The BBC and the Arts Council were each founded by great visionaries of the 20th century. For the BBC it was John Reith, who set up the company in 1922, aiming to "educate, inform and entertain" the public by bringing "the best of everything into the greatest number of homes". It was the economist and architect of the post war financial settlement JM Keynes who founded the Arts Council 23 years later, with a Royal Charter that committed the Council to giving "courage, confidence and opportunity to artists and their audiences".
In a radio talk in 1946 Keynes suggested that these two great cultural sponsors could work together for the cultural well-being of the country, combining the unprecedented reach of a broadcaster with an emerging Arts Council on a mission to increase public enjoyment of the arts. But this partnership never really developed, with the two institutions operating pretty happily alongside each other, rather than working together.
But digital changes everything, with the potential of technology uniting organisations and individuals and offering new connections and new possibilities. Digital gives us the chance to provide fresh ways of experiencing and accessing cultural work, with all old models of creation and distribution becoming just a part of what's possible.
This change has led to the Arts Council and the BBC realising the sense of working together, with a new partnership beginning in earnest a few years ago. The partnership began with the BBC helping organisations the Arts Council funds to develop their digital skills and take advantage of the potential of new technologies. This in turn led to the development of The Space, a freely available digital arts service that gives the public the chance to access high quality artistic work on computers, smartphones, tablets and connected TV.
Since launching quietly in May, The Space has offered audiences everything from an online museum of John Peel's record collection to broadcasts of all 37 Shakespeare plays in 37 languages in the recent Globe to Globe series. The service provides audiences with new ways to experience the arts, encouraging casual discovery and exploration - ranging from a live stream of the Royal Opera House's production of The Trojans to Ridley Scott's first film; and from the a virtual tour of Alan Sillitoe's Nottingham to a new series of storytelling music videos from Contact theatre about a lonely rural rap artist.
The service will continue to fill up with new and original work alongside treasures from the archives of the BFI, the Arts Council Film Collection and the best of the BBC's cultural programming. It's a service that's intelligent and nimble, giving audiences the chance to dip their toe into different artforms or explore work in greater depth. For example, on The Space you can watch archive documentary footage about Benjamin Britten before watching a live stream of his War Requiem, or listen to a performance of The Planets while honing in on the different parts of the orchestra through the Philharmonia's Universe of Sound project.
The Space has the potential to realise many of the ambitions of Reith and Keynes, giving audiences the opportunity and confidence to experience and learn about the arts on their own terms. It's something that isn't a linear TV channel but is more than a promotional website, giving words and sound as well as vision, documentary depth alongside straightforward presentation of cultural work.
And while The Space pilot project is scheduled to run until October, the popularity and potential of the service means the Arts Council and the BBC are actively discussing how the service can continue beyond the this date, and we're setting aside resources to potentially invest in the future of The Space.
Digital Research & Development
What's so exciting about the arts organisations working in digital and creative media is the fact there remain so many unknowns. There's a spirit of adventure about all this kind of work, one that looks to take advantage of as yet unimagined technological developments.
New and emerging digital technology has the potential to transform how the arts reach new audiences, how they are experienced and distributed, and how our organisations operate as businesses. To make sure the arts can harness the potential of these technological advantages, the Arts Council has teamed up with NESTA and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to launch a £7 million Digital Research and Development (R&D) fund. This fund will see artists and arts organisations work with digital technology providers and researchers to experiment with how new digital technology can help them broaden their audiences or enhance or explore new business models.
Projects we invested in through the pilot of this fund have ranged from a new app that allows users to follow in the footsteps of Charles Dickens on a digital cultural journey across London to immersive theatre company Punchdrunk working with the MIT Media Lab to combine theatre with video game technology to partner live audiences with online participants. These projects are just the tip of the iceberg and I hope this new fund will help bring about a new era of collaboration that will transform how the arts in this country create work and reach new audiences.
The pace of change means we're living in a time of extraordinary possibility for creativity in this country, where digital advances mean our ambition can only be constrained by the limits of our imagination. The Space and the Digital R&D fund are about helping artists and arts organisations take real creative advantage of the opportunities these changes present.