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‘Bums on Seats’

“PR folk are always asking how do you measure the value of social media? I’m glad I don’t have to rate every conversation I have.” @Documentally

Over the past few weeks I have been to two ACE Get AmbITions, and the Shift Happens conference regarding the use of digital media in the arts. Get AmbITion I’ve already blogged about, and I did say that I was going to wait until this Sunday to do anything about Shift Happens, but I really want to address something that’s come up, several times, at all of the aforementioned conferences, and I want to talk about it now. Here it is:

‘Bums on seats’

Several times that phrase has come up, and even oftener has the general sentiment been expressed:

‘This is all very nice, very modern. But how does this translate into our making money, how can this be measured?’

Let me just add a brief caveat before I get into this. I am not just a consumer of art. I am not longing after some ideal world where the arts get the equivalent of the defence budget (or at least the money that’s supposed to be going to renew Trident), nor do I think ‘real’ art comes out of people living off a pittance in some squat in whatever part of London is next going to become fabulously cool and bohemian. I understand the material realities of theatre-making. Granted I’m young, but I have worked in two theatres (Terry O’Toole and Loughborough Town Hall Theatre) as well as working for just over a year in a mid-scale company (Foursight Theatre), and (currently) freelancing for another (Theatre Writing Partnership). I also write for theatre, and through that have been involved with Nottingham Playhouse, the Royal Court, and smaller non RFO companies like Box of Tricks and Scary Little Girls. I am telling you all this because I want you to take me seriously. I may be young, may be idealistic, but I do understand the intricacies of funding agreements, I have seen boards poring over budgets, I understand how hard it is, and how much has to be justified, how RFOs have to prove themselves in ‘deliverables’, I also understand that ACE have to have something to measure, otherwise how do they know who do give money to? I understand all of this. I just don’t think that is how things have to be in every inch of our art.

A theatre company operating now, with no involvement in social media, is like a painter having no involvement with the colour blue.

‘But how does this translate to bums on seats’

This question was asked at the Shift Happens conference, during a Q&A after the Hoi Polloi video diary/twitter presentation. It was asked how all of the social media involvement ‘translated to bums on seats’. I was one of the people who responded to the question. However I am a little concerned that I put my point a little awkwardly, I was sitting in the circle, and so had to bark my answer down, I’m worried that I may have sounded harsh. If I sounded exasperated, it’s because I was, but not at the questioner, rather at the imperative to measure that casts its shadow over the whole discussion of social media. So I want to try and put my ideas across to you

This is how I see it: I know that you need money to grow art. It’s like manure, it works ok without, but much quicker and shinier with it. But this does not mean that everything in art should be measured against the money it cultivates.

“Marketing people are talking about the wrong bit, the product, you should be talking about the process – make it accessible” DK @mediasnackers at Shift Happens

The value of social media can and should not be measured against old, analogue-world ideas of promotion and product. Speaker after speaker told us this.

“Digital distribution has changed everything. It’s no longer about pushing product. The consumer will pull what they want” Charles Cecil at Shift Happens

The idea of ‘bums on seats’ is no longer relevant, in the context of a digital universe (and make no mistake, your future audience is certainly living in one) you cannot sell, you cannot push. Old ideas of marketing just wont wash. If you are worried about getting people to your performances or exhibitions, then you should not be shying away from social media, you should be jumping in feet first, wading around, making a splash, because the arts don’t just need to be involved in the digital world, they need to be at the roots of it, prodding, seeing where it goes, asking where it might take us. What is the value of being involved in digital worlds? Because right now it is the only thing that will keep us alive, it is the only thing that will keep us relevant. What the online-conversation dramatises is the connection between art and its audience. One which, if you look at our typical audiences, is beginning to be lost.

“Old ideas of narrative are Newtonian, the internet is reality according to Einstein” @billt

People exist now as many different aspects, in many different contexts, as people are finding new ways to love, laugh, lose and cry, each moment is simultaneously created, destroyed, viewed through a lens. If you don’t understand these new ways of being, how can you make art? If you dismiss a generation’s way(s) of being (including the worst of it, Youtube comments, trolls, the proliferation of paedophilic material, as well as the hardest to fathom, WOW and 4chan) how dare you tell people that you have anything worth saying? How dare you?

