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Big Society – a new opportunity for brands and the arts?
It’ll be a while before the full impact of the coalition’s swingeing cuts in the Arts world are realised, but one thing is clear: it’s forcing artists’ hands. There will be little choice but to seek patronage from sources other than the Arts Council, NESTA or the British Film Institute.
Of course, brands have been supporting the arts for ages and there have been some great examples of this, although some backfire as seen recently with BP’s sponsorship of The Tate. And there are those in the arts community who feel that corporate sponsorship has no place, that it sullies the purity of art. But the harsh reality is that the arts need funds, and the most ready source is going to come from the private sector.
At Camp Bestival last weekend, in amongst the fun and wonder, I was struck by how much harder brands are going to have to work to engage with people, and how this has potential to benefit artists.
One of the best things I experienced at the festival was ‘The House of Fairytales’ field which was made up of a whole range of family activities.
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Guardian #Activate2010
Yesterday, I was lucky enough to attend The Guardian’s Acvtivate2010 Summit, which is dedicated to looking at how the Internet is changing the world. The focus seemed to be very much on global good. Props need to go to Robin Hough, Head of Media Events and his team for packing in some of the most fascinating and inspiring speakers into a single day. Although it was fairly exhausting, it was worth being exhausted for.Here are a few themes that stood out for me.
Do what you’re passionate about and the money will come naturally – This sentiment was most convincingly posited by Julie Meyer, CEO of Ariadne Capital but the living embodiment of this was Jamal Edwards of SBTV who started a YouTube channel devoted to urban culture after receiving a video camera for Christmas when he was 17. Now at the grand old age of 19 he’s turning down TV spots from MTV and others because he wants to stick with the Internet and the ad revenue he receives for his content on YouTube. Jamal didn’t start by wondering how he was going to make money out of it, he simply loves creating content for people to enjoy. Julie’s main point was “Don’t try and be the next Google, just do what you’re good at”. This might seem common sense to most but to really put your effort where your passion is isn’t easy for everyone.
Money fuels the engine of social good – Many agreed on the fact that ideas are useless without actions and actions cost money, therefore ideas need to make money. Simple really, but there was a sense that philanthropy isn’t going to save the world alone. A far more sustainable approach is to create businesses that help society but pay for themselves while they’re doing it. Sustainability in every sense. We can’t rely on generosity alone.
Don’t assume anything about those in need – Ethan Zuckerman from Global Voices told us about 1million shirts, an utterly terrible idea for social good that was almost set to destabilise the second-hand clothes trading market. Through some harsh exchanges, the organiser was introduced by Teddy Ruge, a prominent blogger and social entrepreneur in Uganda. After a rocky start they are starting to collaborate on something that makes much more sense. This is really a larger point about collaboration, co-creation and empathy being vital aspects of creation of solutions for those in need. We need to stop trying to fix problems that don’t exist.
The web is increasing our ability to empathise – Ethan proposed that just as transport made the world feel smaller, the Internet is making us cosy up close. And when people begin talking they start to understand one another better.
We’re still leaving people behind – Britain’s Digital Champion Martha Lane-Fox was driving home the inclusion agenda on various panels. Right now, in the UK there are 10m people that have never used the Internet. The people that can benefit most from the Internet are still missing out. One of the most poignant quotes was supplied by Martha regarding her experience when introducing someone to the web for the first time – “I didn’t realise I had such an enquiring mind”. See Martha’s Race Online 2012 project for more on this.
Talkers v.s. Doers – Doers WIN. Well, 9/10 times they fail, but failing is winning right?
Mobile technology is leapfrogging in the developing world – Georgia Arnold from MTV and Jan Chipchase from Frog Design (formerly of Nokia) both touched on the way in which mobile phones have overtaken other technologies such as TVs and PCs and err… indoor toilets* in developing countries and therefore mobile, SMS and WAP all present an enormous amount of potential. But again, Jan was keen to stress the problem of exclusion.
Some priceless soundbites from the day:
- “If I could download a handbag, I would” Bridget Minamore, contributor to Livity
- “We learn by copying, so why is it illegal?” Peter Sunde, Flattr (formerly Pirate Bay)
- “The music industry isn’t in a bad place, it’s thriving, it’s the record industry that is suffering” Peter Sunde
- “We have free art galleries but people still pay millions for art at Christies” Harriet Thomas, iCaring
This is a top-line for now, I will hopefully break out some of the more interesting talks and do full posts on them, so you know, stay tuned.
This event and its predecessor has been such a success that they will be taking it to the US in December and are considering extending it to two days next year. I heartily recommend it.
*Georgia Arnold claimed that 70% of young Kenyans use social media, 80% have mobile phones – only 53% have an indoor toilet. Personally, if I lived in a small, very hot house I probably wouldn’t want an indoor toilet either.
