We Are One

The Digital Culture Network was launched in the summer of 2019 to develop the digital capabilities of the arts and culture sector. One year on, we reflect on what we’ve achieved, what we’ve learned and what you’ve told us.

What have we done so far?

It’s been a big year. We officially launched in London on the 24th of June last year, down at Rich Mix (Thanks for having us!). Soon after, we took it to the road, visiting as many regions as we could to have a chat with organisations about their digital ambitions and to spread the word about the support available. After all the work that had gone in from the team, it was a big moment to see our vision come to life. But that was only the start.

As 2019 rolled on, and turned into 2020, we’ve achieved so much.

We’ve created an amazing partnership with Google Arts and Culture, where we are travelling the country delivering full days of practical advice, and training hundreds of you in the basics of digital strategy and marketing.

Across the country, we’ve delivered training days, workshops, and talks, in subjects from eCommerce to Safeguarding, and SEO to Content Creation. And as the lockdown took hold in March 2020, we started to focus more on delivering webinars. We recently totted it up, and we have delivered training in a workshop or webinar to over 1,600 individuals.

The team has been present at a range of industry days; Haydn and Dean, two of our Tech Champions, were at the AMA Digital Marketing Day in 2019, talking about Social Media and Content. James and Emma, spoke at the Digital Cities Festival this year about eCommerce and Analytics.

And then we come to our main way of supporting you. We offer one-to-one support for the nine Tech Champions to any organisation or individual who is eligible for Arts Council England funding. Every time someone asks us for help, we’ll open a support case and work with them until it’s resolved. We’re delighted to say that we’ve worked with  660 organisations and individuals and completed 1,024 cases.

How have we done?

We love to hear how we are doing and how we can get better, so we send surveys out to everyone who interacts with us. So far, you have given us a 96% satisfaction rate  in our after support surveys. A staggering 99% of you would recommend us to your peers or colleagues.

You can see the full results on our infographic or in the summary PDF.

At this point, we want to say Thank You. We couldn’t have done any of this without the support of the sector and your willingness to let us experiment and grow.

What’s next?

We’ve got an exciting programme planned for the next six months. With recent events, our plans have had to change, but they’re still as ambitious as ever. We’ll announce a slate of webinars soon, all leading off the phenomenal success of our first set earlier this year. We’ve also got a new website in development, where all our video and written content will be available to you, free of charge. And as ever, we will continue to support as many of you as we can, through our one-to-one support.

And finally, the Digital Culture Network isn’t just the nine Tech Champions. It’s all of you. Everyone from the front of house staff the CEOs. We all have a part to play in making our vision of boosting the digital capability of arts and cultural sector a reality. And so, we’re looking for more ways we can involve you all the time. We want to help grow the culture of knowledge sharing that already exists for so many of you in the sector, so get in touch and get involved.