Producing the future by playing the field – how we support new ideas
July 5, 2010
Posted by Clare in: Watershed | Innovation | Technology | Sustainability | arts | 1 comment so farI have just done a talk at the Shift Happens conference in York and @rohan_21awake asked if could share the text of my speech: "it would make an amazing article/manifesto/job ad"
So here it is:
Watershed, based in Bristol and the UK’s first media centre, began life over 25 years ago, concentrating mainly then on the exhibition of independent film. These days, after some long hard thinking about what we are, how we work and where we deliver value, we refer to ourselves as cross-artform producer, sharing, developing and showcasing cultural ideas and talent.
Today I am going to talk a little bit about our motivations and approach to supporting new ideas and outline our latest project Theatre Sandbox.
To give you a better understand of our mode of operation though, I will start with a (very quick) overview of our business. Watershed is a Group of three companies operating within a common Brand:
- The Trading company is the revenue generator for the company, but also a neutral space where many of the network we work with are happy to work and play.
- The Art Trust curates a public facing programme, primarily in our own venue and online and is the door to Watershed for most people.
- iShed is the R&D arm, producing open collaborations which bridge expertise and traditional boundaries to promote emergent practice. We also manage The Pervasive Media Studio, a research lab which brings together artists, academics and companies outside their normal institutional spaces to collaborate, share ideas and create new work.
Each of the Watershed companies have specialist expertise and responsibility, but it is through the synergy of the group that we manage to punch above our apparent weight, manage risk, and deliver high returns on public investment.
Over 10 years ago Watershed started working with both HP Labs and University of Bristol on projects which explored, tested and got emerging technologies into the hands of creatives and audiences early in its design life cycle. From projects like se3d, Clarks Bursary, Mobile Bristol and Diffraction, we started to create a model of community learning, early stage testing and sustained support to develop unlikely collaborations and interesting projects.
Over the past three years we have been working with the Bill Sharpe and Graham Leicester at the International Futures Forum to try and make sense of the many interactions we have with the people we support and the complicated space we play in, and this thinking – brought together in Producing the Future – a book we have just published with IFF – has helped us to understand how much we value:
- our role as a producer and supporter of new talent and ideas
- the degree in which collaboration has become central to our practice
- and that however much we contribute to the wider creative ecology, we receive much more back in return.
In innovation terms, from the history of silicon valley to the development of places like MIT or Apple, much has been written about the benefits and value of interdisciplinary working, and we often come back to the work of John Seely Brown in Creation Nets, that to develop and deliver new ideas, you must collaborate with organisations unlike you – in skills, culture, size or outlook. Indeed this thinking seems particularly relevant at the moment -
“Creation nets accelerate innovation across participants. Not only are participants able to innovate more rapidly than they could outside these networks, the pace of their innovation accelerates the longer they participate in the network.
A natural reaction to accelerating change is to turn inward and tighten control. Creation nets require a different mindset, one that recognises that flows of knowledge across institutional boundaries are the key to generating the new knowledge and new practices required to succeed in a rapidly changing world”
So, to Theatre Sandbox and our new creation net:
In the last few years, after producing a series of projects which fused theatre, gaming and film – with companies like Hide&Seek, Punchdrunk and Bristol Old Vic we became interested in:
- how we could support new work which addresses the ways in which digital is influencing and changing the way we live?
- how we could support the development of producers by introducing new tools and encouraging new modes of thinking?
- the production of new types of personalised, located performance where audience members become collaborators, co-authoring their experiences
- And the value of pervasive technologies via a creative perspective - asking how can theatre-makers might unlock new and unexpected capabilities, content and applications early in the technology research lifecycle?
As we were increasingly being approached by people from within the theatre sector for consultancy and partnership, it seemed appropriate to use the format of a scheme called Media Sandbox which we had produced for three years in the south west to leverage greater impact than a series of small, unrelated projects. So we applied to Arts Council and created a scheme which would run innovation labs across the country and then commission six new theatre projects to explore pervasive media.
The commissioned projects - and you can read all about them on the blog - range from a hearing impaired performer who wants to develop captioning which responds dynamically to her delivery, to an audio led fairy tale which explores a parallel magical world glimpsed through keyholes and cracks in the pavement.
