Digital Works Podcast
Talking about all the different things that 'digital' means in the arts, culture and heritage sectors. Tales of success and failure, interrogating the shiny new things and looking at what works (or not) and why, Interviews with digital folks working across the sector and beyond, in-house, consultants, funders, and more.
Digital Works Podcast
Episode 032 - Fran Sanderson (Nesta) on shifting how they support the arts, what effective funding looks like, and thinking differently about value and risk
A conversation with Fran Sanderson, Director of Arts Programmes and Investments at Nesta (which was originally set up in 1998 as the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts).
Fran is in the process of exploring a major shift in the way Nesta goes about making investments in the arts.
We discuss the funding landscape for culture in the UK and the changes that need to happen. We explore what effective funding for digital projects might look like, how the cultural sector could think differently about value, risk appetite, new business and investment models, how the sector views popularity, learning in the open, and loads more.
Here is more information about some of the programmes and schemes that we mentioned.
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Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Digital Works podcast. A podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector. My name's Ash and in today's episode, episode number 32, we talk to Fran Sanderson. Fran is the Director of Arts programs and Investments at Nesta. We discuss the funding landscape for the cultural sector, what effective funding for digital projects might look like, risk appetite and questions of value amongst many other things. We join our conversation mid flow with Fran describing the significant shift she's leading in how Nestor is thinking about their investments in the arts.
Speaker 3:Essentially, what we think we see and what has been kind of, we've kicked the task with quite a few people and our funders on this is a gap in the market for a funding ecosystem, which takes you all the way from idea to scaling. Yeah . But does that in a thoughtful and sequence way. So what we have now already is the scaling capital, but that's quite risk averse. You've gotta have quite a developed idea before you come to that. In the investment funds, we're seeing a lot of property projects uhhuh , which is fair enough. That's the thing that people have to invest in. That's the assets the board understand spending money in. But we do think that's a very narrow myopic view of what the assets of the sector are. So there isn't enough investing in understanding your content or your brand or how to make money out of that. And that feels like a really huge opportunity, albeit with the challenges around distribution, et cetera. But I think people just don't have the support or the finance to develop those ideas. So also there isn't often the infrastructure within an organization. So you'll have somebody who might have an idea about what to do, but who do they get to support them buy in on the senior team, even if they could get external funding, how do you get permission to carve out some of your time to do that development work? And a huge missed opportunity for shared learning. So developing together, understanding, not just hiding your failures in a box, but letting other people learn from them. And there are so many failures with these, you know, all of this experimentation is about failing. Go , well that didn't work. Okay, let's try this. Yeah . So that kind of resource, that's more of a , I don't wanna say GitHub 'cause that sounds trite, but it's giving you the building blocks to understand how to do this kind of development yourself as a creative or an organization. Then thinking about how you get that to, how do you create resources that are shareable for those? How do you create, I guess , education programs, fellowships, the kind of environments where learning environments. Yeah. Um , so people can understand how to, not just new technology, new audiences, working with data, all of these things and making new stuff. So making new artwork, not NFTs. Yeah . NFTs. I'm sure there are some ,
Speaker 2:NFTs do feel like they're going away slightly.
