NESTA Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture, Scotland

Gillian Easson, NESTA www.nesta.org.uk/digital_rnd_scotland

Founded: 1998, with £300M endowment

Mission: Bring ideas to life and help make innovation happen

How? Through policy research, programmes and investment

About NESTA…

NESTA’s 3 main areas of work: Innovation and Economic

Growth Social and Public Sector

Innovation Creative Economy

NESTA Digital R&D Arts and Culture, Scotland

The Fund’s overall objective is: “to enable the use of digital technologies in the arts and cultural sector to engage audiences in new ways and to create opportunities for new business models”

The Fund is a partnership between Creative Scotland, Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and NESTA to support arts and cultural organisations across Scotland who want to work with digital technologies to expand their audience reach and engagement and/or explore new business models.

Supporting cultural/arts organisations to innovate

Arts organisation

Digital innovation projects and sector-wide knowledge

Technology partner

Research team

Digital R&D Fund

Enabling arts and cultural organisations to engage audiences in new ways and create opportunities for new business models, through the use of digital technology.

Why NESTA?

Public benefit

Research outcomes

Transferability/scaleability

Benefit to the wider sector not just the individual cultural organisations

NESTA creative economy programmes

Support for arts and cultural organisations to innovate

Creative entrepreneur programmes/resources

Mentoring for creative business start-up and growth

Skills for creative industries

Policy and research

Audience engagement and reach:

Broadening - capturing a larger share of the population known to

be traditional participants but who currently do not participate

Deepening - intensifying current participants level of involvement by eg increasing the number of attendances or by the degree of audience (active or passive) engagement Diversifying - attracting new audience groups/different demographic (eg young people/rural population/ international market).

Business models

A business model is the mechanism by which a business intends to

manage its costs and generate its outcomes- in the case of for-

profits, the outcomes are primarily revenues earned. In the case

of non-profits, the outcome is primarily the public good created.

The Fund’s eligibility criteria

An arts and cultural organisation based in Scotland - which is either predominately publically funded and/or is a registered charity and who wants to work with digital technologies to: expand its audience reach and engagement and/or explore new business models

Your proposal must involve a collaborative partnership between yourself as an arts and cultural organisation and a technology provider that can provide technology services to arts and cultural organisations.

Innovative digital projects which will expand audience reach and engagement and/or to develop new business models

Proposals from all sizes of arts and cultural organisations in Scotland - we have 2 award levels of projects: 1) under £25,000 and 2) £25,000-£100,000

Collaborations between arts and cultural organisations, technology providers and where possible, other cultural/arts organisations.

What type of projects are we looking for?

Fund assessment criteria

Innovation in the proposal Wider impact to benefit for the sector (learning / copycat) Collaboration is genuine Project delivery and timeframe (value for money / realistic)

Spread of projects

NESTA / AHRC / Creative Scotland – panel decision

Digital R&D Fund timetable

6, 14, 16 March 2012 - Digital Days – Perth, Glasgow, Edinburgh 25 April 2012 - Deadline for Fund applications 14 May 2012 - Organisations informed of funding decisions 1 June 2012 - One day collaborative workshop bringing together all projects 31 March 2013 - All project activity must be completed Autumn 2012 – Second call for R&D Fund proposals opens (funding decisions made in January 2013, all project activity must be completed by December 2013)

LSO Pulse App

Imperial War Museum kiosks

The Sage Gateshead plus Manchester Camerata, Aurora, Berwick Maltings, Alnwick Playhouse and Durham Gala with Videojuicer and Aframe

NESTA Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture, Scotland

www.nesta.org.uk/digital_rnd_scotland

rndscotland@nesta.org.uk

@rndscot