Digital Leadership: Creating Transformational Change in the Art World

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Sophie: I think there's still a real lack of knowing who your digital audience and who your digital community is. I think there's a lot of uncertainty about who to reach, how to reach them. Who's looking online. we have not mind the opportunities for digital audiences yet or the, and the international opportunities that offers, from an arts organizations perspective.

[00:00:22] Sophie: So again, like as a rallying call to any like budding cultural practitioners that want to get into working in arts organizations, I think having more solid kind of, tangible ideas for how to build online communities. There's a lot of appetite for that.

[00:00:39] Isotta: This is Art Is… a podcast for artists where we brainstormed the future of the art world and the creative industries. Today. I'm sharing part three of my conversation with Sophie Frost, researcher, writer, and academic.

[00:00:52] Isotta: If you haven't listened to parts one and two of our conversation, I recommend you go back and tune in to season three, episode eight and season three, episode 10. Before listening to this, I also highly recommend you check out Sophie's podcast. People change museums, which forms the basis for much of the topics we cover in this episode.

[00:01:11] Isotta: Today Sophie shares about the course she's been teaching at Goldsmiths University of London called digital cultures.

[00:01:17] Isotta: She also shares more on her work with major institutions like the south bank center and the science museum.

[00:01:24] Isotta: Along with her thoughts on the need for increased online community in the art and cultural sector. We conclude this three episode series by discussing how an interest in tech. and innovation mirrors, an overarching interest in creating transformational change in the arts and culture.

[00:01:39] Isotta: So this episode was recorded in December, 2021. So when we say last year, we mean 20. Also, I would really appreciate it.

[00:01:49] Isotta: If you took a moment to reflect on who in your life might also benefit from listening to this podcast.

[00:01:54] Isotta: When you do, please share art is a podcast for artists with them. So we can continue to grow the show organically and brainstorm the future of the art world to.

[00:02:04] Sophie: 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.

[00:02:23] 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.

[00:02:46] 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 terms of like supporting their workforce and those that they work with?

[00:03:02] Sophie: So that's kind of my key interest.

[00:03:04] Isotta: I'm really excited to hear about the class you taught at Goldsmiths university of London called digital cultures, digital literacies.

[00:03:12] Isotta: Could you share a bit about your experience working with students on the topic of developing digital courage across the arts?

[00:03:18] Sophie: Of course, so, it's a brand new module that we're running as part of the BA in arts management at Goldsmiths college in London. And.

[00:03:26] Sophie: it's been a solely online module. And with the idea that, you know, if you're studying digital culture, you should probably be in a digital realm. and myself and the co convener, who is Dr.

[00:03:36] Sophie: George Musgrave have worked quite hard to. I mean, I mean, it's a brand new course and it just shows, this is the direction of art schools goes to, this is not school, right? it's trying to think in a much more embedded kind of way about like, well, you know, technology is not going anywhere.

[00:03:51] Sophie: And if we want to cultivate a new generation of cultural practitioners and our. Then we have to give them more formulas for thinking about technology and what it might mean for the future of their work in the cultural sector. so we've kind of over saw 10 weeks. We've tried to look at like a real cross section of like digital culture and we've covered everything from, digital ethics and the ethics of algorithms and social media.

[00:04:18] Sophie: Thinking about how you present yourself online, like the bookcase backdrop phenomenon of zoom, and the fact that you can buy, you can now buy book, trace backdrops from Amazon. we've thought a lot about, NFTs, non fungible tokens. We've talked a lot about arts organizations moving their curation, like collections online and me being able to do your own curation.

[00:04:40] Sophie: that's been the case with the state. museum and Amsterdam and with art UK as well, who've put all their collection online and then you can go in and curate your in collection. we've talked quite a lot about

[00:04:50] Sophie: what are the downsides of streaming culture? and I think my biggest take home has been really trying to encourage the students to think. Right. Yeah.We announced streaming culture this is a whole new way of consuming culture.

[00:05:01] Sophie: And we've only done this really in the last five years. I don't know how long I've had a Netflix account. Maybe it's a bit longer than five years, but it's really very new phenomenon, like relatively speaking. And even in the last year, you know, how many new online platforms there are, there's something called the streaming wars.

