Navigating Digital – how Art Fund developed a new strategic approach

Navigating Digital – how Art Fund developed a new strategic approach

By Katie Moffat
Michael Keating

SUMMARY

Optimising your digital activity for effectiveness can be a huge challenge because there are so many different factors that affect success. Mike Keating from Art Fund and Substrakt’s Katie Moffat detail how Art Fund developed a more joined up, coherent approach to digital.

A summary of Navigating Digital - how Arts Fund developed a new strategic approach, presented at The Arts Marketing Association's conference, Brighton, 2024. It presented some of the challenges faced by the arts sector (in relation to digital effectiveness) and explained why having a stand alone digital strategy can help to address these challenges. Finally Mike and Katie explained the steps taken to create an effective digital strategy for Art Fund, and the outcomes achieved.


The challenges

Arts organisations often struggle with digital effectiveness due to challenges associated with  time, funding, and expertise. These hinder their ability to reach, engage, and grow audiences effectively. Katie cited the Digital Culture longitudinal study from Arts Council England and Nesta, and annual survey conducted from 2013-2019 by mtm on behalf of Arts Council England and Nesta. This survey aimed to understand how cultural organisations were using technology, their confidence and skills levels, and the opportunities and challenges. 

Katie highlighted some key data points from the survey. For example, the most frequently cited barriers to organisations realising their digital aspirations were:

  • lack of funding to allocate to digital (70 per cent in 2019);
  • difficulty in accessing external funding for digital projects (58 per cent);
  • and lack of in-house staff time (68 per cent). 

While this report is a few years old now, the findings also demonstrated that organisations confidence and capability with digital doesn’t always develop in an upwards trajectory. For example, the percentage of organisations who said they used analytics and insights to improve their website actually fell between 2013 and 2019. 


The value of a digital strategy

There is sometimes a question about whether, in 2024, a standalone digital strategy is needed, and whether it is better to fold digital plans into an overall business strategy. This is one approach, but Katie explained that in reality most cultural organisations find it helpful to have a specific strategy that is clear on the priorities and focus for their use of technology. Otherwise it can be easy to get distracted and divert resources to digital projects that may seem interesting but aren’t aligned with overall business priorities. She pointed out that even extremely sophisticated organisations, such as the Science Museum Group, has a clearly articulated digital strategy


Art Fund’s context

Mike explained that prior to undertaking this work, Art Fund faced common issues such as poor communication between teams, siloed working, and no prioritisation of tasks or projects. These problems resulted in high energy and output, but low results. The goal was to improve communication, prioritise work, and enhance project quality. He also wanted to ensure that they were using their budgets in the most effective way possible. Mike acknowledged that while he could theoretically have developed the strategy without any external support, it can also be useful to bring in an objective third party who will have a different perspective to you and your team. Enlisting some outside expertise also helps to prioritise practically getting the strategy done, as it’s often something that is pushed down the to do list. 


Steps to create and implement a digital strategy

Mike outlined the key steps to developing a coherent strategy. These are:

Understand your organisational strategic objectives: this will help align digital goals with the organisation’s overall business objectives 

Define Challenges: Clearly identify what issues the digital strategy needs to support, such as increased donations or better user engagement.

Audit: Assess current digital activity, audiences and your internal processes, identify any issues and challenges

Understand digital skills: Evaluate existing skills within the organisation to inform training or recruitment needs.

Competitor benchmarking: Analyse peers and competitors to understand the digital landscape and identify best practices.

Create the strategy: Develop a comprehensive digital strategy based on the insights gained - this will articulate your priorities.

Design team structure: Ensure the organisational structure supports the digital strategy.

Implement and review: Execute the strategy and regularly review its effectiveness, adapting as necessary.


Art Fund’s journey

When Art Fund started working with Katie and Substrakt, they had already done some of this work (eg, there had been some work to create a situational analysis and content audit)). When Substrakt came on board, Katie worked with Mike and the team to revisit this work and to help clarify the key issues.

Through early exploration and discussions it became clear that Art Fund didn’t want to include digital communications within the scope of this strategy. The focus for the digital strategy was about refining how Art Fund worked on digital projects, including website developments, because this area needed the most attention soonest, and the communications side was working well enough after some recent changes. To this end the strategy included a prioritisation framework that was tailored to meet Art Fund’s needs. 


Outcomes achieved

Mike explained that even though the digital strategy is a living thing, that will be routinely reviewed to ensure impact, there have been a number of benefits to undertaking this work, namely:

Improved prioritisation: Having the digital strategy has enabled Art Fund to deliver projects collaboratively across the organisation now  everyone is clear on the priorities.

Better communication: It has enhanced briefing and communication processes.

Increased trust: Fostered trust among team members through clear and consistent updates.

Controlled spending: More efficient project management reduced unnecessary expenditures.

Enhanced focus: Allowed Art Fund to address critical areas.


Key lessons learned

Mike and Katie closed their talk by sharing some key learnings from this project. Mike pointed out that it can be critical to have someone, at a senior level, who understands the importance of effective digital practice and of being focused (this echoed a comment Kate Carter made in her presentation about developing an audience strategy for Edinburgh International Festival - that having an internal champion is extremely valuable to helping you push projects like this through). 

It is also important to consider how you will bring internal stakeholders into the process, so that the resulting strategy is co-owned, rather than being imposed on people. And Mike cautioned against reinventing the wheel, i.e. changing systems or processes for the sake of it; keep what is working and change what isn’t. Katie also said that from her perspective, Art Fund’s open minded attitude going into the project was hugely beneficial. 


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Resource type: Case studies | Published: 2024