[MUSIC] So a lot has changed. Are we changing with it? Are we changing fast enough? A lot of things haven't changed. We're gonna take a look at those as well in this session. Some of the big changes would include technology, consumer behavior, disintermediation, education systemic change, increased competition, and global convergence. Now the big changes is our environment, including the growth of amateur participation. They can be depressing if you think about it, but actually they're all an opportunity. We need to approach how we're gonna address the changes with an air of optimism, rather than a sense of defeatism. Let's look at some of the social innovation inventions of the last few years. [MUSIC] Free access technologies on sites like YouTube, offer a global presenter for amateurs, as well as professionals who want to create art. The big beneficiary in all of this is the amateur. But over the past few years, more and more professionals are turning to these platforms for the delivery of their artistic content. And this distribution channel is growing, literally, every minute. Now the challenge with digital distribution is we haven't quite figured out how it's all gonna work, even now. We can't not play, but we don't quite figured out who's going to pay. In other words, the business models haven't really kept pace with the technological innovation. Please see anybody at the New York Times if you don't believe this. We're cautiously making progress in understanding where the default price on the internet is gonna be free, and where people are gonna be prepared to part with money. We also have consumer behavior and societal changes. There's a big shift in the way leisure time and dollars are used. The technologically enabled leisure activity. It doesn't sound like very much fun when I describe it that way, but essentially that phrase means the portability of the internet and all that it offers. This is a very attractive way of consuming culture for younger people. And it's a wake-up call for our delivery systems. This in turn means that the scarcity value of our work, the live sing, the the actual painting, is declining in terms of how it's valued particularly by younger consumers. Now we may think there are no substitutes. But if our audiences don't think so, then we have to adapt. Big changes in the demographic composition of our communities mean that received wisdom about audience taste, methods of engagement, preferences, need constant revision. And they need this revision at a faster pace who have been willing or able to adopt. The view of culture changes. And it should change in an increasingly plural and participatory cultural environment. The increasing wealth inequality means that many audiences who have the time may not have, or may not choose to spend the money. As a society we are generally time poor. The working days expended, technology means that uninterrupted leisure time is becoming increasingly rare. This has implications for the fixed location, long form nature of a lot of our work. [MUSIC] Disintermediation is just a fancy way if you like of saying cutting out the middle person. New technologies make it possible to access and customize all the content you could ever want, and this changes how we see the role of the expert. And what a lot of our institutions are is the expert. Self curation is the way many people want to consume their culture now. As part of a 40 year trend, the humanities and the study of traditional art forms, by traditional, I mean in the Western canon, drawing, classical music, theatre, art appreciation. The work in that area in the public education system is declining, and has been for 40 years. In some places it's extinct. There's a huge body of research that demonstrates that children's exposure to the arts in either formal, ie school, or informal, play groups, after school, home. In those settings, this is the strongest indicator of their subsequent adult participation in those art forms. This means we have to look really hard at the role we wanna play, and what resources we want to redirect. To shore up an important part of creating future audiences. Nobody else is going to build them for us. Complaining about the change doesn't really do anything. Successful organizations now are figuring out how to help and how to do what's missing. Competition and convergence, we have all sorts of new competitors. Many of them we just talked about, but there are others, and they arise as part of a general move toward convergence. This is a natural direction that all markets and activities exhibit. We're not alone in this. Changes in philanthropic priorities for example. We see a greater emphasis being placed on environmental, health, and educational causes. More easily quantifiable impacts and a more problem/solution oriented approach to philanthropy generally. If you can measure it, then it matters. There's nothing wrong with this, but it represents part of a larger market metric, if you like, dominating our thinking and our policy work. And the market, now provides an almost endless array of choices for consumers, time, money, and loyalty. Over the last decade consumers have stopped Making the traditional rigid distinctions between the non-profit and the for-profit, and leisure activities and artistic offerings, commercial products and non-commercial products. These are distinctions that maybe we see more clearly than any consumer does. At the same time, you got new technologies, think of high definition broadcast, which you can now have on your own television. Product and service innovations, such as theatrical immersive experiences in retail stores. Have you been to Times Square lately? And new production models such as participant curated content and experiences. All of these things have brought leisure, arts, and entertainment into one another's historically separate markets. And this convergence in the mind of the consumers means that the market scope of these organizations has to change. It changes the stage, if you like, for arts and cultural organizations, and therefore it has to change the priorities for arts and cultural leaders. Commercial companies aided by new technologies have focused on ways to enter markets that use to not be profitable for them. You think about cable television. One of the biggest competitors to live theatre right now is HBO, and soon Netflix. So one of the challenges that we face as cultural leaders is designing and delivering experiences. To audiences that may not be interested in the traditional, non-participitory, pre-curated, long-formed cultural offering that we've had in the past. The structures that we've created to deliver our work may not meet consumer needs as well as they once did. So in summary, what's changed? Well, we've got the broader societal changes that present challenges to institutions that are founded on principles that may not anymore be universally held. The relationship between the arts and society. Because of things like changing in demographics technological changes. How people can and do spend their leisure time. How much leisure time they actually have. And how long that leisure time is. These fundamentally challenge our own models. The thrill and the challenge for the leader is to determine, what do we hold as core, that we can't get rid of? And what do we need to jettison? We have a great opportunity to create the future, right now. [MUSIC]
