Culture:Unlimited

Culture:Unlimited is the new think-tank for the cultural sector.

Why?

Because almost every sector of the economy has a research and development (R&D) piece in its jigsaw: a place to take risks, fly kites, experiment with new ideas and mainstream the ones that work.

The cultural sector does not.

It has plenty of people telling it what to do from the outside, but no-one on the inside figuring out what it’s best at.

Our job is to invent, innovate and experiment with culture to get the best out of it for people everywhere: to re-discover the lost social purpose of culture.

Culture:Unlimited wants to turn the hand of the cultural sector to the social good of the country; bring culture back within reach of everyone; find out what culture is for; and discover the questions to which culture is the answer.

Thanks

Culture:Unlimited could not have created this report without the knowledge, expertise and honesty of the people who ran the 11 projects we’ve looked at, nor without the backing of NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) which had the vision to ask us to share some of the stories and lessons of the Illuminate programme; and of course, funded the programme in the first place.

Our thanks to all of them, without whom this report would not exist.

Researched and written by Chris Wood
Edited by Nicola Nuttall
Designed by Murrays the Printers Ltd
Our thanks to NESTA for financing this work

What is This Report About?

This is a report about 11 projects from the Illuminate programme, which Culture:Unlimited had the opportunity to manage from 2006 until 2009. That’s what the report is about. But what it’s for is to try to provide some stars to steer by if you’re planning to do anything similar. There were plenty of things that went well, some that went wrong, some surprises and some outstanding results. We hope that by sharing these stories, you might find some things you can use.

Because Lighting-Up Time is about the stories from inside the projects, we cut straight to the chase about the things that everyone learnt from them. And we’ve made room for the stories from participants and the public too: in the video clips and the epilogue of the report. And finally, if you want to know more, we give you the details of the people who ran the projects with an invitation to call them (or indeed, us). Illuminate was designed to be a laboratory for the cultural sector: and the test results can be applied almost everywhere; so please feel free to call... and read on...

What Was Illuminate About?

The Illuminate programme was part of the learning programme at NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts). Launched in October 2004, at the same time as a review of learning with digital technologies from NESTA’s Futurelab, it was about the personalisation and reinterpretation of museum and gallery collections with the help of new techniques and technologies. Thankfully, that didn’t mean a preoccupation with whizzy high-tech solutions, but a focus on personalising learning, engaging audiences, and getting as far away from a one-size-fits-no-one world view. NESTA invested enough to make a mark on what we know about learning, new technology, and old artefacts.

Illumination

Illuminate has shown us again why museums and galleries have a special place in the learning landscape: because they feed all the emotions that learning needs to survive and grow. Not the kind of learning that is about facts, memory, league tables and teaching-to-the-test, but the kind that is about creativity, invention and innovation. It reminded us too that museums and galleries can engage just about anyone, just about anywhere: because the learning is disguised by being in a museum (no desks, classrooms, blackboards, and teachers); because of the myriad subjects covered by museums and galleries (so much variety that there’s always something that captures learners’ attention); and because it’s learning based on emotion, inspiration, and imagination – things that we all have whoever, and wherever, we are.

The Illuminate Projects

The 11 projects from the Illuminate portfolio that Culture:Unlimited had the chance to shepherd were spread across the UK; this is what, and where, they were:

Gateways, in Belfast, was part of Belfast Exposed (a community photography gallery). With 500,000 images of the turbulent history of Northern Ireland, they wanted to use new technology to help people browse the collection and allow them to make comments and contribute images and ideas via an audio booth as well as a keyboard. Other innovations would allow visitors to bookmark their favourite images and pick up where they left off when they visited again, or create their own slide shows with images, sounds, commentary and text to share with others.

