Talk in the salons these days or at least in the blogosphere is of the third industrial revolution; changes to society as fundamental as the development of the steam engine two hundred years ago and of electricity a hundred years later. This time the revolution is being wrought by, you guessed it, the Internet and what politicians like to refer to as the growth of the knowledge-based economy. Changes are being felt in homes and workplaces all over the world changes which are, well, revolutionary. And, just as with previous revolutions, these changes are affecting us all in different ways. To apply terminology familiar to marketers, some individuals, indeed some industries, are the innovators and early adopters of this new technology and others are destined to be laggards. The onus is on those working in the arts not to fall into the latter group, spending our time reminiscing about the days when, if you wanted an audience, you just had to put up a few posters or print a brochure. Of course, many arts practitioners are embracing new technology: of those organisations questioned in recent surveys (p20), over 95% have websites. These days, it would be a surprise to find an arts professional without a mobile phone and a shock to find an arts organisation without a computer. However, our competence with these symbols of the revolution may vary depending on whether we are technological natives twenty year-olds reared on a digital diet of downloads or technologically naïve, still grappling with predictive text messaging.
But what about our audiences? While it is right that arts organisations should embrace new technology and train staff to do the same, it is possible to get swept up in a kind of revolutionary fervour that can actually alienate audiences. The pressure we are under to set out our stalls in the virtual market must never be a pressure we allow our audiences to feel. Assumptions we may be inclined to make, for example, that all hearing impaired audience members would choose to access information online (p6), are just that assumptions.
Liz Hill and Brian Whitehead, Co-editors