved, and collectively reach the patrons who are most likely the ones that misses good arts editorials the most.

3. A Network for Arts Publications

I have focused a lot on the needs of artists and arts organizations in building BeMused Network. However, a lively conversation with an editor from a major performing arts magazine in Canada opened my eyes to very similar challenges in their world.

Arts publications are small and under-funded organizations that are reliant on distribution systems that have high fees without getting much value in return. Switching technologies is costly, and none of the solutions are ideal. Most importantly, they cannot leverage the data to improve their understanding of their readers, to deliver better content and more timely offers.

Pilot project idea: A literary network for Canadian arts and culture publications that addresses all these issues. In collaboration with key publications, a minimal viable product would be developed with the express purpose of reducing the cost of distribution, while streamlining the collection of aggregate readership data, as well as improving the reader’s experience.

If I have inspired questions and inquiries, feelings of doubt or excitement, that is exactly what I hope to achieve. The ideas above are simply conversation starters, not perfect solutions.

That’s the beauty of partnerships: no one has all the answers, but working together in an earnest and open manner, we have a chance at creating the future that we deserve.

What do you think? Do you have a pilot project idea? How can we foster the next generation of partnerships between artists and technologists?

I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Thanks to John Terauds for reading an earlier draft. Thanks also to Canada Council and the Canadian Film Centre’s ideaboost program for hosting us at the summit.

Reimagining Partnerships in the Arts was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When done right, self-service is a great option to offer customers. When done to merely cut costs, or when done with a poor understanding of the user, it’s mostly annoying. — Seth Godin

Patrons new to the arts are often surprised to learn that some of the highest-calibre artistic offerings in cities like Toronto are primarily presented by volunteer-run organizations (like the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto), or just a handful of full-time staff (like Soundstreams Canada or Alliance Française).

They accomplish the Herculean job of creating rich artistic experiences and eye-catching marketing materials with limited resources. These are the hidden miracles that arts professionals and volunteers work everyday, despite the thankless task. The personal fulfillment they take from the job is one of the reasons they stick around, despite the fraught realities confronting the arts.

It is this dedication that makes the challenge of attracting new audiences such a frustrating one. What more can be done to show the value of the arts? How much more can we give to the creation of unique and memorable artistic experiences?

On Making Art More Accessible

The overarching narrative for the last decade or more has been making art more accessible. We now see discounted tickets for the under 30 crowd (let’s hook them before they start a family) and reduced ticket prices overall (assuming that the arts are in fact competing on price). We also have free shows featuring world-class performers (like the Canadian Opera Company’s free concert series or Harbourfront’s free programs), and the introduction of talks and salons to engage and educate new audiences.

While all great initiatives (and I speak as a beneficiary of many of them), my concern is that we are preaching to the converted. That is, we are wooing the patrons who would have attended anyway, but who are they to say no to a cheaper ticket or a free show?

One of the unintended and rarely discussed consequences of these audience development strategies is that patrons who would have paid the full ticket price are being siphoned to take the place we’d like to fill with new patrons.

On Missed Connections with New Audiences

Try this thought experiment: What if all the effort we have put into attracting and engaging new audiences has merely cannibalized our core supporters?

It’s not hard to imagine, but it does make us uncomfortable, because if it is true, we seem to have worked ourselves into a corner: How much harder do we have to work to create artistic experiences? What’s more accessible than free?

If someone is looking to have an artistic experience, making it cheaper won’t make them want it more. The process we put them through to commit to a show, however, might be the buzzkill that turns new audiences away before you even learn who they are or how many of them are there.

From the moment they get intrigued by your performance, as they proceed to acquire a ticket (or two) and commit to attending, patrons are often confronted with a series of inconveniences: a laborious checkout process requiring too many fields, an interface reminiscent of the early days of computing, and convenience fees whose reason for existing has long been forgotten.

Any artistic and marketing effort is for naught if at the first point of contact, a first-time ticket buyer feels that we didn’t care enough to make a good first impression. These coveted people are bouncing away the moment they land on your ticketing page, and you haven’t even had a chance to say hello. Why do we let this happen?

