[ELECTRON] Fwd: Open Letter on the Development of Digital Culture in the UK

[Simon Yuill]

Hi,

Although this relates to arts funding in England, I would strongly
recommend people who wish to see a future for digital arts and community
practice in the UK to read and support this letter - see below.

Digital arts organisations have been especially hit by the cuts in funding
with many groups who are internationally recognised as important pioneers
having 100% cuts. This includes Access Space in Sheffield, the longest
running hacklab space in the UK who have done more than anyone here to
encourage the use of Free and Open Source Software and recycled
technologies amongst the arts and community media. They helped Electron
Club out when we started along with a few other projects in Scotland (such
as Radius who did the Glasgow Green Map project).

A copy of the letter is below, if you would like to add your name please
do so here: http://www.coda2coda.net


best wishes
Si



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Letter to Arts Council England

Open Letter on the Development of Digital Culture in the UK

This letter, jointly drafted by a constituency of organisations, artists
and practitioners who have been engaged in digital arts development in
England, concerns digital culture and its importance to the wider UK arts
ecology and economy. We the undersigned believe that clear national
policies need to be developed to ensure that the UK can remain at the
forefront of digital culture, globally, and that these must take account
of the key role creative practices play in driving digital innovation.

Whilst we appreciate that digital technologies have created exciting
opportunities to engage with audiences, and to disseminate and distribute
arts programmes in new ways, it is critical that funders and policy-makers
understand that this is not the extent of digital culture. If we are to
make the most of the digital opportunity, it needs to be recognised at a
national policy level that digital culture is about more than extending
the reach of existing arts practices. It is about entirely new forms of
production, expression, practice and critical reflection that digital
technologies have made possible.

We are concerned about the place of art, creative practice, criticality
and risk-taking in current and future funding policies. We are writing to
you with two clear and immediate motivations:

1. We wish to engage policy-makers, and funders, such as Arts Council
England, in a positive debate around future investment in digital culture.
We understand from recent initiatives, such as the collaboration between
Arts Council England and the BBC to build digital capacity in the arts,
that a wide spectrum of stakeholders, investors and funders see
development of this area as a priority. Arts Council England’s planned
launch of the Digital Innovation Fund demonstrates further commitment. In
this context of investment, which extends to the economy as a whole via
bodies such as the Technology Strategy Board, we wish to present some
thinking from the front-line of creative arts practice, ensuring that this
remains at the centre of considerations; in a symbiotic not subordinate
position to operations and distribution.

2. We seek to draw attention to the gap in digital provision that the
transition from Arts Council England’s Regularly Funded Organisations
(RFO) programme to the National Portfolio of Organisations (NPO) has
brought about. The undersigned represent a broad range of organisations,
and individuals, who have met with varying degrees of success in the new
structure. We are however united in our shock at the loss of funding to so
many organisations with long track records of fostering digitally engaged
artistic practices, provision and support. These organisations,
particularly those completely cut, including Access Space, ArtSway,
DanceDigital, Folly, Four Corners Film, Isis Arts, Lovebytes, Lumen, Media
Art Bath, Moti Roti, Mute, Onedotzero, Performing Arts Labs, Picture This,
Proboscis, PVA MediaLab, The Culture Company and Vivid (as well as many
others who received drastically reduced funding or were not included in
the new portfolio) speak to a critical, self-reflexive approach to digital
media technologies, which has been instrumental to their vitality and
overall development. Whilst there will continue to be many organisations
across art-forms experimenting successfully within the digital landscape,
we wish to sound a note of deep concern around this disinvestment, which
impacts us all.

As arts organisations and practitioners, we believe that art helps us make
sense of the world we live in. We know, too, that digital technology is
transforming our lives. Social networking, data visualisation, digital
fabrication, geolocation and crowdsourcing, among many other phenomena,
present us with new environments, languages, and capabilities, which we
must engage actively and critically. If we are to become a digitally
literate society, the public need a sound grasp of the contradictory
nature of these forces, which create both opportunities and threats.

Digital culture is an expansive set of artistic practices and forms of
enquiry that helps us to understand key social drivers. Its products – be
they art works, exhibitions, performances, games, applications,
publications, music or films – contribute to digital literacy across the
board. We understand digital culture to be networked, hybrid, innovative,
improvised, tactical, distributed, de-centralised, local, creative and
skilled; and to cut across art-forms. It is not a small artistic niche of
activity – rather a rapidly expanding, international, popular set of
creative practices, which are swiftly becoming the cultural mainstream.
The UK is at the forefront of digital culture internationally and we have
much to be proud of. The global success of practitioners, such as Blast
Theory, semiconductor, and Furtherfield, and the programmes of work
commissioned and supported by AV Festival, FACT, and Animate, to name but
a small handful, is testament to the international influence of UK
practitioners.

Over a period of many years, these success stories were invested in, and
fostered, by a group of small, innovative digital culture agencies who,
together, created a distinct ecology – marked in very positive ways by the
variety of its approaches, the diversity of its organisational models. And
yet a large number of these were disinvested into in the recent funding
round. As such, we are concerned about the ongoing vibrancy of the
national digital culture ecology, and seek clarification from
policy-makers and funders about how this vital form of contemporary
creative practice is going to be invested in, going forward.

In light of current planning for future investment projects, such as the
Digital Innovation Fund, and partnerships, such as those with BBC and
NESTA, we have two key questions:

i) What is the Arts Council’s policy on digital culture?
Specifically, what is Arts Council England’s understanding of where
artistic practice and critical culture reside in terms of investment in
digital innovation?

ii) How much of the Digital Innovation Fund will be focused on artistic
practice?

We ask these questions specifically of Arts Council England, as we applaud
the progressive and outward looking agenda that it adopted by placing
digital, innovation and risk-taking at the heart of Achieving Great Art
For Everyone. We share Arts Council England’s conviction that these are
essential to artistic development, connecting with audiences and ensuring
the wider relevance of the arts. We are a group of organisations who pride
ourselves on setting trends, breaking new ground and engaging with groups
such as technologists, scientists and the creative industries. As pioneers
recognised internationally in these areas, we believe there is a great
opportunity for national policy makers to go further in defining ‘digital
innovation’ and ‘risk taking’, by placing creative practice at the very
heart of these definitions, and thus enabling the UK to continue to lead
the field internationally. We hope that you will be able to assure us that
the Digital Innovation Fund will be a step in this direction.

Finally, we would also appreciate further clarification from Arts Council
England regarding the recent NPO funding decisions and their impact on the
digital culture ecology in the UK, and its ability to remain at the
international cutting-edge. We would appreciate a statement on the new
portfolio, which explains who led the process of national balancing, who
led in relation to digital culture, and an explanation on what the role of
peer review was in the process.

As a broad constituency of people we would like to express our desire to
work with national policy-makers and funders on positive outcomes from the
present circumstances. We look forward to your response to this letter,
and look forward to establishing dialogue about the future of digital
culture in the UK.

Yours faithfully

Undersigned


Add your support here: http://www.coda2coda.net/

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