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Why I love TED talks
Recently, Jeff Jarvis’ post on how the ‘one to many’ format of Ted talks is ‘bullshit’ caused a bit of a ‘hear hear’ reaction online. His point is that the educational system has not changed to accommodate the “crowdly” influence of the web, that the lecture format where one person speaks and the rest of us listens no longer makes sense, because today we’re ‘many to many’, ‘co-creators’ of knowledge.
Most of us agree that the educational system desperately need to change, but why attack TED’s format? This seems like a cheap shot, dragging a great name into the mud just to gain a bit of attention. Read full post
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We love awesome stuff: Vote for Policies
Earlier this week, Stuart wrote about viewing our competition as allies. This probably feels a little uncomfortable for a lot of people — businesses want to succeed, and a big part of succeeding is making money, which comes from getting work, which normally happens at another business’s expense.
But who says it’s a zero-sum game? The Web is changing and the world is changing. The biggest gains — monetary and otherwise — are to come from being a part of that change, and influencing the direction of that change so that we — and our industry — become smarter, kinder, and just, well… better.
Today, through the serendipity engine that is Twitter, I found a really clever, thought-provoking site. It’s called Vote for Policies and in addition to being beautifully designed and very useable, it’s also really timely. (Thanks must be given to @RKTweets, who tweeted this little gem in the first place.)
The site helps users compare the policies of the six main political parties. It removes the party branding so people can get straight to the content and make informed decisions based on the policies they want to live with, rather than be nudged this way and that by the faces, rhetoric and theme songs those policies usually hide behind. By pulling out the meaningful content and putting it in a usable interface framed by clean, instructive copy, this site does something really important: it makes powerful information accessible to more people.
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Visual note-taking is the new religion
Forget Scientology, Kabbalah or The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the growing Movement of Visual Notetakers is where it’s at.
One of my big hopes pre-SXSW was that I’d learn some cool stuff, particularly about how to present thoughts and ideas visually. A good few of The Many are skilled draughtsmen who easily loop and whirl their way into the thoughts that spring up during brainstorms, workshops and meetings. I’m not one of them. My notes are always predictably outed as bullet-pointed lines; I’m a word person.
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Paxo on Chatroulette
Thank Jehovah that the Web is still capable of generating the kind of super-retarded moral panic and outrage that characterised Newsnight’s piece on Chatroulette last night.
It was brilliant to be reminded of how subversive and mad the Web is. In our increasingly settled, sanitised and locked down Web era Chatroulette is a timely warning to us all that we must hold on to the crazy stuff, because what it really represents is the Internet’s culture of freedom and culture of innovation.
With the exception of Danah Boyd, the so-called ‘experts’ they brought onto Newsnight last night, and the report itself, were shockingly ill-informed and reminiscent of Chris Morris’ 2001 Brass Eye Special ‘Paedogeddon’. It was like a parody.
Culture correspondent Stephen Smith was sent off to a casino in Knightsbridge to play some roulette to the strains of Frank Sinatra singing “Luck Be A Lady Tonight…“. The show’s producers must have thought this was very clever. But it wasn’t. Stephen linked from the casino to the piece itself, with the question on absolutely nobody’s lips:
“Are we to imagine that the etiquette of the green baize will transfer to the webcam and the new craze ‘Chat Roulette’?”
Uh-oh.
“I span the wheel on Chat Roulette”
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Online > offline: we still love paper goods
Last Tuesday night, I went to the preview for the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition (aka the Oscars of the design world) at the Design Museum in Shad Thames.
(Photo credit: Luke Hayes, from the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year blog)
It was a fluorescent evening, buoyed up by free-flowing champagne and ebullient design types larging it in hats, big hairdo’s, bright lipstick and serious specs.
The exhibition covers the gamut of design: architecture, furniture, product, graphics, interactive and fashion. One of my favourite pieces was a bit of folly with a serious message: ‘Panda Eyes‘ a crowd of WWF Panda collecting tins, wired up to a camera in the sky to detect human movement and shift in sync as you walk around them. Its intention is to raise awareness of pandas’ plight in the wild. I think.
What I found interesting is that some of the graphic entries were really all about the relationship between online and print (and therefore arguably candidates for the interactive category). These three entries all had online generation in common: the articles, images, comment and opinion are all drawn from the crowd, using twitter, blogs and data to bring a concept to life.
Newspaper Club (which for some reason has a bit of an ugly website, but produces beautiful papers) allows anyone to create and print their own newspaper, without the need to be a multi-millionaire media mogul.
Here’s a particularly cool example that’s both useful and will please anyone who likes a bit of data visualisation loveliness. The Postcode Paper was an experiment from the Newspaper Club themselves that took information from data.gov.uk such as local services, crime stats and other useful stuff you need to know when you first move somewhere, like TFL transport links, and republished it in one handy, paper format.