Built into the very DNA of Theatre Sandbox is an emphasis on familiarisation, investigation and training for both the partner venues and the commissioned projects to feel confident, informed and able to engage with digital technologies. We have a brilliant advisory group including Lyn Gardner, who is on stage tomorrow, and a wealth of technology and theatre experts for the commissions to tap into.
We staged the first meeting for participants last week and are at the exciting beginning stage of development where they get to do some free thinking and we get to work hard in the background trying to work out what kind of support they might need.
But the scheme isn’t just about offering an opportunity to these six groups, so here is a 3 minute video showing the ideas generation process of the 5 labs we did across the country:
View film: http://www.theatresandbox.co.uk/2010/05/17/film-theatre-sandbox-workshops/
Marcus asked me to speak personally today and this video illustrates everything that really excites me about working in this space: Bright, open, generous, hungry people, looking to do something new – either in terms of a medium, the audience or their own practice.
But what are the skills and qualities I think are expected of me as a producer, in order that we keep finding and supporting new ideas? How can I continue to be what Seth Honnor describes as a midwife – keeping open channels of exploration whilst maintaining quality and relevance?
I need to engender confidence – to ensure the people I am working with don’t obsess about the technology and are able to concentrate on their idea. Sometimes this confidence is built through introducing them to people who can help them realise their idea, sometimes it is simply permission to spend time thinking, or recognition that their idea is worth pursuing.
I need to be a translator, negotiating across sectors and in a new medium where the language and possibilities is both exciting and daunting.
I need to be promiscuous, to say yes to many meetings even when its not clear why, and then be opportunist about spotting potential and moving quickly. I need to Understand and bridge the research, technology, the commercial digital industry and the cultural sector. Curating conversations and situations where brilliant people can flourish.
I need empathy and care – to work with people over long periods of time… and patience to stick with them when they are wondering what its all about.
I need flexibility and open-ness – I am reminded of David Jubb’s contribution to the Jerwood book The Producers – you rarely make what you set out to make – especially if you look to test, share and iterate ideas during the development process.
I need to be an advocate and spread infectious enthusiasm, to make sure the ideas have a life after the research period.
I need to understand and manage expectation within a collaboration – making sure communication is clear and learning is shared.
I need to shield projects from bureaucracy, cash flow, application forms and pre-defined outputs – taking care of liaison with funders etc.
I need to embrace and share failure – mine and that of the projects that we have worked on – if your success rate is 100% you haven’t taken enough risks. But we can certainly all learn from things that didn’t work.
Watershed is a creative ecosystem, operating in many and different economies. A healthy ecosystem will always be generating new ideas, possibilities and meanings – this is a creative process. Equally creative I think, is the process of negotiating the interaction between the multiple economies at play. Its what excites me and its what I love about my job.
Whilst there is obviously loads of brilliant and extraordinary ideas being made, as a sector I don’t believe we yet know how to properly support or even identify potential interdisciplinary producers. We have been lucky enough to have Katie Day working with us on Theatre Sandbox as part of the Cultural Leadership Programme and we have both learnt a lot during the learning and reflection process.
Digital producers are brilliant value for money in that they leverage connections and opportunity, and their mix of tacit, commercial and cultural production skills will deliver across projects, but leadership development in our sector often doesn’t cater to those working in this way.
I believe there are many more brilliant ideas and people out there ready to fuse artistic practice and digital tools, but don’t think the ideas necessarily come ready to make or that organisations and individuals have the skills or confidence to realise them.
You can throw money at the problem but it won’t result in a flourishing and innovative sector. For this you need to engender open innovation, collaboration, peer to peer learning and time for experimentation.
You need to empower organisations and individuals to think outside of their disciplinary silos
And you need the producers to make possible, recognise and support the development of new ideas and talent.
Theatre Sandbox announcement
June 3, 2010
Posted by Clare in: Watershed | Innovation | Technology | Bristol | arts | Add a commentiShed is delighted to announce the six recipients of this year’s Theatre Sandbox commissions, supported by Arts Council England.
