Date: 04.10.2011 12:30 - 14:00
Location: The Lecture Room, Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3JL
In an era of constrained budgets, it seems that the need to build a rigorous body of evidence which can be used to understand the value of cultural activity has never been more urgent.![Arrow icon pink square [original]](http://admin.nesta.org.uk/library/images/arrow.jpg "Arrow icon pink square [original]"){kind=icon}
Take a look at the event pictures on our Facebook page
![Arrow icon green [original]](http://admin.nesta.org.uk/library/images/arrow_green.jpg "Arrow icon green [original]"){kind=icon}
A lively and interesting debate that explored the intersection of art and technology, how they interact and how that interaction could open up new businesses and audiences if entrepreneurs, artists and those in the creative industries seize the digital moment.
The discussion was kicked off by Charles Hunter from Mudlark who talked, amongst other things, about the groundbreaking Such Tweet Sorrow and argued that although it was not a strictly Shakespearean text, it had brought Romeo and Juliet to life for a generation of Twitter users and introduced them to the work of the bard.
He handed over to Peter Tulin co-founder of CultureLabel a new digital platform that is opening up the possibility of buying art to a whole spectrum of people who would previously not have known how to go about doing it.
He argued that technology was not a distraction from culture or things of cultural value but was essentially a means of opening up new markets and creating new audiences. He gave the audience an overview of some of the many exciting projects in this field - check them out for yourself:
Beck's - The Green Box Project
Hockney ipad
Punchdrunk working with Sony
Kickstarter and Wedidthis.org.uk
These themes were picked up by Ed Vaizey who argued that this intersection of two often separate worlds was of vital importance to the future of the creative industries. He said that art and technology had to come together and questions of enterprise and brand should not be seen as dirty words.
He said that he wanted the cultural world to be at the heart of the Government's technological revolution and highlighted the work that we at NESTA are doing with the Arts Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council on the Digital R&D fund. He said that this is a strong example of the kind of work that should be being done in this field: not just funding pioneering new projects but drawing learning from them that will have impact beyond the scope of the project. He said that this focus on new technologies creating new audiences should be a vital part of the Arts Council's work, arguing that the subsidised sector existed to take risks that purely commercially driven organisations couldn't and that risk was a vital component of innovation.
NESTA's CEO Geoff Mulgan brought the discussion to a close making clear that this was an area of genuine interest for NESTA and hinting at future interesting projects in this space.
Chair: Geoff Mulgan
Speakers:
![Next Gen. thumbnail video games and sfx skills rev [original]](http://admin.nesta.org.uk/library/images/next_gen_thumb.jpg "Next Gen. thumbnail video games and sfx skills rev [original]")
This report sets out how we can transform the UK into world's leading talent hub for video games and visual effects industries.
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Recap on the events we hosted during the 2010 Party Conference season
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