Can the arts cope in a beta world?

Every so often you go to a conference and something said by a speaker becomes a worm in your head. It turns, challenges, probes and just won’t go away.

So it was for me at the Arts Marketing Association Conference this summer where Ed Sanders, Marketing Director for Google and YouTube, was talking about his experiences of working with arts organisations on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project. He genuinely couldn’t understand the lead-in times required by many arts organisations to get a project off the ground, where schedules of work are booked years ahead, and each stage of a project’s process is mapped in minute detail, all leading to a wonderful performance at curtain up, or a faultless exhibition opening.

At the time I brushed the comment aside, thinking that it was simply a culture clash: perhaps Ed didn’t understand that the arts sector really excels at creating perfect moments first time, every time. “Always has, always will”, I thought, and yet that Ed’s throwaway thought has caused me to think very deeply about whether our model of working has a place in the new world order.

Let me explain: Google, along with many other technology companies, operates in a permanent beta mode; they release products and services to market as soon as they are able, encourage feedback from the users, and then tweak their offer to iron out initial glitches and make suggested improvements. The constantly evolving technological landscape doesn’t leave enough time to beta-test new approaches before innovation evolves again. The on-line futurology and trends experts trendwatching.com have identified this as ‘nowism’, which they describe as “Consumers’ ingrained lust for instant gratification”.

Trendwatching.com feels that this lust “is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

The internet marketing specialist Mike Moran calls this the “do it wrong quickly” approach. If you are an early adopter of technology, you’ll probably be conversant with this approach: the earliest iPods and iPhones were quickly outshone by the later models, and not just because of additional features.

This has always seemed inherently unfair to me: why should I part with £150 of my hard-earned money to receive an incomplete product? If the price was lower at the start and rose as modifications were made and things perfected, then I’d feel like I had a choice: go in early and get it cheaper in exchange for helping refine the offer, or buy later on and get it perfect. That’s really what theatres do with cheaper previews if you think about it.

But younger people – Generation Y born after 1980, with the Post-Millennium Children right on their heels – just don’t ‘get’ our way of working. The idea that an opera company will know not just its repertoire but often the names of the principle singers up to a decade ahead of time is genuinely laughable to a 22-year old. I know because I asked. Questions like “But won’t it be really out of date?” and “What happens if the singers die before then?” are valid, and perhaps just serve to reinforce some of the stereotypes that me and many of my friends have devoted a working career to breaking down. Try telling a twenty something that it won’t be out of date because it was written 150 years ago and watch a human hard-drive implode.

Other parts of the creative industries are wising up to this. It must have taken a huge effort for the BBC to show a TV dramatization of The Last Days of Lehman Brothers just over a year after the real events. Inside the cultural industries, we know that the creative process takes time: that research has to be done, scripts written, locations sourced and permissions gained, actors and crews booked, costumes designed, and so on. But the BBC managed it, and in doing so told the story at a point when it still felt scarily current.

So can the arts not just survive but thrive in a beta-obsessed age?

Ultimately yes, but if we embrace this new way of existing, it may see a change in the pecking orders and a fundamental shift in the ways in which we work. Smaller, emerging companies who can be fleeter of foot, may genuinely rival the ‘big boys’ by appearing more current, and using ever-cheaper technologies to share their work and engage wider audiences. Organisations with lower fixed overheads, such as no buildings to run, could become kings. In a post National Lottery funding boom age, where massive investment took place in making buildings fit for purpose, the arts world could be turned upside down. There will indeed be chaos, realness and excitement.

As Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”.