Vaizey equates innovation with IT

Arts Minister Ed Vaizey has called for Arts Council England (ACE) to perform a co-ordinating role to help cultural organisations that want to explore a different business model or take advantage of a new technology, to gain access to specialist support services, such as those offered by Mission Models Money (MMM), the Cultural Leadership programme, NESTA and the Technology Strategy Board. Much of his opening speech at the MMM Culture Change conference in London last week equated innovation with technology, and Vaizey said arts organisations are “a fundamental part of the creative industries, and of our future growth”. Suggesting that some arts organisations are “relying on a 20th-century formula which worked well in the past, may work well now, but probably won’t in a decade’s time”, he urged ACE to work “seamlessly with the rest of the creative industries, taking advantage of the knowledge and experience in the video games or design sectors, and sharing that with arts organisations – and vice versa”. As a first step towards this, he announced that ACE and NESTA will be working together, “hopefully providing up to £1m of seed funding for small projects that will share their learning across these sectors”, but no details were available as to where the cash would come from. No reference was made to AmbITion, the ACE-funded programme which offered support for digital development for the arts sector across England, and is currently running in Scotland. MMM’s Clare Cooper gave a cautious welcome to the speech, but added: “We need to help arts organisations articulate and deliver their innovation ambitions on their own terms, sensitive to their own needs and resources…”