Digital Access to Arts and Culture post COVID 19

New research project explores widening access through video streaming

Images of two women projected onto an urban background
  "Sign Night Still 2" by Cathy Mager.

Dr Richard Misek from Kent’s School of Arts’ Film department, has launched a new project which will explore widening access to arts and culture through streaming video

Since the global spread of COVID-19, video streaming has emerged as perhaps the most popular and effective tool for maintaining access to arts and culture.

Live streamed concerts, online film festivals, virtual gallery tours, Zoom-based performances and workshops, and countless other innovations in digital programming have helped physically-sited arts and culture institutions stay ‘open’, and provided locked-down audiences with desperately needed opportunities for cultural engagement and shared experience.

The recent outpouring of creative alternatives to physically-sited events has also lifted former geographic and economic constraints on who can access arts and culture.

The project, developed in collaboration with Arts Council England (ACE) and digital support agency The Space, focuses on providing arts and culture organisations of all sizes and from across the UK with specific, practical knowledge about how to manage their digital programming

Beyond this immediate goal, the project’s longer-term aim is to establish a rigorous, statistically-based foundation of knowledge about how digital programming can be used to widen access to arts and culture, and increase the diversity of its audiences.

Full details of the project can be found on the ICCI Projects page.

Contact: R.E.Misek@kent.ac.uk