Let’s get real about digital and AI
Jane Finnis, Consultant Director of The Audience Agency explores the benefits of AI for the arts and cultures sector.
In these fast-paced and volatile times feeling uncertain is the correct response. It’s a complex operational environment that many of us in the cultural sector feel unprepared for, in particular when it comes to digital.
What is our strategy for digital and AI? Where to invest? How can we reframe our position towards being able to think about change? Can we get comfortable with ambiguity? Do we have a clear vision of what our future should look like?
In my work over the last 20+ years trying to help bring arts and heritage organisations into the 21st century, I have seen time and again that the main challenge lies in people thinking that understanding digital is actually about technology. It isn’t. It’s about people’s feelings and emotions. About their confidence, skills and mindset. The fear and anxiety that change is happening too fast and that we can’t keep up, keeps us stuck in the ‘now’ and makes finding strategic foresight very hard.
The brilliant Brene Brown’s long termqualitative research identifies two camps in tech trends – ‘scramblers and ostriches’. The first are scrambling to leverage advantage without really understanding it. The second are asking themselves ‘why do I need to know about this and what difference does it make if I don’t care’. Both of these approaches are dangerous for different reasons.
In her recent interview with futurist Amy Webb, Amy describes how ‘novelty is the new normal’ and how when it feels like everything is new all the time this can lead to indecision or entropy. Everyone is waiting for the ball to settle and the change to stop so they can get their hands around it.
The thing is … this is not going to happen.
What is actually needed now is to build our digital confidence as a sector so we feel okay about taking a breath to think, understand and then prioritise. In my work, we talk about this as building people’s digital literacy. Giving people the building blocks to adapt and evolve. I would call this process digital transformation and it’s what our sector needs to do if it is going to be properly fit for this century.
Digital transformation is still probably the biggest thing that you didn’t know your cultural organisation needs to do. It is not only at the heart of many of the fundamental issues we all care passionately about – accessibility, environmental responsibility, social justice – it is fundamental to making more of what you already have. Digital Transformation is two words that are still misunderstood and ignored in much of our sector and this needs to change and the reasons are pretty compelling:
- Our audiencesexpect our digital offer to work in the same way as it does in other sectors
- Creative practice itself is changing and will continue to do so as platforms evolve, integrate and connect
- Our changing political landscape is played out online and shapes our communications, social interactions, politics and sense of identity
- We need to think beyond the technical limitations of the infrastructures that so many of us have that were created in the last century and are in many cases, no longer fit for purpose.
Now is not a good time to be a ostrich or a scrambler. What is needed are leaders and organisations with expansive thinkings, who are open-minded and will allow their cherished beliefs to be challenged. Who are as Brene says ‘comfortable leading through uncertainty’.
There are some resources out there, created by and for our sector, that have been successfully used and tested over the last few years, that can help you progress on your digital literacy journey.
Take a look at the framing for ‘digital activity’, created as part of the One by One action research project. This can help you to plan, scope and understand any digital activity. It breaks your activity down into four areas – use, manage, create and understand – and gives you a way to structure your questions.
Thinking about AI within this framing can help you to map out considerations such as:
- Use: What AI tools can we explore using?
- Manage: What data do we produce, collect and hold and how/where is it managed?
- Create: Can AI help us create content?
- Understand: What do we need to understand about the ethics, legalities and processes of using, managing and creating with AI?
If you want to go deeper, this resource on ‘Developing digitally literate leadership’ can help you to take stock, reflect and develop your personal digital leadership, as well as your organisation’s digital confidence and capacity. It was created as part of The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s ‘Digital Skills for Heritage’ programme.
Both of these resources and more are freely available and managed as part of The Audience Agency’s work We’d love to hear how you get on with using them or talk to you about any questions you many have and don’t forget to sign up to our Digital Snapshot e-newsletter to hear about new opportunities and insights.
So don’t be an ostrich or a scrambler, instead, take a deep breath and start to explore the help that is out there to build your digital confidence and literacy. You got this.
Jane Finnis is Consultant Director at The Audience Agency and can be reached at [email protected]
