Essential IT – Adapting to change

Kieran Cooper finds that the pace of technological change is threatening to swamp all but the most IT-literate arts organisations.

When I started my first job as marketing assistant at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1990, the world was a different place. Now, before you start dismissing me as an old fuddy-duddy (even though I know that a lot of todays marketing assistants were probably still at primary school that year), I think its very important for us to look at how much has changed in the field of IT and the arts during that period.

The pace of change

Taking a moment to stand back and consider just how dizzy the rate of change has been is essential if we are to appreciate the scale of the challenge we face in learning to adapt and incorporate the best of new technology in the way we work. When Id been at Aldeburgh for four months, we bought the shiny new box-office system PASS (we were customer number 37 in the UK). Databox wasnt yet a twinkle in its creator Jonathan Hyamss eye and the only people with mobile phones were city traders.

Over the past sixteen years weve seen box office systems become ubiquitous, mobile phones grow ever smaller and more intelligent, the rise of the World Wide Web (which was still four years away from being launched when I started work), the growth of email, and so on. This expansion in workload has made the life of the marketer particularly difficult. People are suddenly expected to add at least two new communication media to their work without being able to drop anything that they were previously doing.

Positive response

Its essential that organisations make time to assess their strategies and work out how technology can best help them meet their objectives. The relationship between strategy and technology must always be one of master and servant: whilst there are opportunities that can be opened up by new developments, its only worth pursuing them if it matches what the organisation ultimately wants to do.

Looking at the situation regularly (at least every two years) should mean that organisations are better placed to make use of what will suit their needs. It should also permit pragmatic assessments to be made of the feasibility of expecting staff to increase the number of communication channels without dropping some of the things they are already doing. This needs to be done at Board level  it really isnt enough for the guardians of organisations to leave these kinds of decision to middle managers.

Falling short

But having said all that, what worries me most is that arts organisations dont seem to be making the best of the opportunities that technology can present. In companies that Ive worked for as employee or consultant Ive seen so much time, energy and money wasted because of the lack of any coherent strategy to embrace IT. Ive written in the past about the way organisations need to be clear about how their office systems will be developed, supported and renewed over time. Without a plan of some sort, the possibilities for wastage are manifold.

I also think that our lead bodies should be leading here, insisting that boards discuss the issues, and offering guidance as well as money to organisations that need to change the way they work. So many organisations Ive seen could have made significant savings if theyd had some sound advice about purchasing or support of IT at the beginning of a project, but neither the capital or revenue funding systems seem to be particularly good at offering practical help.

As a result there have been too many knee-jerk reactions to perceived trends, and bandwagon projects where regional bodies have invested in a particular type of technology for no better reason than that their neighbours have done the same. (Surely the evidence is now clear that there is no direct association between using technology and attracting young people to the arts, despite hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on experiments). Who, within the funding sector, is actually responsible for making sure that funded clients make the most sensible and cost-effective IT decisions?

Bridging the gap

We also need to work together to ensure that the gap doesnt grow between those organisations making best use of technology and those that have not yet embraced it fully. One of the tenets of A thirst for knowledge  a report about the uses of audience data produced by Catalyst Arts for the national arts councils in 2003  was that it is much more important to help increase competency across the board than to develop yet more projects that help those organisations that are already ahead of the game.

This is equally true of the application of technology: we dont want to end up with a situation where those organisations that know what theyre doing soak up all the available funding and support to try new and ever more adventurous things (however valuable) whilst leaving the majority behind to try and cope on their own with the tide of change. Some arts organisations undeniably lead the way  and companies outside the arts are recognising their best practice too  but the whole sector should be able to benefit from this, whatever the scale or artform.

Technology is not going to stand still, and we cant ever hope that it will. We need to develop a new paradigm that embraces change  not for its own sake but because of the real benefits that it provides in reaching audiences, presenting work and making organisations run more efficiently.

Kieran Cooper is a Director of the arts management consultancy Catalyst Arts.
t: 01223 562871; e: [email protected];
w: http://www.catalystarts.com

He is now stepping down as our regular Essential IT contributor following his recent appointment as a Director of Facultas, UK distributors of the email marketing software Lyris.