I believe art should speak to us of ourselves. I believe that we should try and learn about every moment, every second, I believe we should talk about the future, in order to look at now. I also believe that the digital world is an almost entirely untapped source of story. Where better to explore the relationship between avatar and RL, than on a stage, framed, where people play characters? Where better to ask how it is that groups of people consent to pretend that the on-screen, framed [bracketed, if we’re getting phenomenological] world they are looking at is somewhere else, an alternate reality, with alternate concerns, aims, multi-string narratives, and people represented by avatars than where it is already happening? Where better to tilt-shift the digital world so that we can see it anew, distanced, objectively emotive, questioning?

“Using an open source model of work reduces the cost of collaboration and provides you with a skillset limited only by your network” Alex Fleetwood @ammonite at Shift Happens

You might argue that I’m being very airy, very conceptual, perhaps even a little conversational? Well here’s what else social media can get you: more resources than you could ever dream of. What do we do when we can no longer ‘push’ – can no longer try and convince people that the story we’re telling them is what they want to hear? Well how about we listen to them, we let them in on the process, tell them that they’re worth listening to, engaging with. And how about we look at the world–changing concept of open source working- the WIKI, the dev environment.

“Why do people need your walls and stage when they’ve got Youtube? They’re you’re competitors” DK @mediasnackers at Shift Happens

We are fighting for the attention, now, of a generation who have become used to being their own protagonist, accessing their own world, controlling their own characters. If you open your process up, if you engage with people, if you tell their stories, ask them questions, offer them involvement, ownership, they will want to see the work you make. You will have made participants, not an audience. If you can make them laugh, if you can make them wonder, if you can connect to them in a human way, in conversation – you will not just have a bum on a seat, you will have a heart too. And hearts come back.

Don’t just join in now, look to the future. Is open-source, wiki developed work the next step in devising? How does theatre writing exist in a wiki-world? Is streaming a new testing-ground for new work? What is the potential for using these tools to find new talent, to help people, to reach out the disenfranchised and disaffected? How can the digital world work on stage? Is the digital world a stage?

Social media is a conversation, not a piece of equipment. This is a call to arms, for democratisation, for anarchy, consensus. Be exited, embrace your fear, jump in. There’s almost always a back button. If you are exciting, if you are relevant, if you engage, your social networks will not be a task, your participants will create them for you.

“[The world of ideas is changing] the news is becoming mutual, Obama’s politics was mutual- not driven by spin, broadcast control and brand […] It’s all about the pull […] Think pirates. Think mavericks, think renegades [They will re-form our world, they can tell us what the future might look like] It’s critical that artists are engaged with the digital world, not for marketing, but to ask difficult, big questions of it” Charles Leadbeater @wethink at Shift Happens [brackets = paraphrasing from my twitter feed]

So find the new stories, ask the big questions. We’re heading to a new universe of narrative and being, someone needs to throw ideas around, ask big questions, to “make a mess so we know where we are”, to ask who we are, who we might become. Let’s keep art vital.

Further reading: I have also written a short, all-in introduction for tweeting for artists and arts organisations. Twitter is a very easy, cheap way to get started. You can download my document here. Share and share alike :)

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Digital Media and The Arts

My first conference tag, wheeee!

Digital Media and the Arts

So, an editorial-style blog and couple of creative pieces later I think there’s a ‘what I am up to’ blog due. Short answer: lots. But if you follow me on Twitter, or speak to me occasionally you probably already know that – so here’s a long-answer-picture of everything that’s been going on over the past few weeks.