(Photo credit: Newspaper Club)
It’s Nice That brings together the best of the creative industry in one place. As well as existing online, they also produce “a bi-annual printed publication, monthly talks and videocast, an online shop selling exclusive products as well as regular interviews and features with current practitioners.” I haven’t seen the print publication, but they feature some mighty nice stuff online.
And having recently received an extremely dull pre-conference magazine for SXSW, I can appreciate how something like The Incidental would be refreshingly interesting and bring the good stuff to your attention when wading through the programme at a conference. Essentially, it’s “a community-generated news pamphlet and website at international design events which offers debate, reviews, news updates and recommendations by tapping into what everyone is talking about.”
This has given us some ideas for SXSW…
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Grow a spine you wimps
Are you as tired as I am of these people who whinge on about the Web being too big and free and open and rich for their fragile little brains to cope with?
After centuries millenia of restricted access to knowledge being something every hipster should be heard moaning about, it’s now suddenly cool to complain that there’s just ‘too much information‘ out there and that you can’t cope. Yeah man, it’s just too heavy. It’s like you could spend all day every day online, but you still can’t take it all in and it’s completely ruining your life, and making you feel worthless.
To be fair, it’s the same type of people now complaining that there’s just too much knowledge who always tell you – unprompted – about the the unearthly hour they got up as a way of asserting their moral superiority over anyone who got up at a more sensible time. They’re the same people who never miss an opportunity to tell you how many days they’ve had without any sleep because they are SOOO busy, and how little they’ve eaten… ever. Now, the Web offers these idiots a new opportunity to demonstrate self-worth – through another melodramatic and yet pointless piece of self-denial. But it’s better than that, the Web also provides a massive new audience of gullible fools people to bore on to.
I had to check to see if this article from the NY Times website was some sort of hoax – it’s called “Stop Your Search Engines” (headline writer possibly suffering from Continual Partial Attention disorder). In it, they describe an Apple Desktop App called Freedom - created for people who feel the need for a “strategy” to help them deal with the temptation of the modern world’s super-abundance of knowledge.
It works like this.
I can’t believe anyone wasted any valuable moments of their lives programming Freedom. Your modem and your system preferences will both do this. You do not need an App. And there is also this button on all computers that just turns them off. If you that’s not good enough for you but you live inside the M25, then why not DM and I’ll come round your house with a baseball bat to smash your equipment up.
I call this programme of self-realisation ‘Total Freedom’ and it costs £50 a pop. Drop me a line.
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I’ve had a baby. What have you all been up to?
(or 10 things that have changed on the web since November '08)In the time I’ve been away and had a baby (she’s 10 months old this week…), a lot has happened.
The internet being a many-splendoured and rapidly changing thing, I hesitate to attempt any coherent summary of all that’s gone on.
Instead, I’ll just pick out a few things that have sprung up on my radar as significant changes between November ‘08 and September ‘09. Broadly speaking, I see them as these:
- digital as support act > digital as headliner
- semantic web frenzy > real-time web frenzy
- slow fade of shiny 2.0 aesthetic > upsurge of big type mobile-friendly aesthetic
- Twitter as geekorama > Twitter as mainstream
- Google primacy > Google supremacy
- 43 white, analogue US presidents > 1 black, digital US president
- banner ads and buttons > social, shared content
- state control of ISPs (Iran, China) > online social mobilisation and subversion
- stream of rubbish reality TV on iPlayer and 4OD > demise of Keith Floyd
- Plus, of course the launch of Spotify, Facebook Connect, a proliferation of Twitter clients and more iPhone apps than you can shake an accelerometer-enabled stick at.
You’re more than welcome to plug the gaps on the things I’ve missed whilst I was lost in the apparently endless cycle of feeding, sleeplessness, nappy-changing and washing.
Please, tell me: what other important stuff have I missed?
P.S. As I was writing this, I found a couple of Trend Blend maps via Ross Dawson’s blog which suggest that between 2008 and 2009, life has gone from being an ordered train journey through society, politics, technology et al…
Trend Blend map 2008
…to a more scary-looking hydra, beset by ominous little red demons. Perhaps I should have stayed at home, offline, with the curtains closed.
Trend Blend map 2009
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Climate Squad: from social media to social movement
Made by Many is pleased as punch to announce the launch of climatesquad.org.uk, a platform for joining and organising actions to halt climate change that’s also the first of a series of initiatives by V to change the way youth volunteering works in the UK.
V is an organisation funded by the Office of the Third Sector to promote and fund volunteering for 16-25 year olds. V came to Made by Many 8 months ago, asking us to create a vision for future volunteering with the expectation that digital engagement would reduce barriers to young people joining in voluntary action. In May we started working on Climate Squad, joint funded by V and Bank of America, as the first implementation of the strategy we defined with V.
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