[00:05:15] Sophie: if you look it up, there's some hilarious pictures of like apple TV fighting the Amazon logo online. But, you know, I think what's so interesting about streaming culture is not only is it hugely capitalist and the commodification of culture in a whole new unprecedented way, but it's radically changed as well.

[00:05:35] Sophie: Not only the way we're consuming culture, but the way we're making culture, you know, it's affected the way We're choosing to make music, to make artworks, to share artworks. And in some ways, platforms like YouTube, massively exciting, you can do this kind of Robert Rauschenberg of YouTube and do this, like hotchpotch of found and old and new kind of, crazy videos and music making and art making.

[00:05:56] Sophie: It's really exciting. But on the other ways, you know, the ways our opportunities to monetize this are very minimal and it's been really challenging. And I think we'll say back to a point I made earlier on like algorithmic bias and data bias and the ethics of the online space in terms of art and culture is really problematic.

[00:06:14] Sophie: And we have been pretty much, co-opted like by massive big data and big tech firms, to the point where we don't really have a choice. And I know. Oh fair. You and I was talking about Instagram being a very much a marketplace environment. Yeah. I've had a lot of conversations with students about the fact that, we don't really have a choice.

[00:06:30] Sophie: We're still gonna stay on Instagram, even though ethically like the digitally courageous thing to do would be to opt out. But you can, if you want any kind of platform, there's not enough collectivisation elsewhere yet. So we've had lots of these kinds of conversations and it's been great. and I think, My emphasis, for the students thinking of them as the cultural workers of the future, is that thinking critically about the role of technology in the production and consumption of culture is really important. And the more we can be critical of it and ask questions. Feel vulnerable about talking about this stuff, rather than just taking it on as something we just got to accommodate and adapt ourselves to is the future.

[00:07:12] Sophie: and I also on that, I want to say as someone who works quite a lot with big arts organizations, my main client is south bank center in London. is still. a huge amount of questions being asked in the arts and in policy about what streaming practices and what digital culture is going to do to the sector.

[00:07:30] Sophie: And there's no, one's got really loads of answers. We're missing loads of data. There's been a lot of like reactionary behavior, obviously, as we know, just getting online in the pandemic. it's a really rich area to choose to work in now and to show yourself as a kind of thought leader and a thinker, because there aren't any clear cut answers.

[00:07:49] Sophie: And so that's why I feel like it's a real hopeful space because there is a huge opportunity I think, to start to adapt and remix, how technology is currently been adopted in these settings. Yeah, that's a kind of, some of what it's been like teaching that course of Goldsmiths. I think.

[00:08:07] Isotta: through various online communities, that I'm a part of, I've really noticed the opportunity for international connection and collaborations. How do you see online community developing for your projects?

[00:08:18] Sophie: I think it's quite a hopeful moment in terms of online communities, because I think we haven't hit goals yet and finding the right forum. You know, there's still a lot of, online fear and difficulties of sharing stuff and anxieties about it.

[00:08:32] Sophie: And I think we're still in an experimental mode. I only have a good,you know, Raymond Williams to quote him again. He has this idea of like emergent, residual and dominant cultures and how every type of culture is one, one of those. And I think at the moment, emerging in a way, it's the coolest one.

[00:08:47] Sophie: Cause it's the one that hasn't yet been capitalized on it still being experimented with and thought about. And I'd say a lot of work around online communities is still very emerging and we're learning. So I am excited about that Not only because I think it will democratize practice, particularly artistic practice.

[00:09:01] Sophie: And I think it destabilizes preexisting hierarchies that can only, as far as I'm concerned, be a good thing. I think, like you said, it speaks to a kind of internationalism that we've been lacking within the art world forever. You know, it's always been very bordered.

[00:09:17] Sophie: There's been lots of people who still can't take part or participate or share. So I think, that's really exciting from an international perspective. And I think we haven't hit gold yet and how we do that. So I'd say just one last thing on that, which is from a, not from an artist perspective, as much as from an arts organization perspective, it's a bit like, again, I think I said, but.

[00:09:37] Sophie: I think there's still a real lack of knowing who your digital audience and who your digital community is. I think there's a lot of uncertainty about who to reach, how to reach them. Who's looking online. we have not mind the opportunities for digital audiences yet or the, and the international opportunities that offers, from an arts organizations perspective.

