Digital Works Podcast

A great chat with Hilary Knight. We talk about the importance of team culture, the value of trying to be entertaining, the rigidity of the career paths into leadership positions in the cultural sector, the strategic importance of digital ambition, and loads more.

Hilary is a Senior Consultant at AEA Consulting and is the former Director of Digital at Tate. Prior to joining Tate, Hilary worked in a variety of digital and commissioning roles at the BBC and Channel 4.

Dr Richard Misek is a Senior Lecturer in Film, School of Arts at the University of Kent. He is a film-maker and researcher, and was the Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council project, ‘Digital Access to Arts and Culture Beyond COVID-19’, in partnership with Arts Council England and digital arts agency The Space.

It's through this research project that I first became aware of and got in touch with Richard, and we discuss the findings of his research, the structural problems around the economics of digital cultural activity, the accessibility benefits of working in this way, and much more.

You can find out more about the research project via the project's website https://digiaccessarts.org/ 

A conversation with Nick Sherrard about experimentation and innovation. Nick is a Partner at Label Ventures, which is a venture studio in Edinburgh. Nick has held a number innovation and strategy-focused roles in the commercial sector as well as production and administration-focused roles in the cultural sector. We talk about risk models, nurturing a culture of innovation, new approaches to partnership and funding, and why some organisations might deserve to die.

Our first returning guest! Another brilliant conversation with Kati Price. Kati is Head of Digital Media and Publishing at Victoria and Albert Museum in London and was one of the first guests I had on the podcast back in early 2020 (that chat is now our most listened-to episode).

We reflect on the turmoil (and progress) of the last two years, the impact that the pandemic has had on the thinking around digital in the cultural sector, the challenges everyone is facing around retaining and hiring people, the importance of good leadership, and what she is excited about for the future.

Oh and Beyonce, we talk about Beyonce too.

A lovely chat with Nicholas Triantafyllou. Nicholas is the Director of Information Technology at the National Theatre and has previously held technology and systems-focused leadership roles at the Southbank Centre and the Barbican.

We explored the importance of collaboration, what good leadership looks like, the challenge of getting things done in big institutions, how NT At Home happened, and lots more.

A conversation with Annette Mees, Annette is an award-winning artistic director, creative producer and cultural strategist.

Annette used to be Artistic Director of Coney (an award-winning company of adventure and play which put the audience at the centre of every experience), she ran Audience Labs at the Royal Opera House. She is currently Artistic Director of Audience Labs & Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Culture and Creative Industries at King's College London, and is also the Chair of the FutureEverything a year-round cultural programme, that brings people together to discover, share and experience new ideas for the future.

We discuss the use of technology in cultural experiences, we also discuss Current, Rising which is a hyper-reality opera that Annette made whilst at ROH (I discussed this project in Episode 018 with Eva Liparova, who was a producer on the project, listen to that conversation).

Back after a bit of a break with a chat with the Sydney Opera House's Head of Digital Programming, Stuart Buchanan. 

We chat rave culture, the Royal Court Theatre's website in the 1990s, employing digital to explore new ways of engaging with artists, wrangling institutional dynamics, responses to the pandemic and loads more.

Stuart has worked with organisations such as ABC, Disney, SBS, Sydney Festival, The Guardian, MONA, Royal Court Theatre and TED, and as founder of digital cultural agency The Nest. He has presented radio programs and podcasts on ABC Double J, FBi Radio and London's Resonance FM, and is the curator of the New Weird Australia music initiative.

In this episode we chat with Heart Of Glass CEO, Patrick Fox.

Heart Of Glass are a St Helens, Merseyside-based collaborative and social arts agency. They work "with artists and community groups, young people, asylum seekers and refugees, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, older people and communities of all kinds" to "support each other – and learn from each other – on creative journeys of enquiry and exploration."

We chatted about how the organisation's use of digital has shifted over the pandemic, how you can create digital serendipity, the digital divide, and much more

A really enjoyable chat with my pal, Drew. We compare and contrast the similarities and differences between the banking and cultural sectors.

Drew in his own words is "a serial entrepreneur turned banker; a sheep in wolf’s clothing. He recently left Barclays where he was Director of Digital Strategy since 2019. He was previously the Head of Platform for the Standard Chartered Virtual Bank in Hong Kong. He joined Standard Chartered as Director of Fintech Strategy and Engagement in 2016. Before renting his soul, he founded and led a financial inclusion payments company in Indonesia, a financial services Cloud services company in Hong Kong, an oil and gas technology infrastructure company in Papua New Guinea, a data analytics startup in Berlin and a zip line in Singapore." 

A lovely chat with Wise Children's Technical Director, Simon Baker. We talk about Simon's career, the DIY approach that Wise Children have taken to their digital activity, why the "bodge it" skills you learn doing audio are useful in a digital context, the potential of audio experiences for storytelling, understanding signal flow, and loads more.