Dance Mapping - Arts Council England

• successful regional roll out of AmbITion 74 roadshows (April 2009)
• launch of a redeveloped Arts Council England website (Summer 2009)
• new Channel 4iP national and regional partnerships established (October 08)
• Ofcom/Arts digital content audit undertaken (November 08)
Whilst Arts Council England are developing their response to the digital revolution, many arts
organisations and artists are experimenting with digital content, e-marketing, engaging
audiences through second life performances and establishing social networking sites.
3. Dance artists’ engagement in new technology
As artists and other creatives begin to experiment with other practitioners in making art then
the problem of whose art it is becomes an important debate. There are issues of context,
control and copyright in the unregulated environment of the internet. Handling the issues of
intellectual property are challenging as many artists enter this world seeing it as a creative
collaboration opportunity. They fail to have a hard-headed approach and awareness of what
impact the outcome might have upon their intellectual property. This may mean they lose out
from the financial opportunities that may come from collaborations of this kind. Arts Council
England and others should be advising artists on what they need to take into account when a
product has several authors.
The artists engaged in global collaboration see a range of benefits for themselves through
this work, which include the opportunities to work across international boundaries and have a
dialogue that has a strong international focus. This is in contrast to many written publications,
which are national or local but failing to take into account the influence and opinion of the
international artistic community. In addition many issues are often discussed in online
debates, as is the curation of digital work, which draws attention to the interdisciplinary and
durational nature of much digital work.
However, relatively few artists are making work specifically for web-based distribution. Some
are quite resistant to this idea because of what they see as the limitation of two dimensions
and/or the small screen. But it is concerns about budget as well as expertise and ownership
and copyright that may be inhibiting engagement with this area.
There are an increasing number of publications addressing the impact and opportunities of
digitisation, for example, Charles Leadbeater, who has produced other publications and
papers that have influenced arts thinking, published a book We-think 75 in March (2009) It is
74 http://www.getambition.com/?option=com_content&task=view&id=9&Itemid=16
75 Leadbeater, C (2009) We-think, www.wethinkthebook.net/home.aspx
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