Lead, follow or get out of the way: How the CCS is adapting to the digital shift
When the pandemic reached Europe in early spring, some optimists predicted that the virus would retreat in the hot summer months. The thought of sheltering in August was something few wanted to think about. And yet, here we are.
Soon after tentative measures to ease lockdown were announced in May and June, cases predictably spiked, especially in highly populated regions. Many countries quickly backtracked on freedom of movement, leading to the current patchwork of safety restrictions for residents across the EU.
While tracking coronavirus cases has become Europe’s unofficial (and not at all fun) hobby, it hasn’t been the only way we’ve been keeping busy. We still engage in cultural activities: watching movies, listening to music, enjoying works of art. The only difference is, we now mostly do it from home and online.
In July, this gave us the idea to delve into culture’s switch to digital. In short, we concluded that, as demand for digital culture rose, so did the options for consumers. There is no shortage of choice, from virtual gigs, streaming platforms, to educational tours on museum websites and more.
But what’s been happening at the other end of the supply chain?
Cultural and artistic works are still being produced, of course, but making them available for consumption on digital platforms can be a challenge of its own. And the cultural and creative sector (CCS) has not necessarily had the easiest time making that transition.
Over the last few months, clear, but divergent trends have emerged across the CSS, highlighting both challenges and opportunities in the cultural and artistic space.
Here’s what we found.
Digital-first platforms are ahead of the game
Subscription video on demand (SVOD) services and the gaming industry made enormous profits in recent months. The reason is simple: by their very nature, these cultural producers follow a digital-first model. The pandemic hasn’t really forced them to change their practices, and they have actually benefited from the increase in captive audience.
On the other hand, cultural organisations that rely heavily on their physical presence, and consequently on in-person engagement, have fared less well. Museums, for example, were particularly hard-hit.
Globally, museums have not fared well in the pandemic: 90% were forced to at least temporarily shut down, and in Europe, due to falling revenues, 73% have been forced to cut costs, including drastically reducing staff. Unsurprisingly, this strain on resources has made it even harder for them to keep up with the digital shift.
Those that have kept pace tend to be larger institutions with generous budgets, or, even more likely, like Google creating a VR tour of Versailles back in 2019, had started implementing a digital strategy before the pandemic hit.
“Globally, museums have not fared well in the pandemic.”
Existing digital technologies to the rescue
With vanishing budgets and lost engagement and revenue, cultural organisations felt a lot of pressure to get their content online, and fast.
This left little room for innovation when it came to the channels they chose. Many organisations turned to tried-and-tested digital platforms like Youtube and Facebook, for example, as their go-to solutions. Others—like the We Love Green TV festival—joined forces with traditional media partners, while others looked to niche apps, like Hopin, which provides a virtual venue for events and conferences.
Even Twitch entered the mix. The app was already extremely popular with gamers, allowing them to watch their favourite streamers broadcast themselves playing video games live. During the pandemic, Twitch partnered up with the music industry to host online gigs for fans, leading music content viewership to double in the space of a few short months.
Digital, but not interactive
One of the biggest advantages of hosting cultural or artistic works on a digital platform is the rich potential for engagement and feedback from audiences or users. In this regard, we’ve been mostly underwhelmed.
The Milan Digital Week only went as far as live broadcasting scheduled talks and conferences; the celebrated Prague Spring music festival similarly stuck to televising the concerts. Few virtual events seem to include Q&A sessions, or other complementary activities that can really elevate an event for the cultural consumer.
Even innovative CCS apps like Marquee TV, which offers on-demand access to opera, dance and theatre performances, are failing to meet audience needs for an easy way to provide feedback.
We see this as a lost opportunity for CCS producers. Listening to the end-users of cultural works is a great way to understand what they want to experience more (or less!) of, and shape a superior future offering.
Barriers to access persist
It’s well known that territoriality creates a barrier between cultural producers and consumers, especially in the dissemination of audiovisual works.
Most SVOD platforms, like Hulu and OUTtv, are subject to territoriality, i.e. Europeans’ access to them depends on the country where they log in. Surprisingly, recent European festivals, like DOK.fest Munich, DocsBarcelona and Vienna Shorts, have decided to follow the same model, restricting audience reach and disappointing many fans of cinema.
In a time when opening up access and broadening audiences is more important than ever, cultural producers have nothing to lose and everything to gain from removing, or at least circumventing, barriers to viewership.
One positive example of working around territoriality regulations has been eyelet, a platform that has adopted a digital single market model for European independent film, and has in the process become a trailblazer in streaming technology. Through a smart mechanism of license linking, it gives access to its complete catalogue of audiovisual works across European territories, while respecting distribution and license financing models.
“Institutions like music venues, smaller museums and theatre companies often struggle to find resources and technical expertise to smoothly transform their cultural offerings into polished and easy-to-access digital experiences.”
Willing, but perhaps not yet able
All these critiques might make it sound as though the sections of the CCS that hadn’t already adopted a digital-first model are reluctant to adapt to the digital shift. This is simply not the case. The CCS is broadly aware of the need to go digital to stay relevant in the current market conditions. Not doing so means losing audiences as much as revenue, which threatens their very viability.
The real issue is that CCS organisations are often not able to adapt as quickly and as efficiently as they’d like. While digital-first organisations like streaming providers have had it relatively easy, many others struggle to meet the technical requirements of going digital.
Institutions like music venues, smaller museums and theatre companies often struggle to find resources and technical expertise to smoothly transform their cultural offerings into polished and easy-to-access digital experiences.
It’s clear that accessibility and interactivity are of the essence in showcasing, promoting and sharing content digitally. For one, cultural producers should make use of the digital technologies at hand as these better guarantee speed, reliability and efficiency of adoption. As for the latter, even basic interactive functions like adding forums to their websites and being more active on social media channels can go a long way to retaining audiences.
As one CCS professional recently pointed out, the double pressure of producing cultural and artistic works, while also digitising these in record time for online consumption, is a heavy burden to put on the CCS.
That said, the sector has historically been used to working under pressure and dealing with change, including the constant need to secure EU funding for cultural and creative projects. Taking up the mantle of digital transformation is clearly the next big challenge CCS organisations have to tackle. Given the conditions they are now working under due to the pandemic means pulling together and deploying their inherent creativity and long-learned habit of 'doing more with less'.
Maureen Blache has been a junior consultant at BECCA Europe since February 2020. Over the last three years, she has been gaining experience in grant writing and managing EU projects with a strong social and cultural focus. Would like to know more about funding opportunities for your next creative project? Contact Maureen here.