Digital Leadership: The ‘One by One’ Initiative

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Sophie: I think we often see technology and innovation as a silver bullet to dealing with a lot of socially. and they're like a one size fits all. We'll just throw a new digital thing in it. We'll throw an app at it or a new snotty online toolkit, or I don't know whatever it is.

[00:00:15] Sophie: And you AR VR experience and then suddenly we've solved. Particular, social L and I believe actually at the core of changes people and thought leaders and makers and all these other types of terms. And so I was trying to say like, actually is people change museums. It's not technology that changes museums as people that do and it's how they use technology in interesting and creative and diverse ways.

[00:00:43] Isotta: This is art. Isa podcast for artists where we brainstormed the future of the art world and the creative industry.

[00:00:50] Isotta: Today, I'm sharing part one of my conversation with Sophie frost, researcher, writer, and academic Sophia, and I had such a wonderful and enriching conversation that I decided you needed to hear all of it. So I split it into three parts. Go ahead and listen to part one now, but before listening to parts two and three, which will be coming out in the following weeks, be sure to check out her podcast. People change museums. That way you can fully appreciate and understand the topics.

[00:01:19] Isotta: Today Sophie introduces her work and the mission behind people change museums.we reflect on how the pandemic and other intersecting crises of the moment have impacted museums and the art sector at large. While looking at the role technology plays in shaping our contemporary cultural reality. this episode was recorded in December, 2021. So when we say last year, we mean 20

[00:01:43] Isotta: Before we start, I also wanted to share some news last week, the week of January 10th, 2022. Art is broke its listener record.

[00:01:51] This was also the first week I didn't post about the podcast on. So, what I'm saying is we are growing organically by word of mouth, which is amazing. And I'm so excited. So instead of following art is on Instagram or liking our posts, please take a moment to reflect on who in your life might enjoy and benefit from this podcast And please share it with them so we can continue to grow and brainstorm the future of the art world together. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Anyways. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed making it.

[00:02:24] I'm Sophie. I am, first and foremost, an academic. And at the moment, my research is principally in the context of museums and I work in the museum studies department at the university of Leicester. but I actually have a PhD in film and visual culture. and I have worked across arts management.

[00:02:43] Sophie: Cultural media and creative industries work and a bit of cultural anthropology as well. and I currently teach across those subjects. I've learned the art of being quite lateral in my skillset, but I think what's at root in all of the kind of research writing lecturing podcasting. The ID now is a real.

[00:03:06] Sophie: Commitment to this idea of cultural work. What does it mean? What does it mean in the 21st century? What does it mean to make art right now? How can we create better conditions for making art? and how do cultural organizations operate in order in terms of supporting their workforce and those that they work with?

[00:03:23] Sophie: So that's kind of my key interest.

[00:03:25] Isotta: I'm really excited to dive in. So to get us started, could you introduce us to the one by one initiative

[00:03:31] Sophie: Right. So

[00:03:31] Sophie: the one by one initiative, was actually stablish by my boss, professor Ross Perry, who is a professor of museum technology at the university of Leicester in 2017. And our strap line is building digital confidence in museums.

[00:03:47] it's a transnational initiative made up. Museum practitioners, academics, policymakers, sector, support organizations, other interested people. and we're now in our third round of funding through the arts and humanities research council in the UK, our current project is actually co-funded, by NEH in the U S which is the national endowment of the humanities.

[00:04:09] Sophie: So it's. Big scale project we're on now. when it was SAP in 2017, it was really in response to a conversation that's been happening for many years around a deficit. If I can use that term still, if digital skills and digital literacy in the museum space and how museums an art galleries, heritage sites include including that definition, was struggling to get.

[00:04:30] Sophie: Use technology for a variety of interlinked and complex reasons. And one by one decided that we needed to do a lot more research in this area and it should be embedded action research. So really trying to be on the ground in different museums, working out where exactly where like the issues and what can we do to solve them.

[00:04:48] I think it might be helpful if it's okay. Just to talk about like how my work's kind of changed while I've been on this project. So I joined in 2019, for the first version of the project and I was based, as a digital fellow, I was called at the Royal pavilion, museums in Brighton and Hove, which is a five site museum service down in Brighton on the south coast of England. So this is way pre COVID 2019 kind of, you know, the golden age of innocent times to do with digital skills and thinking about digital and museums. Dare I say it. And I was tasked to try and think about how we could encourage the workforce across the museum to feel more confident with digital stories.

[00:05:29] because of the kind of 200 odd members of staff, there's a real mixed amount of feeling towards social media in particular and what it could do for the museum service. So a lot of people were quite skeptical. They were frustrated. They were unsure. They'd had bad experience of using social media in the past.

[00:05:47] Sophie: And it was my role as an action centered researcher to see how we could build some consensus about what social media and digital storytelling could offer the museum service in terms of reaching new audiences, building new types of confidence. I actually ended up calling it digital courage, how it could be used to democratize the experiences of the workforce as well.