Today I was at a combination of the Arts Council England (ACE) AmbITion and my first meeting/contract signing with Theatre Writing Partnership. I’ll talk a little more about the content of the former in a bit- firstly: ‘contract signing?’ I hear you cry! ‘what is this craziness?’. Aha, well I can now officially say that I have been contracted by TWP as a freelance Online Communication Officer, the idea being that over the summer I work with them on a freelance basis, helping them spread their digital roots. This will be in conjunction with a website overhaul being done elsewhere, building up to a big, exciting, social media theatre writing experiment around October time. TWP are (for the uninitiated) an East Midlands based new theatre writing initiative – I came across them in my first year of uni through the Momentum Festival – it was with TWP that I wrote my first ever piece of theatre, I made many friends (Lucy, Alex, MorpheanRamble, Robin, Phil, Sabrina) through the festival and it set me off on my current trajectory as an aspiring playwright. TWP are a brilliant resource for theatre writing in an area in which there are very few (in comparison to London) opportunities to have work read and developed. My work with them will consist of getting an online presence together, creating an online space for all of TWPs past writers, workshop leaders and other participants to reconnect and catch up, really build a grassroots-style support and opportunities network for them, get a blogroll together etc., as well as looking at how new and social media can work for a new writing theatre company. Very exciting stuff! So today I met up with Bianca from TWP, sorted all the contractual things, and got started, watch this space!

This morning (as anyone who follows me will know) I was at the ACE AmbITion day. A morning of speakers followed by an afternoon of workshops (we skipped the afternoon of how-to’s). I missed the introduction due to a combination of a late train and having a map to the wrong Broadway (one’s a street, one’s a cinema >_<) and instead went straight into one of two speakers. The first up was Alex Fleetwood (@ammonite). Alex was from Hide and Seek, they don’t call themselves an arts company per se, but what they’re doing is some very exciting and challenging stuff. Their main project is one of play – the idea being that play is going to be central to culture in the 21st Century, it took in all kinds of ideas on ‘play’ from video games to childhood games to immersive theatre in the style of Punchdrunk, Forced Entertainment et al. The most valuable (IMO) thing that I took away from the talk however, was the model of involvement that it used. It basically took on the Wiki ethic and put it in a performative/artistic context. Examples of their work include Wiki developed city-wide games of hide-and-seek and spy narratives, and one particular piece which was a game for two- one of whom was in a tomb-raider style puzzle house, and the other who controlled and interacted from a rich online environment. These pieces were all self generating. The framework was there, but the content was user generated, interractive and built in the ‘sandpit‘ of what essentially was a dev community. The games were beta tested, altered, shared and shared alike. This is a step on from ideas of devising theatre, there is no final text, there may be words spoken, but it is the participant’s play. It raised fascinating questions about authorship, of how people accept rule-sets, of created and real identity, basically bloody gold dust in terms of my theatre and tech PhD, and otherwise essential ideas for the future of performance and art.

However I was a little disappointed with the rest of the event, the next speech was more than a little lacklustre, less about potential for new work, and more about the process of some pretty standard old work. The Q&A at the end brought up two questions which stick in my mind. Overall the comments consisted of bemused excitement, people seemed to repeat the fact that it was all so over their heads so complicated etc, they could see the potential but not what it meant for them – but I suppose that’s what the second half of the day was about- getting people to jump in and see that the digital world is not scary. But it was a little depressing – the resistance to these ideas- they seemed to say ‘yes but you’re young, you know about these things, I don’t’. Um…. Well learn then! Dive in! Learn that it’s OK to not know, that it’s where everyone starts. I did fine art and English lit A levels, my respective degrees are in Drama and Playwriting, when I went to school the most advanced piece of kit we had was a little mushroom shaped thing on wheels which you could program to travel a variety of distances, left or right (I don’t know what that was supposed to teach us). My point is that everything that I know about the tech world is what I’ve taught myself, and learnt from friends, peers, family. Do some people decide that they have finished learning? That they know enough? I know so little about so many things, I’m hungry for it, for understanding, for information. This rant relates onwards, don’t worry, to two specific questions that came up. The first one I’ll mention was after Alex Fleetwood’s talk on Hide & Seek, from a gentlemen near the front of the room, I didn’t catch where he was from. I’m paraphrasing, but he basically asked:

“But how do we get these 13 year old kids away from spending 10 hours a day on World of Warcraft and on to more important, social things?”

