About us

What is the Digital R&D Fund?

The Digital Research & Development Fund for Arts and Culture is a partnership between the Arts Council England, Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and NESTA to support arts and cultural organisations across England who want to work with digital technologies to:

A key element of the fund is partnerships between arts and cultural organisations and technology providers (which we defined as any creative, media or technology company including other arts and cultural organisations with relevant technology know-how) that can provide technology services to arts and cultural organisations. 

Specifically, we invited arts and cultural organisations to submit projects that test digital propositions around audience reach & engagement and new business models that are of interest to the arts and cultural sector.  The projects needed to produce research/data that other arts and cultural organisations value highly and, possibly, new products/services that can be used by other organisations.

The total money going in to projects for the arts and cultural sector in England was worth £500,000 over 2011/12.  The fund was looking to support a range of projects both small and large however, no one project could receive more than £100,000 from the fund.

What kind of projects were we looking for?

We looked for digital projects which sought to expand audience reach and engagement and/or to develop new business models.  All of the projects needed to set out clearly what the digital proposition was that they wanted to test and why that proposition was of interest to other arts and cultural organisations.  A key objective of the fund was the production of research insights and data that could help other arts and cultural organisations innovate.

In addition they had to fall under one of the programme themes.

Fund Themes

These themes were selected with input from the arts and cultural sector - here's how.

  • User Generated Content and social media: Harnessing the power of the Internet and social media to reach audiences and to give them a platform for discussion, participation and creativity.
  • Distribution: Using digital technologies to deliver artistic and cultural experiences and content in new ways.
  • Mobile, location and games: Developing a new generation of mobile and location-based experiences and services, including games.
  • Data and archives: Making archives, collections and other data more widely available to other arts and cultural organisations and the general public.
  • Resources: Using digital technologies to improve the way in which arts and cultural organisations are run including business efficiency and income generation and the way in which they collaborate with each other.
  • Education & learning: Developing interactive education and learning resources for children, teachers, young people, adult learners and arts and cultural sector professionals.