Each of the six successful recipients receives £10,000 to develop their groundbreaking projects at prestigious partner venues across the country ready for public events and testing in September. This will be followed by a final showcase event at Watershed in November.
Theatre Sandbox seeks to grow an active community of experimentation and learning and includes a structured programme of commissioning and knowledge exchange to grow awareness of technology in the theatre sector. IShed aims to encourage innovation and to leave a lasting legacy as part of the scheme.
The commissions were selected following an intensive application period, during which 275 theatre makers attended nationwide introductory workshops and almost 100 applications were received.
The commissions:
Proto-type Theater
Hosted by Bristol Old Vic
Fortnight is a two-week long performance experience located in the spaces, technologies and occurrences of our daily lives: an unfolding adventure into the limitless 'local'.
Proto-type Theater is a company of multi-disciplinary artists interested in live and digital performance. Proto-type has created demanding, intricately crafted original works, differing in scale, subject and medium for a diverse audience of intelligent, modern humans. FFI www.proto-type.org
Mind the Gap
Hosted by Contact, Manchester
Mind the Gap will make a sonic maze where the audience are moved through a space, attracted and repulsed by sirens. Mind the Gap makes professional theatre with learning disabled people. FFI www.mind-the-gap.org.uk
Analogue
Hosted by The Junction, Cambridge
Analogue will use 21st century connectedness to explore disconnections between ourselves in the present, and the semi-remembered events of our childhood. The audience will navigate through events in May 1985, beginning with a phone call that has long since vanished from history.
Analogue aims to produce challenging, highly inventive via theatrical traditions from the past.FFI www.analogueproductions.co.uk
Ed Collier & Melanie Wilson
Hosted by Lyric Hammersmith
The Observatory is an audio led adventurous fairy tale for children aged between 7 and 10 and their adults. Staged both on a high street and in a theatrical playspace it is about a parallel magical world that exists alongside the city. It can be heard only by those who want to hear it and glimpsed through keyholes and cracks in the pavement by a lucky few. The Observatory will be made Ed Collier of China Plate and award winning theatre and sound artist Melanie Wilson.
FFI www.chinaplatetheatre.com / www.melaniewilson.org.uk
Tin Bath
Hosted by mac, Birmingham
Sophie Woolley and Gemma Fairlie of Tin Bath are developing a new comedy called You’re So Happy I Want to Die. The project experiments with dynamic, evocative captioning that responds to the live nature of theatre. Tin Bath produces exciting interactive theatre that is accessible to deaf and hard of hearing people. FFI www.tinbaththeatre.com
Duncan Speakman & Uninvited Guests
Hosted by Soho Theatre, London
Duncan Speakman is an artist who creates experiences in public spaces, often using mobile audio technology. He is collaborating with Uninvited Guests, a Bristol based company whose recent work blurs the line between theatre and social festivities. Together they are exploring how audiences can collectively imagine utopian futures in real locations using performance and networked maps
FFI www.duncanspeakman.net / www.uninvited-guests.net
Theatre Sandbox is originated and produced by iShed, part of Watershed. It is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and delivered in partnership with Bristol Old Vic, Soho Theatre Lyric, Hammersmith, mac, Contact and The Junction.
UK Trade & Investment report published: Digital Media
May 8, 2010
Posted by Clare in: Innovation | Technology | Add a commentUK Trade & Investment (UKTI) is the Government agency providing business opportunities, expert trade advice and support to UK-based companies wishing to grow their business overseas. UKTI recently commissioned a Focus Group to better understand the needs of Digital Media businesses, as they relate to international trade, in order to help develop its future strategy for the sector. The Focus Group and subsequent report was produced by Mark Leaver through iShed.
Read the report: Digital content report.pdf
Report for UKTI: our SXSW panel event
April 20, 2010
Posted by Clare in: Events | Innovation | Technology | Gaming | Add a comment
Image: Title slide from presentation
Instead of submitting a formal report to UK Trade & Investment who supported our panel event at SXSWi this year, in the spirit of web 2.0 and open-ness, I am blogging it:
In the summer of last year I submitted a panel idea for SXSW interactive which went to community vote, the SXSW Advisory Boards and SXSW staff before making it through to the first batch of events to be programmed for 2010. On 11am on 16 March 2010 I was joined by Toby Barnes of Mudlark, Nina Steiger of Soho Theatre, Duncan Speakman and Simon Johnson of SlingShot to present as part of the Screenburn programme.