Plants and People, at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham, aimed to help children learn about the interdependence between plant life and modern life via medicines, clothes, food and cosmetics. They used computer gaming technology to create a Green Man whom the children have to feed, clothe, medicate and decorate using products made from plants. Their interaction with the Green Man is through a panoply of technology including mobiles, lap-tops, the worldwide web, touch-screens and others but focused on the issues of biodiversity, genetic modification, world food supplies, health, and sustainable development.

Learning Journeys, at Bradford Industrial Museum, took 30 children aged 8 to 11 through an ambitious, three-year, catalytic experience, inspired by the Chinese ‘Children’s Palaces’ model. That idea offers deep, rich, learning for children outside the classroom through workshops and masterclasses led by adults. The goal is to inspire their imaginative play, creativity and scientific exploration, and to enable them to apply their ideas across the traditional divides between science, technology, and the arts. For example, the Flying Machines workshop used animation, technical design and sculpture to engage the children in the theme of journeys, during which they also helped facilitate a family workshop and interviewed visitors to a photographic exhibition.

Rethinking Disability Representation, anchored in Glasgow but across the UK, brought together nine museums and galleries to develop a range of exploratory projects to provide learning and engage audiences with often challenging ideas, linked to disability. The work sought to uncover existing material held in museums that could contribute to a broader understanding of disability, develop new ways to display and interpret it, and look at the impact on disabled and non-disabled audiences. The undercurrent here was to help museums in the UK tackle disability issues thoughtfully and confidently; something that, until this project, was true only of a handful of organisations.

E:SI – Egyptology: Scientific Investigation – in Harrogate’s museums, went behind the scenes of Egyptology to look at the science underlying the stories of Egyptian artefacts. It aimed to make the scientific exploration of Harrogate Museums’ Egyptology collections fascinating and accessible to the widest possible audience. The new displays would interpret and display the Egyptology collections from a unique science-based perspective using a range of sensory techniques and showcase the future of science as a tool for historical detective work. For example, Explorer areas would have hands-on interactive experiments to demonstrate the tests typically used on Egyptian artefacts.

Valle Crucis Abbey, in Llangollen, set out to re-create the abbey of the 1400’s using high-spec, high-tech, virtual head-set technology that would transport the wearer straight to life as it was when the abbey was at the height of its power. The plan was to take people on a virtual guided tour of the Abbey, in vivid 3-D, where they would be able to see the walls, windows, features, decorations, furniture, and even people, that are lost to history.

Enlighten Magna, in Rotherham, set out to use the Magna science centre to give visitors a personalised interpretation of the steel industry, using simple torches to trigger their experiences. Torches became the technology of choice because Magna is dimly lit. Each torch casts a unique pattern of light so that cameras and software can recognise which is which and create a unique, and changing, learning experience when they’re shone at any hot spot. Using torches encourages a sense of exploration too and, combined with the smart software, can generate a very diverse experience of the life of steel and the people that make it.

Silver Sounds, at Queen’s University, Belfast, proposed to take some of the 300 pieces of silver in their collection and commission 10 artists to make 2 minute soundscapes to interpret them in a new work of art. Beyond that, they wanted to use hand-held computers to allow visitors to trigger lighting in the display cases, influence the combination of soundscapes to personalise the gallery, and collect information about each piece of silver. High-quality 3-D computer models of the pieces would also allow visitors to explore the objects in ways impossible with real objects, and a new piece of silver would be commissioned to unmask the silversmith’s art.

Waves Science Sculptures, in Cornwall, wanted to explain the invisible forces of electricity and magnetism to the visitors of Porthcurno Telegraph Museum. They have one of the best collections of early communication technology in the country but wanted a way to simplify the science by using art. The solution was to commission artists, working with GCSE science students, to create sculptures to demystify the processes. This sculpture park would be in the museum gardens, allied to information and education packs to underline the learning and inspire visitors with their own model of the physics beneath our information society.

