The Future of Arts and Culture: Connecting Global Voices to Understand Change

Image. The full dataset from the Future of Arts & Culture study, featuring over 500 connected drivers of change.

A guest article for The New Real presents scenarios for the future of arts and culture over the coming decade by Scott Smith - Spectaculars and Small Stages, Global Network of Communities, Platforms and Multiverses.

Around the globe this Spring, governments have been rapidly stepping down protective measures put in place to tackle COVID-19, opening borders, services, and of course, public spaces. Worldwide, museums and performance spaces are tentatively opening their doors and dusting off seats. Arts and culture organisations are re-awakening and looking toward the next horizon. Yet, two years on, as the New Real is itself exploring in more depth, technology has accelerated because, not in spite of, the disruption. World events have juddered forward. Behaviours have shifted.

In March 2020, even as the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a pandemic, various leaders in the arts and culture sector were already assessing damage from the early months of the crisis, and wondering how to keep their doors open, sustain staff, protect their patrons, and keep the show going. Without an ability to travel, comparing notes, assessing wider sentiment and sector-wide strategy became increasingly challenging. All that most institutions had to rely on to look ahead and collectively manage their decision-making process were local points of view, without benefit of a wider picture.

In that context, a handful of sector leaders, including Annette Mees, UK-based Artistic Director of Audience Labs, Honor Harger, then Executive Director, ArtScience Museum, Singapore, Tateo Nakajima, Fellow, Arts, Culture & Entertainment at Arup, and my team at Changeist, a futures research group, decided to lean into the challenge and create a way to tap and collect insights from our global peers to do just that—look ahead, through the fog of COVID, and try to imagine just what opportunities and challenges lay ahead for the next decade. The resulting Future of Arts & Culture project, now eighteen months on, has given us an important lens on collective priorities and possible pathways—globally, and by region.

By using an online tool called Futurescaper, we were able to reach out to hundreds of leaders in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and the Middle East, across museums and galleries, the performing arts, festivals, funding bodies, critics and creators to tap their respective insights. We heard from over two hundred participants who created and connected over five hundred possible drivers of change, describing their implications for institutions, creators and audiences over the next decade. This became an exceptionally useful way of sharing with us the benefit of their collective foresight.

The outcomes of the probe, which allowed participants to play out numerous “if-then” impacts, held a few surprises, but also confirmed some fundamentals. Looking ahead, COVID-19 wasn’t seen as the key issue by participants. According to the group, climate change stands as the single biggest shaping factor in the decade ahead for arts and culture, and exerts an increasing influence on almost all other issues, from business models, to wellness, to social equity, to how technology is used, and by whom.

Looking across the constellation of connected issues in the study’s data, these latter issues—business models and funding, awareness of the social value of arts and culture, and equity and inclusivity, formed the three biggest and most influential “issue” clusters. Each of these clusters of related drivers and impacts helped us surface some important scenarios that are likely to play out, or may already be playing out, in different ways across arts and culture globally, perhaps in parallel. Briefly, these can be described as:

● Spectaculars & Small Stages — In this future, with funding impacted by continued economic uncertainty, profitability is the key imperative, pushing arts and culture ever further toward the dynamics of media and entertainment. This benefits the biggest and most well-resourced institutions and events, but places more strain on mid-sized organisations to keep up. Small, locally-focused organisations use relationships to stay afloat.

● Global Network of Communities — The stress of the pandemic has created a new focus on the need to strengthen communities, a critical piece of which is the bolstering of arts and culture at a local level as a critical source of connection and growth. This re-dedication to social impact means a greater focus on equity and equality, climate, and social and economic justice.

● Platforms & Multiverses — In this scenario, a new generation of creators build on the foundations created in the early 2020s for a more transactional future where digital tools and platforms dominate attention and cultural commerce. A broader definition of what constitutes art emerges, recognizing a wider spectrum of works as valuable culture, and a more diverse group of voices creating new canon.

Again, many of the aspects of these scenarios are already unfolding, but perhaps at different speeds in different regions or sectors. They are also not mutually exclusive, and can be unfolding in connection to each other. All involve some balancing of economic, social and technological challenges and opportunities. All call into question the relationships between platforms and publics, and between arts, governance and society. How do we leverage new tools and enable new voices, while remaining open and accessible to all? How can technological and social innovation be balanced in ways that explore experiential richness with real-world relevance?

Even in this diversity of challenges, one particular call rings clear in the study’s insights: as we face even more uncertainty in coming years, the ability of the arts as a key tool to enable social growth and resilience will become even more vital. Without a vital arts and culture sector globally, we may be left struggling with the emotional and social impacts of immense change. If we can centre the arts and culture as part of both anticipation and response to these challenges, we’re likely to come through the next decades stronger.

Find out more about the project, and download the summary report, at http://futureofartsandculture.org. This project was carried out by Changeist, and supported by Arup and Therme Group.

Scott Smith is founder and managing partner at Changeist, based in The Netherlands.