AmbITion Scotland
Find out more about the the current AmbITion project in Scotland
The AmbITion Scotland team is delighted to announce that Creative Scotland has launched its Cultural Economy Programme. This funding area includes investment in digital development for the cultural sector over the period 2012-2014 to be delivered by AmbITion Scotland. These resources will sustain delivery for another comprehensive series of events sharing digital skills, knowledge and resources throughout the sector. The AmbITion Scotland team (Culture Sparks and Rudman Consulting) will be working directly with new partners, NESTA and Culture Hack Scotland building on our considerable experience from the last two years. The Creative Scotland guidelines for the Digital Development strand state:
We have developed partnerships with NESTA, AmbITion Scotland, and Culture Hack Scotland, and will launch an integrated, comprehensive programme of support for digital development early in 2012. This will address the spectrum of needs of organisations at varying stages of development in terms of digital capacity, knowledge, and skills. The programme will:
- Support capacity building around skills, infrastructure, and knowledge in adopting digital technologies
- Address and reflect the further digital technology development needs of organisations with the capacity and interest to innovate and significantly enhance organisational sustainability through further integration of sophisticated digital technology
- Support the further organisational sustainability of those exploring progressive business models, or at a more advanced stage of developing creative content*
*note: support for the development of creative content is available through other Creative Scotland Investment Programmes including the Innovation Fund which will open again in April 2012 (this also sits within the Cultural Economy Programme and aims to ‘invest in distinctive and engaging digital interactive media content’).
The AmbITion Scotland team look forward to sharing more details about the form and content of our activities and programme soon.
Full details of the Cultural Economy Programmme can be downloaded here.
To stay up to date with developments around AmbITion Scotland please join the AmbITion Scotland mailing list and keep up to date with our social media channels on Facebook & @getambition on Twitter.
About AmbITion
AmbITion is a change programme for the arts and cultural sector – helping organisations achieve their 21st century sustainability ambitions through implementing integrated IT and digital developments. AmbITion is a programme suitable for any nation or region to implement – get in touch with Hannah Rudman of Rudman Consulting to enquire about AmbITion for your area.
Digital technology is transforming the relationship between artist and audience, arts organisations and places, art and the creative economy. As digital technologies and art forms converge, so do the assumptions about who is an artist, what is a digital business. In the past, it was assumed that the arts were purely a research and development function of the creative economy, or an enhancement element to places where creative economies flourished. Now, the arts are beginning to be recognised for their full economic and social potential. They are:
• equal partners in the creation of aesthetic quality and tastes;
• trusted channels the general public like;
• incubators for and homes of creative talent; and
• they leverage mass participation and dialogue.
AmbITion England champion, Bill Thompson suggested that organisations most likely to thrive in the 21st century were those that were moving from a position of ‘assimilation’ (where the digital is assimilated into existing modes of thinking) to ‘adaptation’ (where existing thinking is changed to accommodate the new possibilities and potential of the digital).
Why the need for AmbITion?
It is critical that the cultural sector not only keeps up with digital developments – such as those adopted by the wider creative industries – but that it successfully develops its own, suitable to its content, audiences and aspirations! We have found specifically that small to medium sized creative organisations are most likely to benefit from digital developments but are limited in their capacity to embrace change. Put simply, their current knowledge base, limited staffing capacity and scale means that many cannot sustain new digital developments alone.
AmbITion believes that digital development is a key driver to sustaining resilient 21st century arts organisations.
AmbITion is also encouraging the emergence of a digital content ecology, where the best content is created by the arts/culture sector collaborating with the digital/media industries. This demands that arts organisations adapt rather than assimilate, and it means that different types of collaboration have to be encouraged to ensure innovation. Events like Digital 2011, which emerged from a strategic partnership with Interactive Scotland, have given us a tested model for brokering cross-sector collaborations.
Our experience shows us that creative sector organisations and individuals also need to adapt to the opportunities presented by the now embedded philosophies of openness and sharing. Understanding and capitalizing the sharing of processes and of data require that organisations are “innovation ready”.
The AmbITion model has developed solutions for all areas described by providing a programme that enables wider access to a specialist knowledge base (technologists, digital media professionals and innovators); supports skills development & providing tools for sectoral capacity building; and through partnership, facilitates content production partnerships and innovation.
AmbITion’s Vision
AmbITion’s vision is to generate a critical mass of creative and cultural organisations that proactively consider digital development as key to business, operational, and artistic growth and sustainability.
Specifically, AmbITion prepares later adopters for organisational and business model change – using digital developments to support resilient strategy creation; digital content creation; collaborative relationships with media, broadcast and technology companies; and innovation readiness.
Catalysing a mindset-change
AmbITion is impacting the cultural sector by catalysing a mindset-change and developing digital leaders.
We have developed the AmbITion Approach, a methodology at the heart of AmbITion programmes, that supports arts organisations through a managed process of organisational change to enable them to use digital technology in an effective and integrated way (across artistic, organizational and business practices) – for better 21st century sustainability.
Digitally Disseminating lessons learnt
Digital development lessons learnt, content, case studies and toolkits – these are online on our specific website for resources.
AmbITion’s online network hosts 750+ cultural sector professionals discussing digital development.
You can find out about in-person learning, networking opportunities in the events section of this website – even if you aren’t local to them you can watch the webcast version, produced by Envirodigital, who are focussed on environmentally sustainable uses of digital technology.