The Devil is in the (Ticketing) Details

Ticketing systems (or the lack of one) being used by arts organizations don’t often change because they work in a sense. They gather patron info, they are connected to administrative databases, some even issue physical tickets, so the volunteer at the door can manually check for them during admission.

Long-time patrons are patient and well acquainted with the process. Even in a worst-case scenario, you can rely on them to show up and pay at the door. However, the new patrons we so desperately want have a different set of priorities: make the buying process quick, make the admission easy.

If you can make each touchpoint before the show a remarkable one, they come to the show in a great mood, and you leave the impression that you are serious about building a long-term relationship.

BeMused Network applies this simple philosophy to our ticketing service for the arts, and the patrons’ candid responses speak for themselves:

“Thanks for believing that ‘service’ or ‘convenience’ fees are a bunch of nonsense. The financial sector indulges in legal criminality all the time!” — Josh H

“Thank you for the ‘no service fees’. You are right. It is s bunch of ^@#*%> Here’s to taking ownership back of these ridiculous abuses. Merci.” — Gina V

“The Shaw and Stratford festivals need to learn from you. I always think that I should charge THEM the service fee, since I am doing the ordering and printing and saving them the time and money for both! Appreciate your service!” — Joe D

New audiences are not unicorns. They are people like you and I. Between great artistic programming and imaginative marketing campaigns, paying attention to the way your ticketing service makes first-time patrons feel can turn those missed connections into real ones.

We don’t need better art; it can’t get much better than what we are already producing on an ever shrinking budget. Let’s pick a different battle, critically review our ticketing process from the perspective of first time patrons.

It seems absurdly simple for such a seemingly impossible problem, but I believe it can make the difference we are all yearning for.

Thanks to John Terauds and Bonnie O’Dacre for reading a draft of this.

Join BeMused Network to enjoy the lowest rates and the best patron experience for arts and culture.

New Audiences Are Not Unicorns was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“…digital networks will continue to be increasingly central to daily life and anticipates a time when they are regarded as a mundane, but vital part of the social infrastructure.” ~ Andrew Clement and Leslie Shade, “Access Rainbow” (PDF)

Infrastructures are essential yet invisible to us, even as they play a critical role in our everyday lives. Just imagine if our power grid goes out, roads collapse, or water ceases to flow in our homes. Unimaginable disruptions.

We are in an era of constructing digital infrastructures. From high profile projects like electronic health records, which requires the coordination of policy makers, creating of new jobs, and the partnership of various health organizations, to the less visible but no less impressive network of digital applications and social platforms.

While invisible to most of us, digital infrastructures are being built, either by purposeful collective creation or by adapting existing tools and solutions.

The challenge of creating something new is in matching technical knowledge with experience in the field in order to meet a community-driven mandate. The danger of the latter without the former is unintentionally building an infrastructure that cannot evolve or grow in ways its users might want in the future.

Ticketing, as one example, is a service we take for granted. There are dozens of solutions that are more or less the same, except for service fees and whether they can follow your ticket pricing strategy and selling process.

Take a step back to consider the following:

1. Which one offers your patrons a hassle-free buying experience? (Easy checkout, no surprise convenience fees, no registration process, quick retrieval of tickets and receipts, proactive patron support.)
2. What else do your patrons want to feel when they are buying tickets? (That they are dealing with an arts-friendly service provider that supports the same artists and community that matters to them, and that is actively trying to improve the patron experience and foster audience relationships one ticket and a time.)
3. What can we learn about our patrons without subjecting them to another survey? (What other kinds of shows do they buy tickets to? How far are they willing to travel? Where are they coming from? How often do they attend arts and culture events?)

The online ticketing service that addresses these issues would not emerge from the Brown Paper Ticket, Eventbrite, Universe, because they have no incentives to build such services. The sheer scale of their operation and the priority of turning an ever higher profit are two factors that work against an arts-focused agenda.