[00:06:07] so that was project.

[00:06:08] Sophie: one. that culminated in creating a social media blueprint for the institution, which was consensus led. So it was really like, based on working in a safe way, like providing a sort of safe, supportive, open. Environment in which people could really say how they felt about social media.

[00:06:25] Sophie: And we create this social media blueprint to foreground how the organization might use social media in the future. And we created, my first podcast research podcast, which is called. of the Royal pavilion of museums, which is a 16 episode podcast where, I interviewed an absolute cross section of the museum service about that experiences, history stories about the building, the collection, other thoughts, and really my main.

[00:06:53] Sophie: With that was using the podcast as a very simple form of technology that would help democratize experience to the workforce. So one episode I interviewed lavender, you know, volunteer of 25 years standing and amazing anecdotes that she had about working for the museum service done in Brighton.

[00:07:10] Sophie: And then the next episode, we've got the chief exac talking about, what it means to be a strategist for a regional museum. so that was kind of my first intro into podcasting as well and how effective it could be in terms of really including all voices in a phenomenon rather than just one or two voices.

[00:07:28] Sophie: this set and episodes like direct Q2. So like the first episode, I go on a journey with a museum outreach officer, and the skin of a Siberian tiger, could Boris. Poor Siberian tiger. It was an item in the museum's collection and bars died in a local zoo in 1986, I think.

[00:07:47] and we take Boris on the bus with us to a local primary school that has very little resources and can't afford to take his kids to the museum itself. So the museum goes to. And so we sit down with Michael, the outreach officer and Boris, and we just talk to these kindergarten kids basically about what tiger is.

[00:08:06] Sophie: And then we will read tiger. He going to T by Judith Kerr. but it was a really great mechanism, not just as like celebrating different forms of museum work and what the potential of museums was in the local community. But also it was a way of me. excessively telling a bigger point about lack of arts education, lack of provision, like cultural provision in the local area, how we value, our heritage sites in the community, you know, so it was, I kind of used a fun way to access a deeper point.

[00:08:33] Sophie: And that's what I really like about podcasting as a research tool.

[00:08:36] Isotta: That's a great point using podcasting as a research tool and as a lens through which to showcase different perspectives.

[00:08:42] Sophie: I mean, it hasn't seen challenges cause I think,put costs. Haven't particularly been recognized within academia as anything more than like a fun kind of instant output. I don't think they have Th the Q dos, the credit that you would, if you had a peer review journal article, for example, or like a monograph book, which is a shame, because I actually think in many ways, they're more dynamic and forward thinking than anything you can produce in those different mediums, um, that, Hey, you know, all we can do is like force the change, which is what I'm trying to do.

[00:09:09] Isotta: well, I think that's an awesome mission and I truly think you are accomplishing it.

[00:09:12] Isotta: I mean, I discovered your work through your most recent. People change museums, which is so impactful. Could you introduce it for those who haven't listened yet? And also maybe comment on the backstory of the title.

[00:09:23] Sophie: so people change museums was like the second podcast produced under the umbrella of one by one. and so when that project with brightened ended. we then had a new partnership with the Smithsonian in the states. And, that started in February 20, 20, so a month before the pandemic.

[00:09:40] Sophie: So joyfully myself and my research team, we were like, Yeah, you're going to spend loads of time in Washington. And we'd already had a warmup trip, the premium summer. And we were working with four Smithsonian units. So for Smithsonian museums, specifically looking at the role of digital leadership across the Smithsonian, and then obviously the pandemic unfortunately hit and we had to really quickly re-pivot and think, okay, how can we do qualitative ethnographic embedded action centered research.

[00:10:09] Sophie: When we only have virtual worlds to access our research participants. And so my response to that was right. we're going to do another poke cost. And so people change. Museums was born, So that was quite different, like tone and tenor to voices, the Royal pavilion. I wanted it to be much more narrative, as in much more narrative media, leading the narrative a lot more, sharing my insights, a lot more, making it a bit more critical and conceptual and drawing a lot on my own research background in visual culture and sociology and cultural anthropology.

[00:10:40] again, the podcast was a tool to capture a moment in time when there was a lot of anxiety and uncertainty and crisis actually, you know, really intersecting crisis as the term, I use a lot in the podcast around what was happening in the world in March, 2020 onwards especially in the museum space.

[00:10:59] Sophie: You know, different to the UK, which is obviously the other context in which I work quite a lot. us museum sector was really struggling. There was a lot of sudden closures, permanent closures, huge reductions in staff, people being laid off and they didn't know that it would be able to work for their institution.

[00:11:14] Sophie: Again, there was lots of really bad stuff happening, and then mixed with a difficult political time alongside COVID was. The matter of George Floyd, and the resurgence of the black lives matter movement and,a lot of civil rights questions being asked very critically within the museum sector in the us.