Speaker 3:There . There are some. I , I mean I think there are use cases for NFTs. I just think it's got massively hyped and yeah , it's also very challenging. Obviously being linked to crypto, very
Speaker 2:Volatile . But it sounds , sounds like what you're describing there is you are trying to design more of a, like an ecosystem. An environment in which innovation, however you want to describe that big eye little eye can happen and then can be accelerated and then can be sustained. Whereas the traditional grant funding model is not that. I
Speaker 3:Don't think so. I mean, I think there have been some programs that some bits have worked off without wishing to dam with vote praise. But I think the audience of the future, there were some really strong elements of that. I think one of the things that we've done at Nesta, which we've been able to do because we're independent, is to, and we're not bound by public money ratios or anything, is to be able to spend more on the overheads of a grant program. So I think it can be really challenging when you've got a big grant, but the amount of support that's there to help you spend it wisely is naturally limited by the design of the grant program. So I think one thing that we've tried to do is be really careful about, well actually how do we optimize the value from that money? It's not necessarily deciding that the highest amount of it has to go out to the grantee for a lot of these grant funds, especially if it's in early stage development, it's actually much more sensible to spend a lot of money on supporting people to spend that grant money well to learn together, et cetera . So I think that's, we would be generally a high overhead grant funder and I think there's a real space for that and a gap for that in the market. That's obviously challenging to raise money to do that. It's easy when you've put your own money <laugh>.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah . But it feels like as well, because when it comes to digital projects, often organizations haven't necessarily worked at scale in that space. And so it feels like there isn't the understanding about how you put together the budget for a project like that. Yeah . You know, in a way that people understand how to put together a budget for a show or an exhibition. Yeah . Or a extension to the building. And it doesn't feel like there's that same level of knowledge and understanding and experience and putting together a budget for Yeah ,
Speaker 3:Completely agree fial and also the kind of understanding of what is gonna happen and what are the contingencies and you know, which folks in the road might occur. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think there is, again, a gap and I would say this for a support agency that can help people do that. I also think partnerships are potentially really interesting here. So I think, again, one of the visions of having an independent intermediaries is to kind of balance that power dynamic between private sector, commercial sector and independent creatives or subsidized arts organizations. Because there is obviously, you know, there's an attraction there , mutual attraction there, there's, there's obvious things that they have to for each other that you can end up that the commercial partner who's got the money and stuff and the resources ends up taking a bit more of the benefit or the IP sits with the commercial partner. So again, I think there's some clever workings out to do about the incentive structures and partnerships that can mean everybody wins in the end in terms of how those happen. But I think it probably does need a broker in the middle.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it does feel like probably , or certainly from my perspective sitting here on the sidelines a little bit, that those sort of coalitions are going to become more common and more necessary in order to put this work on. Because I don't think there are gonna be the big lumps of money from a single source. And also there isn't the expertise in the cultural organization to be able to, I
Speaker 3:Mean, that's the thing I hope, but my fear is that, you know, as a creative working in the UK in particular today, your choices are quite limited about who's gonna pay you. And I think they're only gonna get more limited. So in order for the talent to remain in the independent sector and not all get completely sucked up by the private sector, which is not good for audiences or, or anyone really, we do need to make sure that that's, and I'm not blaming any creatives who are going for following the money. Like it's really difficult to live as a creative in the uk. That's not funny. But that's where I see the kind of big picture concerns is that, you know, the choices are more limited and increasingly so as the kind of buying power it's concentrated within the private sector.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I wonder if, you know, we , we were talking about this a bit before I hit record, but in conversations on this podcast and elsewhere, it feels like whilst there's an appreciation of funds that have been made available over recent years for digital projects, there is also a frustration in the way that those funds are designed. I e , when you are submitting an application, you'll have to detail every possible permutation of the thing you are describing, even when it may be experimental in nature. Yeah . And also when the odd project is successful, there is rarely the opportunity for follow on funding to sort of accelerate that success. Yeah . And , and sustain it. And as someone who works at a funder, is that something that funders are mindful of or aware of? Or, or are , are funders learning how to fund this work as cultural organizations are learning how they need to invest in it ? Invest ,
Speaker 3:Yes, I think so, but not particularly quickly because it's hard and it's bitty. I think that funders are working together more cautiously because obviously, you know, you need plurality in the funding landscape. And I think everyone's aware that you don't want to lose that. I think the big kind of philanthropic landscape in general is a bit more conscious of not being top down of power dynamics of not being dictorial. At the same time, I think it is seen as risky. There is a lot of risk aversion. People are worried about spending money wisely. And I think when you look at an area that you don't understand as well, you do look for more detail and more information and you are worried about delivery risk. And you know, I think every funder's nightmare is that they go off and fund load projects. They've got nothing to show for it . And , and they look like they haven't done their due diligence. At the same time. You've gotta strike a balance between being heavy handed A in terms of the resources of the very resource constrained organizations we usually funding . And b, heavy handed in that you , you don't wanna stifle any imagination or creativity in the project. And the point you make about, you know, agile development and adaptability is really crucial for this kind of work. You know, you just don't know what you don't know. And that's what experimentation is and that's what creatives are used to. And I think that, to be honest, that probably goes for broader arts funding as well in that, again, it's a power balance thing and it's a risk thing. You , you need to give artists a space to experiment and to not know exactly what they're going to do and to have an idea and to fail and learn from that and let other people learn from that as well. Um , or make something that wasn't remotely what they thought they were gonna make. And you know, you don't wanna rule out the happy accidents 'cause that's a lot of where creativity lives. But I do think it's a challenge for funders, I think , I think working together can help you mitigate that risk to a certain extent. I certainly think learning together and sharing learnings and being open about what's worked and what hasn't is really critical to understanding. I think, yeah, on that note, I think we learned a lot from the digital r and d fund, which in lots of ways was maybe a little bit ahead of its time, but I think made a few assumptions that didn't necessarily bear out particularly successfully in terms of, I think if we did it again, what we would do is focus on challenges that were universal and that means that the learnings and the research reports that come out of it are genuinely valuable. We would certainly keep in touch with our grantees more have longitudinal, I mean the digital culture survey I think was helpful and it was nice to have that snapshot of, of what's going on in the sector and interesting to see how reality measures up against your hypothesis, which was progress was, was slower than we thought it would be in lots of cases. And that was even prior to the pandemic. But that's another whole area which we were just talking about what happened to digital innovation in the pandemic.