The Lightbox, in Woking, wanted to confront the stigma of mental ill-health by using their nationally-important collection of artefacts from the (now closed) Brookwood hospital in Surrey. Their philosophy was to focus on personal stories from this collection and use artistic interpretation of them to help bring insight and meaning to the taboo subject of mental illness. The innovation here was to tackle contemporary mental health issues, rather than confine the work to just interesting historical footnotes. The plan was to do this by engaging users of today’s mental healthcare system, and healthcare professionals, to complement the museum’s skills in exhibition-making.

Animal Navigation, at London Zoo, intended to mimic the way some creatures navigate their world by using technology to help humans become a bat, or a rat for an hour. Using wearable headgear, visitors would literally dress up in the technology of a bat (using echolocation), or a rat (using touch sensations through whiskers) to vividly explain how these animals ‘see’ their world. The intention was that the use of technology to simulate the experience of being another creature would make the experience both more memorable and understandable for everyone, but especially younger visitors, to the zoo.

The Story of What Worked, What Went Wrong, and Tips for the Future

Instead of taking this portfolio of projects one at a time and dissecting each of them, we decided instead to tell the story of them all by grouping together the things they all found encouraging, frustrating, satisfying, vexing or any other adjective that applied to them all – and with an eye for (sometimes brutal) honesty. We hoped that, this way, we were most likely to expose the things other projects might encounter, and be as useful as possible to anyone thinking of something similar.

A Legacy of Change

These 11 projects from the Illuminate programme were exploratory and exemplary in equal measure. They did what they set out to do: illuminate some new ways of working for museums and galleries in the UK; proving that cultural organisations have strong social, technological and educational roles as well as their usual historical and artistic ones. This flurry of video clips show how these projects affected working practices inside the organisations, and how that impacted on the people who were involved and the public that came to see the results. It is a legacy that the teams, the organisations and the funders should be proud of: A legacy that has changed the institutions, and the cultural sector, for the better.

But what of the lessons from these projects? If you wanted to do something similar, and achieve the same kinds of success, with the same verve, what are the things to keep in mind? Well, it turns out there are 10 things you’d hear by eaves-dropping on these projects. They sound like this...

Technology is a Slave, not a Master

With technology projects like some of these, it’s easy to be seduced by the wizardry of them but that’s not what they are, or should be, about. It’s often the case that technology is at its best when it’s invisible. In other words, when it’s so intuitive that people can focus on what they’re trying to do, and don’t notice it’s there. At Animal Navigation, becoming a bat or a rat was technologically tricky, but it was so carefully focused on making it simple to use, that it achieved what it was really about – making it memorable. Likewise, Silver Sounds, where the personal digital assistant devices were made to talk to one another and a central computer – a first for this technology – driven not for its own sake, but by the needs of usability. At Gateways, Enlighten Magna, and Valle Crucis Abbey the technology bit back, with the promise of the various software evaporating through technical frustration. If the technology sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Ask questions about what it will deliver, not how it works. Stay focused on the outcomes you want from it and don’t be tempted into the technocrats’ world; that way lies an answer, but too often to the wrong question.

Time Flies Whether You’re Having Fun or Not

There is never enough time. When you’ve worked out how long you think your project will take, double it. Only one of these 11 projects stuck to their original timescale. The other 10 were late by between 2 months and 10 months. We’ll come to the reasons for the lateness in a moment but, for now, it’s enough to note that if you’re planning something similar, your initial assumptions about time will probably not be enough. Now for the reasons for lateness: The interesting thing is that it wasn’t usually, as you might guess, due to technical failures with new technology or something similar; it was because of people. Or rather, the choice of individuals can make or break a timetable. In Waves’ case (10 months late), the museum had both a change of Director and a very difficult relationship between a commissioned artist and the organisation. In Silver Sounds’ case (9 months late), the project had lain dormant for nearly a year from the start and it took the appointment of a new project manager to resurrect it and turn what was an ugly duckling into an elegant white swan.