[00:11:32] Sophie: So it felt like this kind of huge melting pot of issues. The question of what can technology do at this really troubling, difficult time? We're sort ofat the top of everyone's agenda. And I wanted this to be a really reflective, critical piece of work that was trying to understand that. So. to answer your question about the title. I always wait for my podcast titles. Like they come to me very late and always in the middle of the knife, some reasons. So I messed around for quite a few months, doing interviews, not knowing what the title was. And then I just realized look, there is no one phrase that's going to capture this moment.

[00:12:05] Sophie: And so that's why I've got a full stop after each of the word says people full stop, change, full stop museums, full stop, because. The podcast is about people. It's about change and it's about music. but then obviously neatly as well. It's people change museums, which is at the heart of it.

[00:12:18] Sophie: And, you know, I'm sure we'll come on to this, but it's a broader idea that, I think we often see technology and innovation as a silver bullet to dealing with a lot of socially. and they're like a one size fits all. We'll just throw a new digital thing in it. We'll throw an app at it or a new snotty online toolkit, or I don't know whatever it is.

[00:12:36] Sophie: And you AR VR experience and then suddenly we've solved. Particular, social L and I believe actually at the core of changes people and thought leaders and makers and all these other types of terms. And so I was trying to say like, actually is people change museums. It's not technology that changes museums as people that do and it's how they use technology in interesting and creative and diverse ways.

[00:12:58] Isotta: What I found really impactful were the keywords you chose for the podcast that dictated the episode titles.

[00:13:04] Isotta: Could you explain that decision?

[00:13:05] Sophie: so the key words idea again, came about with a desire to like really work out, like, what are the most profound. Issues, affecting people working in museum and heritage sector. But I should say when I say that I actually am also, I've done a lot of research with performing arts venues and galleries.

[00:13:24] Sophie: So this work happens to be with museums. But when I talk about the conditions of work, I'm often talking in a much more like cross arts context. I wanted to really work out like, what are the key words, defining the conditions of work last year. This was based on a very kind of, one of my favorite critical thinkers.

[00:13:41] Raymond Williams, who was a Welsh sociologist and he wrote a very famous book in 1976 called key word. And you've capillary for culture and society, in which he looked at over a hundred keywords and like that, what are the kind of implicit meanings underneath them? You know, including like culture is a word being one of those complicated, like meaning full and therefore often meaningless because there's so many meanings attached to it, words in society.

[00:14:07] Sophie: I was really influenced by that and I thought, okay, it's a really accessible way of getting new ideas on the table. So. I came up with six key words and I used the kind of, podcost structure to, to organize them. So there was an episode perky with. And three of those words are very celebrate tree. So you've got words like courage and agency and empathy, and those words, we're trying to say, like, these are the kinds of skills and behaviors we need to model.

[00:14:36] Sophie: If we are going to have any kind of sustainable. Future for ourselves as people working in the arts and heritage organizations. And then the other three key words are precarity and there's two terms, emotional labor and cultural identity. So procarity and emotional labor, I think to, you know, the two complex theoretical ideas, which also capture very real lived experiences of working in the arts today.

[00:15:04] And I was very interested in the role they play within the arts, but also how we can reappropriate them and harness them to be used as a source of good, rather than being a bad thing. And then that final term cultural identity really speaks to what I was talking to earlier about kind of one of the intersecting crisis points being, the re-emergence and the re pushing of the civil rights agenda in the U S and I just realized as I went on.

[00:15:27] Sophie: I would be remiss in making this series, if I didn't have a, episode that was about cultural identity, because it is such a pivotal keyword to our current moment and continues to be within this space.

[00:15:38] Isotta: I remember reading Raymond Williams as keywords in art history class at university

[00:15:42] Sophie: he still has value. Right? I really get excited when we can repurpose their wrists for the modern day. You know, when we can and use historical figures, recent historical figures to like then frame our current moment. I think there's a certain power in that.

[00:15:54] Sophie: I'm not an Instagram or I have to say, I'm on Twitter, very on Twitter at, so under school frosty, I have a LinkedIn page and then also you can. Find people change museums. The best source for it is on Spotify or apple book costs. and likewise with voices, the rope of it in the museums.

[00:16:15] Sophie: And you can find more about one by one on a One by one, the UK,I mean always up for more chats, and feel free. Anyone gets in contact, he's been interested by anything I've said or just wants to actually debate it.

[00:16:27] Sophie: Welcome that to.

[00:16:29] Isotta: Thank you for listening to art is a podcast for artists. This episode, I'd like to thank Sophie frost for sharing her insights with us. Stay tuned to hear part two and three of our conversation. Coming later on in season three, please leave art as a podcast for artists, a rating and review on apple podcasts.

[00:16:48] Isotta: It really helps others find us. You can support the work I do by subscribing wherever you. And by donating to the podcast, the link to do so is in the episode description. Okay. That's it for now. Thanks so much and see you next Wednesday.