Speaker 4:But I think what you are ,
Speaker 2:I think the gap you're describing there is a funder other than the Arts council that has a strategic interest or strategic perspective on research and development around digital stuff. And it's probably unfair and unrealistic to expect the Arts Council to ever be able to, but
Speaker 3:The arts council's got a huge Exactly . Remit. Exactly . Yeah . And um, and I think the Arts Council does do some of that really well. I think the tech champions have been good. I think the Creative XR things like that, specific projects have been, and they do a lot of work on innovation. I think it's probably harder for them to broker partnerships. Again, they have the same constraints around how much of the grant funding they can spend on support, I think with government funding. So sort of internal overhead ratios are a constraint for them. And I think being, obviously they're arms length from government, but sometimes that can be a constraining factor. And I think that the other funders as well would be keen to understand better how to do this. Because I think it's a concentrated area. It feels quite overwhelming. I know that Rosschild Foundation did a fellowship with the Royal Shakespeare Company that seemed to be really well received by both sides, but that's kind of it . It's hard to do that in that piecemeal fashion. I think they're gonna publish some findings from that. But I know that lots of the funders are interested, don't quite know what to do, how to do it. We did actually have a digital subgroup of the Arts Funders Network and I think that was on me to arrange the next meeting. So note to self , uh, I'll get that done. But I ,
Speaker 2:I think it's interesting to hear, hear that because you know, we, I talk a lot with people about digital literacy and digital leadership in cultural organizations. But it sounds like from what you are saying, that that is also an area that needs to be thought about and focused on in the whole cultural ecosystem, including in-house at funders. I think there's maybe a bit of an , an assumption that our funder funders have got that sorted and they're choosing not to invest in
Speaker 3:This area. Yeah , I don't think that's the case at all. I think that funders feel nervous at the moment about dictating what organizations should do. I think they feel nervous about making that allocation on behalf of organizations. So I, I feel like more funders are moving towards, I don't have data on this, but I feel like there's a bit more propensity to fund core funding or to, you know, give you a bit more unrestricted income. So that kind of feels like maybe they feel like funding digital specifically is moving away from that and moving more towards telling you what to do. But I think people are nervous about audiences. I think they're nervous about what are the future revenue streams. I think all funders, you know, it's difficult. You have a funding round. You want to understand as part of that funding round why you're gonna be able to fund a different organization next funding round because you're helping some kind of foster, some kind of independence. But at the same time, you haven't got the long term necessarily to develop a new business plan. Yeah . So that does bend you a little bit towards understood business models rather than new ones . But I , yeah, I do think there's a lot of awareness of audiences changing, audience needs changing. What are the business models of 10, 20, 30 years in the future? And
Speaker 2:It feels like the danger is, and again we were talking about this before, the danger is in organizations understandably refocusing on sort of in-person attendance, programming choices may be becoming slightly more conservative with a small C again, understandably so, that the focus on the immediate term is going to distract from a necessary focus on a quite significant shift that needs to happen for longer term viability. And do you think funders are again, mindful of that, aware of that? Or again, is there , is there a , a slight risk aversion that okay, we wanna invest in buildings, we understand people are making safer choices and we're not going to try and push that. We want to give on restricted funding, which because people are in this risk averse mode, it's going to get