Don’t Make Yourself a Straightjacket, or Accept One as a Present

A project plan is, exactly as the name suggests, a plan. It helps you to think through the issues facing the project, question your assumptions, frame your discussion, decide what you’re going to do. But it is no more than that, especially in exploratory projects like these and if you feel compelled to stick to it, or funders insist that you do, it will stifle your work. Same for budgets, which are, after all, just a manifestation of what you think will happen at the beginning. Neither are somehow clairvoyant voodoo magic that can predict the future. Luckily in this case, NESTA allowed things to change because innovation, by definition, cannot be accurately predicted. For example, at Valle Crucis Abbey, the opportunity to include an animatronic model wasn’t in the plan or budget, but was too good to miss, so room was made for it; and at Enlighten Magna, some of the technology was jettisoned in favour of a different approach because it wasn’t producing what it promised at the outset. The thing that helps in every case is staying focused on the outcomes: what you want to achieve from the project; and editing how you do that as you discover things along the way.

Look at the Horizon. Don’t Look Down

When you’re doing an exploratory project, repeat to yourself where you want to go, not how you’re going to get there. Like a high-wire artist, if you look down, or focus too close, you’ll fall off; if you look ahead, you can balance better. Many of the projects in this portfolio managed to stay focused on the horizon, especially the ones that were owned by their audience, like Learning Journeys in Bradford. In that case, the aim to give 30 children the chance to find inspiration in the museum for their own learning journeys encapsulated this idea. It meant that sometimes the project felt a little out of control, messy and counter-cultural for a museum more used to making decisions on behalf of its audiences. Nonetheless, the resolve of the project team, their commitment to the particular children and to the idea of their ownership meant that resistance and inertia were overcome or navigated around, and the delivery of the project was adjusted to suit the preferences of the audience. This is rarer than you might think in UK museums and the more valuable for that.

A Good Vacancy Always Beats a Bad Appointment

More than any other characteristic, it’ll be the people that mean your project will sink or swim. It’s easy to get distracted by the intricacies of recruitment procedures and forget that managing adventurous new projects like these needs imagination, tenacity, flexibility and not a small amount of energy and selflessness to deliver. Amongst these projects, Valle Crucis Abbey was exemplary in its project management and communication because of the person running it; Silver Sounds came back from the dead because of the visionary appointment of someone with (this might surprise you) little experience, but stacks of energy and ambition to do well – so much so that they won the Times Higher Education Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts and were graced by a visit from HM the Queen in 2008. Plants and People was affected by the tension between a Director and an evaluator with very different values. Waves Science Sculptures was similar, with the friction eventually leading to contractual strife with the main commissioned artist. And at Enlighten Magna, it turned out that the internal staff had the talent and the ambition to make the project fly. If you make a bad appointment, try to change it as soon as you can before too much damage is done, and do try to be clear about who is going to do what. When you make a good appointment; celebrate: give them the freedom to deliver.

Look Outside Your World

When NESTA created these projects, they helpfully created an assortment of independent advisers alongside them, and the projects themselves appointed independent evaluators and made partnerships with external organisations. Together, they gave perspectives on the projects that could never have come from inside and that was crucial to the successes. The best ones of all took advice from outside the museum sector (like The Lightbox), where the best tips on working with new audiences or in new ways, were to be found. Of course, the same rules apply to independent advisers as they do to staff: choose carefully; look for attributes that suit your project; expect some turbulence as people get new posts, take maternity leave etc. and expect the job to become the shape of the person doing it (hence the reason to choose carefully). Rarely, some of the projects hardly used their advisers at all and some, like Learning Journeys, used them almost to extinction. Can you see the difference in the results? Yes.

