Crossing Boundaries - BFI - British Film Institute

- Infrastructure for You: The venues have been innovators in providing infrastructure for an audience. These are
the conditions that have historically enabled creative consumption and production to flourish. They include the quality
of the cinema programming and wider ‘cinema experience’; the workspace, showcase and network offer; and the
design and ‘feel’ of their public realm. Until recently, these have very much focused on the physical footprint.
- Infrastructure by You: Although there are marked variations between them, the venues have been less adept in
providing infrastructure that has the signature of a diverse range of shifting audiences and communities. While
historically the venues have thrived on a relationship with a relatively niche audience of cultural producers and
consumers in each city, and while this audience has played a signature role in making the venues ‘their own’; there is
a need today, with digialisation a key engaging mechanism, to broaden the base of this ownership and to do so in
ways that enable cultural producers and consumers to introduce multiple signatures of ownership and divergent
senses of place. By developing an open source structure and culture – to management, programming, cross-art-form
practice – the venues can become ‘Infrastructure by You’. This is the proactive pursuit of creativity and innovation as
an outcome and process, with an emphasis on connectivity: of audiences, businesses, art forms, technology and
content, and strategic partners. It is based upon the direct brokerage of new relationships and interactions, on the
deliberate staging of boundary-crossing activity, and on the purposeful programming of activities that extend far
beyond the physical footprint of the venue.
Digitalisation forms a key part of a shifting cultural and strategic landscape which requires that the venues to be recast as
Infrastructure by You, launching activities and services beyond the physical footprint to operate as contemporary cultural
intermediaries for their cities and regions. It is no longer sufficiently meaningful or sustainable for the venues to simply provide
infrastructure for cultural producers and consumers: just as the boundaries between cultural production and consumption have
diminished to, in some cases, be almost negligible, the venues need to operate as cultural intermediaries and producers in their
own right: of content, dialogue, ideas and cultural intelligence. By providing the “‘spikes’ in the otherwise flat earth of digital
culture”, they can become the physical and digital gathering and translation points for creative content, where the physical and
digital footprints are interdependent, and the content and meanings are user-driven.
Introduction 30
tom fleming / creative consultancy
UK Film Council
in association with
Arts Council England and the Arts Humanities Research Council