Digital Inclusion: Mirador Moves on into new areas of achievement and expertise
This has been a busy period for Mirador Culture which was brought into existence to mainstream the work of Asian Arts Access, the arts development agency established in 1990 by Kalwant Ajimal.
A number of its projects have been earmarked for Tenth Anniversary Celebrations but the programme which has won the most respect and interest is The Festival of Ephemeral Arts, which was launched by Kalwant Ajimal in 1999. The one singular claim that he makes about the festival after many years of its presentation is that it has continued to innovate and every second year, the festival has been acquiring new themes and dimensions. The cost of research and development has been phenomenal and always completed by Mirador as a part of its preparation for public funding.
Who pays for research?
There is no estimate of how much time and effort is committed by arts organisations to carry out their R&D; the cost of research is always recognised in business through new sales or more contracts. The cost of research is borne by arts organisations as a ‘given’; it is something they must do in order to remain competitive. It is an investment which can only be recovered in part in short-term budgeting processes but with suitable adjustments to accounting treatment, the cost of research may be acknowledged as just self-sponsorship or input-in-kind.
Mirador moves into Digital Inclusion
A great deal of new ground has been created by Lord Carter’s Report on Digital Britain and many of its supporters as well as its critics have tended to focus more on the technology side of digital inclusion. Very few creative agencies have a clear policy on how digital inclusion is going to apply to their development programmes and what value does it bring to the organisation and its customers?
Mirador has taken the view that investment in digital inclusion is a priority for two main reasons. The first is commonly acknowledged but the scale of investment and the intensity of effort still varies between organisations. There is no ground rule which would suggest a suitable indicator – in industry, for example, an R&D spend of 15% would be considered to be very generous and healthy. There is no doubt that investment in digital inclusion could be treated as a part of the process of consolidation of the intellectual assets of a cultural organisation. However, as the pundits of digital inclusion, Slywotzky and Morrison have said “Becoming a digital business is not about having a great website, setting up separate e-businesses, having next generation software, or wiring your workforce. It is about using digital technology to become unique…to create and capture profits in new ways”. Mirador has acknowledged this and gone further in two main ways.
Mirador invests in capacity generation
Mirador’s investment in capacity creation relates to the empowerment of the creative staff. Further discussion on this is to follow. Mirador has also invested in digital inclusion to attract external collaboration and to use digital technologies for marketing and audience development. Details are to follow.
The second area of innovation where digital inclusion is likely to shape Mirador’s research and development effort lies in how it aims to attract collaborations – new joint venture partners, researchers, artists with specialisation in digital inclusion on the one hand but schools and teachers on the other. Schools are to be invited to join Mirador’s work programmes through educational networking sites currently under development but a taster can be found at http://ephemeralarts.wikispaces.com , using wikispaces as the platform. Soon to be launched, it is expected that this site will become a major example of the use of digital inclusion for networking amongst teachers and schools. Mirador has also created http://ephemeralarts.ning.com , using ning.com as the platform. This site is a meeting space for artists and practitioners who are interested in Ephemeral Arts. So far, two artists who are based in Tanzania have become “Ephemeral Arts Innovators”, a new community of practitioners that Mirador is launching.
Bloggers have to work harder
There was a time when any self-respecting blogger could create a blog and find that major search engines were competing to host the sites. That is no longer the case. Bloggers have to learn to swim as major search engines such as Google, Ask, Lycos and technorati no longer oblige by hosting the blog within a few days. It seems that bloggers have to do more work and create a lot of good output before their work is noticed. In the meantime, it makes sense to use the community or social networking sites which are driven by membership. New users, that is, volunteers, collaborators or just ‘friends’ have to first become members before they can access specific content based sites. Mirador has been investing extensively in this aspect of digital inclusion. It has several blogs; the two main ones are http://diverseview.wordpress.com – this one which you are reading now and the communication blog of the organisation which can be found at http://miradorculture.wordpress.com , a very popular blog which attracts an increasing readership.
A new site for a Mirador Client
The use of ‘RSS feeds’ or interconnecting links between Mirador’s blogs and networking sites which facilitate exchange of content has made the whole platform very productive. Finally, Mirador is working with a new client to help it launch a dedicated arts and cultural complex in East London. The client is able to benefit from the Mirador Culture weblog on a daily basis as far as general communications with the cultural sector is concerned. However, the client, which is known as Culture@270 is also going to benefit from its own community networking site which has just been launched at http://eastendarts.ning.com As indicated above, the members and supporters of Culture@270 are invited to join ning.com free of charge so that they can access the content that is relevant to the Culture@270 organisation.
Next Steps…
These interactions between blogs and networking sites mark the first stage of the digital inclusion programme of Mirador Culture. Mirador has already received requests from cultural organisations to support their own programmes. A support programme is under development. Bringing the knowledge and expertise of digital inclusion is one thing. Mirador also offers the ability of developing content which should client organisations’ programmes.
New online festival has been announced. Called Documedia, it features documemtaries as a new area for development. Please see http://tripleDfestival.wordpress.com
For further information please contact kalwant.ajimal@btinternet.com