Evaluate Things Before the Finishing Line

Perhaps it’s a problem with the word evaluation, but it’s almost always left to the finishing line of a project. That’s wrong, because part of the point is to provide a feedback loop to a project to improve it, not just conduct a post mortem afterwards. That problem was fixed in these projects by having evaluators embedded in the project so that they could give some feedback to the project teams as they progressed. At The Lightbox, the evaluator was commissioned from the Institute of Psychiatry, and stayed with the project from beginning to end: attending meetings; writing interim reports; and offering advice to the team from her observations. Elsewhere, most evaluators were incisive, sometimes abrasive, in their pursuit of quality outcomes for projects. At Plants and People this was the source of some discomfort, but when the prickliness had subsided, the project was better for it. For Rethinking Disability Representation, the evaluators were so deeply embedded in the project, they were almost indistinguishable from the rest of the team and an every-ready source of advice. In every case, the point of evaluation was to enhance, not simplistically judge, and that’s something to remember: Evaluators should not be a hired gun to shoot failing projects, they should be there to improve them; and that can only be done if they’re in it from the start, not from the end.

Don’t Play Safe, but Do Have an Escape Route

If you’re thinking of trying something adventurous like these projects, you probably won’t be in the risk-averse category anyway, but you’ll get questions about it from those who are. Innovation is about experimenting and learning what works and that means taking risks, embracing change, and getting things wrong; and then admitting it and learning as much as your audience does. Nonetheless, it helps to think about what you’ll do when it does (and it will, if you’re doing properly challenging work) and recognising that, even then, you can’t plan for everything. The Waves Science Sculptures project could have floundered on the rocks of planning permission for the sculptures. As it turned out, the way was cleared: but there wasn’t a plan B because they were advised they wouldn’t need one. At Enlighten Magna, the summer floods of 2007 soaked the whole site and drowned the project for several months. This was not in the contingency plan and is an example of not being able to plan for everything, no matter how meticulous you are. Risk assessment helps but there are still unknown unknowns that can bite you, which, like Magna, is when the tenacity of the team will show or, as at Silver Sounds, when the flexibility of the team will be its hallmark.

Own Your Project, and Share It

Partnership is a word so overused because it can mean what you want it to mean. What it meant to these projects wasn’t a competition for the longest list of partners, or the supply of money or access to audiences, but the quality of the relationship with other organisations. That meant, as it should, that things took longer to agree, but that once they were agreed, everyone could move forward together, and more quickly. In Rethinking Disability, for example, the issues at stake were hotly contested amongst partners, and then there were 9 museums to enact the project, so the partnership element of the work consumed a lot of energy. Did that produce a better outcome? Yes. Owning your project is not reversing the polarity of partnership, it is simply a reminder that your partners should be chosen for the values that they share with you, as much as the value they can add. There is no point sharing a project with a partner organisation that doesn’t believe in what you do, or where you want to go. That’s just a self-destruct button you don’t need to press.

Take a Stand. Do It for the Right Reasons

Choosing to do a challenging piece of innovation in the first place should be because you believe in it, not because it’s fashionable, or the money is tempting, or it’s politically correct. By choosing a strong and exploratory project, you won’t please everyone and you shouldn’t try, but do be clear about what you believe, the position you’ll take, and the message you want people to hear. These projects all did that, especially the more socially-focused ones with less technological content: The Lightbox had a story to tell of the forgotten voices of the mentally stigmatised and marginalised and getting that message out to challenge the public and shatter some illusions was its driving force; Rethinking Disability Representation likewise had the reformation of museums in mind when it set out to reveal the lacklustre representation of disability in the sector; and Gateways wanted the story of Northern Ireland to be told through the eyes, and camera lenses, of the people that live there. The almost missionary zeal that comes from strong moral, political, or philosophical values will enable your own project, like these, to sustain tremendous energy, achieve more than you could reasonably expect, repel critics, and convert the prophets of doom.

Want to Know More?

This is a short report on purpose, to try to make it digestible. But the projects and their people have plenty more to say. Any of them would be happy to discuss the successes, the challenges, and their tips for the future with you. Feel free to get in touch:

Back to Publications