[00:09:58] Sophie: So again, like as a rallying call to any like budding cultural practitioners that want to get into working in arts organizations, I think having more solid kind of, tangible ideas for how to build online communities. There's a lot of appetite for that.

[00:10:10] Isotta: So what's next for you?

[00:10:11] Isotta: And the one by one initiative? .

[00:10:12] Sophie: Oh, Yeah.

[00:10:13] Sophie: thank you for asking me that. because I am like Toki book down, in a lovely kind of intellectually stimulating way, by my current project one by one. So as I mentioned at the moment, I'm doing, a study with the science museum group, which can be. Of the science and industry museum in Manchester, science media museum, and Bradford science museum, London, locomotion museum in Sheldon and the national railway museum in York plus, the national collection center.

[00:10:41] Sophie: So the reason I list all those is because I think when I think of the science museum group, I didn't think before of all of the massive sways of engineering and technical history that they housed. and I'm doing a project. Where I'm on the back of people, change museums and us going into the kind of COVID recovery thing.

[00:10:57] Sophie: Of life. and all the museums having reopened of understanding what digital work now consists of across the group and using them as like a case study for like, what does digital work look like now? And what's been really interesting about it is having talked to a lot of people now across the.

[00:11:14] Sophie: And all different job roles, everyone from curators to collection, database officers, to social media managers, to chief executives, to volunteers, to the Wikimedia residents. You get the picture. I have found out that there is what I'm calling a lot of hidden forms of digital age. And at the moment what I'm doing is I'm mapping a kind of alternative hierarchy of expertise across the museum service, which has to do with technical expertise, but not just technical expertise, like other forms of digital labor, like database entry, like the stuff that doesn't really get seen as being very important work.

[00:11:48] Sophie: And I'm trying to raise the profile of that through doing this alternative map of like digital labor, Digital work's really important. And it's like the hidden pillar or the hidden pillars. Plural, actually, if museums now and what's keeping them ticking and keeping them alive and. Again, as I sort of referred earlier, like, what we're seeing is this alternative kind of hierarchy of digital labor is actually just showing that the same old structures of inequality exist.

[00:12:13] Sophie: It still can be very gendered work. It can be people of certain ethnicities during this work. It can be very exclusive still in some regards, there's very much a distinction of some of the leaders often, or almost most of the leaders to be honest, tend to be male. Most of those doing kind of data entry tend to be female.

[00:12:29] Sophie: There are like really obvious, problematic kind of tensions going on. Also a lot of the kind of sharp end of social media work is still quite precarious. I'm not saying this is science museum group per se, but these are themes I'm coming up across the sector. So I'm hoping that kind of mapping this, what I'm calling the hidden constellation of like digital labor.

[00:12:47] Sophie: we can better understand a, what the temperature is again, if the current moment in museums, but also how we can start to value these hidden forms of labor a bit more and make them visible.

[00:12:59] Sophie: I thinktechnological innovation and openness to what tech and innovation can do for us within the cultural sector. Mirrors an appetite for other forms of transformational change. in terms of lifting people up, like I said, dismantling hierarchies, pre-existing structures of inequality. I think that technology and innovation. All enablers of enabling a much more kind of flat structure across working practices and working behaviors in the arts.

[00:13:32] Sophie: And I think that's an exciting thing. And I'm finding that on the whole, those people who are. Talking critically about the role of technology and innovation and the work they're doing. There are also those who are at the kind of furthermost point of thinking about change, social change, and intersects.

[00:13:48] Sophie: Totally with climate justice. You know, with, conversations about decolonization and, of civil rights conversations with, all sorts of different narratives. I think digital change is totally interlinked with those. And so I found in my research that.

[00:14:03] Sophie: Anyone who's talking in excited ways about the possibilities of technology is also someone generally who's thinking and quite excited ways about and important ways about how we can change the world. And that can only be a good thing.

[00:14:14] Isotta: I'm not an Instagram or I have to say, so 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.

[00:14:35] Sophie: And you can find more about one by one on a

[00:14:38] Sophie: 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.

[00:14:46] Sophie: Welcome that to.

[00:14:48] Isotta: Thank you for listening to Art Is… a podcast for artists. This episode, I'd like to thank Sophie frost for sharing her ideas and enthusiasm with us.

[00:14:55] Isotta: please leave Art Is… a podcast for artists, a rating and review on apple podcasts.

[00:15:00] 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