Ways to increase engagement through using innovative digital media

Collaboration and building communities via digital strategies

Hannah Rudman introduced the session by introducing the speakers and outlining some key themes, especially looking at the operational organisational framework within which we are working.

What is an innovative approach to digital media? It's probably about changes in the way we are working, such as collaboration and building communities.

Why is this happening? Digital development is the result of technological change, which is having economic and social impacts and in turn is leading to significant cultural behaviour changes.

These developments have hit the cultural sector hard - not just on account of the technology but also because we have spent the last hundred years trying to control the way we work with people. It's now necessary to work with people in a different way.

A question frequently asked of me is: does technology make everyone an artist? The answer is 'not really'. Just because people have snazzy digital cameras doesn't mean they don't still look to artists for inspiration. It's about people choosing to be an artist by vocation. However, the masses want to create and innovate. Some businesses are leading and they do this because understand that 'our focus should be not on emerging technologies but on emerging cultural practices' (Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture, When Old and New Media Collide).

If we go back to medieval times, culture such as mummers' plays used to be participated in. Then over the last 100 years we have professionalised our art; it is made in special places by special people. Now we are in an era in which people have the tools and the connectivity to make culture together again. This affects cultural behaviour.

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