We were overwhelmed with the feedback, which was attended by about 200 people. A few of the tweets:
@SMERC_Design - #pervasivegames is turning out to be the most inspiring panel at #sxsw.
@yoomsters: Best idea ever, have the moderator on a bell to cut off the ramblers and stay within time limits. Props to #pervasivegames
@alper: Switch pays off! Tail of this panel #pervasivegames is better than most others. Quick, pointed and skips the basics. Thanks @clarered!
@katylindemann #pervasivegames are totally showing how a successful & compelling panel should be run & moderated. watch & learn
@alper Switched from the #cityasaplatform session (slow moving) to the #pervasivegames one #sxsw. Who would program these two against each other?
@grether: Finally, after ALL these sessions, some panelists actually disagree with each other! Now THAT is reality. #pervasivegames
You can read all of the tweets in this pdf summary.
The SXSW Interactive Festival celebrates the creativity and passion behind the coolest new media technologies. In addition to panel sessions that cover everything from web design to bootstrapping to social networks, attendees make new business connections at the three-day Trade Show & Exhibition. With a focus on online services, gaming and mobile, South by Southwest is an invaluable opportunity to connect with a wider international audience of delegates working in new and emerging technologies. The aim for me in attending the Festival is to research new business opportunities, view work, spot emerging digital trends and experience first hand one of the biggest international conferences in the digital sector. Having a panel in the programme enabled more networking opportunities, a higher profile and an excuse to talk to people, which was of huge value.
Our panel explored the new possibilities in game-play that mobile internet, pervasive gaming and sensor-enriched public spaces enable. We were keen to build on previous SXSW events, and get leading UK practitioners to explore the ethics, design challenges and business potential of this new form in a more textured way than I had seen at SXSW.
Some lessons learnt (which may be useful to others):
Keep the format and slides simple - I gave each of the panelists five minutes to present a project and then switched to discussion. They were allowed one image each to inspire the audience but not distract. The twitter hashtag and our twitter names were visible at all times.
Image: Duncan Speakman's slide in presentation
Prepare – we did two sessions and found potential areas of disagreement to tap into – there is nothing more dull than a panel in complete agreement
Deconstruct the things that you think work and don’t as an audience member - I was keen that this panel was reflective, offered insight and addressed the ‘why’ of the project - something missing in presentations which concentrated only on the specifications of the technology.
One of the most successful elements of our event (learnt from being frustrated audience members in the past) was banning self promotion and rambling questions from the audience. People were welcome to use the twitter stream to reference projects but anyone breaking the rules was cut off with an old fashioned bell.
The podcast of this session will be available from July 15th at http://sxsw.com/interactive/news/videos_and_podcasts
The future of digital content (the next 5 -7 years)
March 31, 2010
Posted by Clare in: Innovation | Technology | Add a commentNotes from CITIN's quick presentation of their digital beacon research so far at the Technology Strategy Board Collaboration Nation conference today:
Content will be multiplatform as standard. Platforms must work together and build on each other to make a greater and more compelling experience.
Migration to next generation networks. We will still be constrained by bandwidth sometimes, so how do we design services that account for mixed connectivity?
New TV formats with greater integration of content, (the tv in your living room is a games machine, computer etc)
Networks will be seen as a utility. Operators will need to provide smart connections. Value will come from converged offers.
Blockbuster content migrates to new platforms.
Mass advertising still exists but with a lower premium. Advertising must become a distribution platform for point of sale purchase.
Micro-payments become standard and secure. All content creators get paid (if they want to be). There will be two-way value chains.
More social media. How will it alter business models? As a content distribution platform, social media will flatten markets.
Privacy will be a premium service. Our data trail is already being used to provide us with personalized content and info. It will become a tradeable commodity, you will have to pay to go off grid.
Meta data - will drive huge market efficiencies. Personalised and location based services will offer more joined up and targeted marketing.
Our input and interactions with technology are richer (think Project Natal). Easier access and invisible technology will drive uptake.