BeMused Network, on the other hand, has been dedicated to building exactly the kind of ticketing service that artists, and most importantly, their patrons love. It’s a simple philosophy, but an immense technical and creative undertaking.

Despite the many challenges (which I will spare you), the rewards of creating solutions to address what’s ineffective about the tools we use in the arts is truly great. It’s what keeps us going, changing our digital future, one artist, one audience, at a time.

For overworked arts workers and leaders, we risk placing our artistic future in the hands of technologies and businesses that are shaping our future for us, rather than in the hands of technologies and business that respond directly to our needs. There is no harm in the short-term, and the feeling of being able to choose from a plethora of great digital solutions is empowering. However, the lack of real ownership of the digital infrastructures of the arts could potentially will be costly in ways that are unimaginable to us today.

In the end, through the everyday choices we make, I have no doubt that we will get the Digital infrastructure for the arts that we deserve. The question is, what do we think we deserve, and how can we make sure we get it? I would love your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks to John Terauds for reading a draft of this.

Join our LinkedIn Group for Digital Infrastructures for Arts and Culture.

What kind of Digital Future do the Performing Arts Deserve? was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“If we wish a different world, it is necessary to design humane and liberating technologies that create the world as we wish it to be.” — Bonnie Nardi

What does it mean to build a digital infrastructure for the arts? What does it take?

A digital infrastructure is a network of independent systems that play nice with each other. I imagine a digital infrastructure that will exclusively serve the arts community, provide end-to-end services for their most pressing needs, and ensure its sustainability by evolving with the times we live in.

It would allow your data to be easily ported between services. Artists and patrons alike would have sensible ownership over their information. Shared metrics are safely aggregated into anonymized open data sets that can help us gain a clearer picture about what we do collectively from the most grassroots organizations to national institutions.

That is a very different description of the ‘digital infrastructures’ we are working with at the moment: an ad hoc collection of online and digital tools built for a mass consumer market, with interesting features that don’t necessarily fit your workflow. The most mission critical files are either managed from your desktop computer, or stored in cloud-based services that regularly change their service agreements without you noticing.

In other words, adoption of technology creates new challenges, with no simple answers for resolving them. If this is the reality, is it any wonder there is a resistance to change?

Let’s bridge traditional arts and culture values with forward-looking innovations.

There is a huge gulf between where are and where we want to be, and I believe that articulating the complexity of the problem as well as concrete solutions is a critical and practical first step to bridge that gap.

The experience of building BeMused Network from the ground up over the last three years has inspired me to initiate a conversation about building digital infrastructures in the arts in a meaningful and productive way.

1. To start, we need to identify and articulate the emerging and ever-evolving needs of our artists and arts organizations in a networked society. Do we need an arts-specific information policy? Do we need free and open-source tools and resources for our artistic communities? Do we need scalable co-marketing initiatives? What does open data mean for our artists? (Maybe the answer is that they are too burned out to care. I am hoping not.)
2. We need to align with like-minded designers, researchers and technologists to create purpose-built solutions that serve the arts exclusively. The barrier of access to technological know-how is lower than ever. Who are the specialists working towards digital infrastructures for the arts? What can we learn from them? How can we work with them? (Let’s create opportunities for like-minded practitioners from multiple domains and disciplines to cross paths.)
3. We need the collective commitment and resolve of the arts community to make this a priority within our own practice. This can be as simple as engaging with the relevant conversations, or as involved as incorporating it in your strategic plan. The common thread is the intention and desire to build a foundation from which all our artistic practices can thrive, and from which the next generation of audiences spring. (If you are grappling with the questions above,or they inspired some new ideas, thank you. You are already giving it priority. Wasn’t that easy?)

This is a discussion that we cannot afford to delay. If this post has resonated with you, or you want to bring this conversation into your world, join the LinkedIn group on “Digital Infrastructures for Canadian Arts and Culture” to share your thoughts and hear other perspectives.

Building Digital Infrastructures for the Arts in Canada was originally published in BeMused Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.