An Online and Offline conversation on the role of Digital in the National Cultural Policy

Last Thursday Andrew Brettell and I attended a day of conversations and presentations on how the new digital worlds could feed into, and be integrated into, the new cultural policy. 

Organised by Senator Kate Lundy and her office, this was the third public sphere conversation. These conversations happen online and also in a real word meeting - usually supported by live presentations that are streamed. There is the use of hashtags on twitter and a wiki to collate and capture ideas before, during and after the event.
Though the biggest trending story on Twitter that day was the passing of Steve Jobs, #publicsphere was ranked third – showing a wider engagement than those who were just in the room.
There were presentations from 5 key areas followed by group discussions. They were:

• Games Development - the future of games development in Australia from independent to major studios and publishers.
• Film & Animation - the future of film and animation in Australia within the context of digital culture.
• Media & Music - the future of music and media culture creation in a digital world.
• Digital Arts - looking at digital arts, how they contribute to our national culture landscape.
• Cultural Institutions - exploring how cultural institutions right across Australia, from regional galleries, libraries, archives and museums to national institutions can collaborate on public access and participation in our culturally diverse heritage through digitisation, online engagement such as crowd sourcing and emerging technologies such as augmented reality.

Key issues that came up in the discussion with the participants from the GLAM sector were: 

• the role that digitisation plays in building engagement at a local level
• the provision of services to assist the small to medium organisations in Regional Australia who may have the will but not the resources
• the need for an over-arching peak-body  for the GLAM sector, as a balance to the roles Screen Australia and The Australian Council for the Arts play for their sectors as a policy advisor to government  and research voice for the sectors.
• the model of DigitalNZ http://digitalnz.org/ 

and

• the change in organisations’ roles as part of this process from Keepers to Sharers to Distributors to Facilitators.

You can read the collated notes at http://digiculture.wikispaces.com/ and contribute to the discussion until the 15th October when it will be closed and finalised as a submission to the National Cultural Policy consultation by the 21st October 2011.
Just a reminder that if you haven’t already commented on the National Cultural Policy, submissions for that close on Friday 21 2011 http://culture.arts.gov.au/discussion-paper/developing-a-vision

 Michael Huxley