I’m being very, very restrained by not breaking into a full on rant here, because I don’t think it would be terribly constructive, let me just outline all the things that are wrong with that question.

  1. The assumption that WOW is antisocial
  2. The assumption that what the questioner calls ‘art’ is worthier than a game
  3. The assumption that games and art cannot be the same thing
  4. The assumption that time spent on WOW is wasted
  5. The assumption that it is our job to rival the ‘bad influence’ of games.

We should be learning from the model of MMORPG games – they enthral people because they put them at the centre of a story, they make the player an originator. People connect online, just because the connection doesn’t fit hitherto subscribed to social norms, doesn’t mean the connection is any less. Often, in terms of intellectual engagement, it can make it is somehow more. I’m not saying that all theatre should be like a game- but in our world there are new questions arising from new politics of identity and communication. Gaming communities are vibrant, strong, and active things, it’s so ignorant to assume that your way of living your life is somehow right, and another wrong, rather looking at the differences between the two, trying to understand. Why might someone spend so much time online? What does the VR give them that RL doesn’t? Is it control? Is it the power of the protagonist? Is it the idea of playing as another? Is it relaxing? Is it exciting? Is it escapism? Ask those questions, don’t ask how we can save them from themselves. Ask how they can save us from our old selves.

Alex Fleetwood was brilliant in response, he emphasised that we shouldn’t see WOW and other games as ‘bogey men’ or enemies to real life. He put it much gentler than I have, but he was clear, and gave what I think was an admirable response.

The other question I’ll talk (briefly) about was asked by someone from Lincoln’s Drill Hall venue – basically the point put forward was that they couldn’t afford the staff hours or to pay someone external to run the kind of web 2.0 social network that was being talked of. Which is a reason I’ve often heard mooted- and it’s understandable, but if you ask me, it’s not the answer that’s the problem – it’s the question. The kind of sandbox style beta testing artistic environment that AF talked about is not one that you can engineer- it is only one for which you can provide the framework. It is not an organisation’s job to nail down every corner of a mapped social network – it should be theirs to enthuse an audience or target group to the point at which they author it, and in which the organisation is merely a participant. This means that the organisation hasn’t spent masses of budget and time on something that might not work, it means they have something which is and continues to be self-generating and relevant. The point of social networking in the arts is to pull down the pedestal on which art has been placed- to stop saying so definitely when art stops and audience begins, to play with collective creation, to play with narrative, to play with identity. These things are changing in modern society, there are new ways of loving, laughing, and losing being invented everyday, if we don’t investigate them, if we don’t tell these new stories, then we fail as artists.

We need people to stop being afraid of these new ways of communicating, otherwise art – which I consider as best-fitted to challenging society – will become defunct, another method of escapism, a tool of suppression rather than revolution. Better put than I ever will:

“Theatre is a weapon. A very efficient weapon […] for this reason the ruling classes try to take hold of theatre and utilise it as a tool for domination […] but the theatre can also be a weapon of the liberation. For that, it is necessary to change appropriate theatrical forms. Change is imperative.” (p. ix, Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed (New Edition). London: Pluto Press, 2000.)

What else am I up to? Many things, I think it’s best if I summarise more quickly as this appears to have become a bit of a behemoth. I’m writing an article for Subtext Magazine on women in tech. I’m going to be in York at the Shift Happens arts and digital technology conference at the end of this month, talking to people about Twitter. I’ve also written an arts organisation intro to Twitter for it, which so far seems to be getting some good responses. I finished and sent off my treatment for the 15 minute play Box of Tricks have commissioned me to work on. I’m meeting up with some Twitter friends for some drinks (as well as some thoughts on the future of digital media, but mostly drinks) I’m off to Leeds and Birmingham this month, and in mid July – Paris! I have also decided to save up enough money to attend the weekend of Climate Camp in August.

Plus I’m trying to squeeze in some temp work so I can afford all of the above!

Phew!

I’m not going to pretend I don’t love this :-)