Speaker 3:Spin up . Yeah, I think it's more of the latter. I think it's less that funders are thinking we want to do the safe things. I think funders are thinking we don't wanna tell organizations what to do and organizations are thinking we wanna do the safe things. So that's my perception of it. And again, as you say, that's totally understandable. My worry is that there was a lot of amazing, you know, I feel like I'm using a buzz phrase, but this is an actual description that frugal innovation that was going on in the pandemic where people were putting on shows on Zoom and you know, doing low cost interesting things. Actually quite high operating leverage models where you could make a lot of money from a show as long as you've got the audience because your costs were relatively low. And that kind of development I feel potentially might just go by the wayside. There's lots of ideas there . There isn't the funding to go, okay, well what was that thing you did in 2021 if you could develop that if you had, you know, either your own coder or , or access to another coder to do this and see how far you could take it. Whether you could package it up and sell it to other organizations as some kind of franchise or product. You know, I feel like there probably is a lot of that stuff out there that either people are working in their own time to do or have just given up on because they don't have the resource. So I mean that's within our space is more arts organizations, but that's also within, you know, smaller independent creatives as well . And
Speaker 2:Sort of touches back on a point you made earlier about the cultural sector, understanding where value lies. And it feels like that is still an area that almost every cultural organization could stand to. Yeah . Become a bit more familiar with because you know, the art and inverted comm is as it traditionally exists, seems to be what people focus on. Yeah. And actually in a digital context, value exists in lots of other ways. Yeah . And , and places. <laugh> , how do we, how do we help people to, to shift their understanding of what is valuable?
Speaker 3:Such a big question, isn't it? I mean there's, there is the kind of, I guess we look at it in three ways because ultimately when we are talking to investors, investors like axes and we have our social access and our artistic or cultural axis and then the financial access as well. I think one of the ones that sadly in terms of digital innovation in the pandemic and what that did for access, I , I'm worried about that one. The social value of that and kind of equality and you know, how someone disabled who can't make it to a venue could see their favorite band in the same way as somebody else. And there's a real value to that that I think we may be missing a trick in terms of access and inclusion. And I think people think about that, you know, the majority of artists that's really at the core of their practice is, is is some kind of social mission as well as the cultural mission. I dunno if we know how to think about them together. I think there's still a really unhelpful perception that popular is not artistic <laugh> , if something's commercially successful then it can't be that good. So I think we need to just think about framing all of those areas of value and impact in a helpful, non-competitive way that kind of shows that they bounce off each other and accrue. And actually the arts are amazing for all three of those. For like enriching our lives with content that makes us think differently and fun experiences connection and also, you know, can make loads of money. You know, I think the appetite for artistic content is only growing and if you look at TV and streaming the quality of what you can see now, it's just incredible. It's , it's unbelievable if you, if you look back 10, 15 years and audiences really, really want it and are willing to pay for it. So thinking about how we reframe our relationship with audiences and what we feel entitled to expect people to pay for. I guess that , I mean there's other questions like other sectors will get paid for what they deliver in terms of health savings or that seems to be, the money doesn't very naturally follow the patient if you're getting a, a sort of health referral into the art sector. And that feels like a challenge. So I think I digress wildly on your thinking about kind of if you go into artistic and financial value, I think, you know, with work there is always this and I , I find whenever I see my artist friends that I still can't quite believe that they've given up on that thing they were doing two years ago. It's like, but that was amazing. A million people need to see it. And they're like, no, I wanted the next thing. That's not necessarily a digital question, but digital is an opportunity to keep those assets. You know, I mean I , I think of this sort of digital graveyard of brilliant stuff that is around and people have got on SSD cards or hard drives somewhere and people don't see, and I guess that's a distribution challenge, but you know, thinking of that as valuable, there's a mindset shift there as well. I think so as kind of, you know, I've got this work in my over , sorry , I'm not very good at French. How can that be something, you know, it's not just something I've put on my CV and I've got some reviews for, it's still there. It still exists and people can still see it. So I think thinking about how new modes of distribution can change that mindset and creatives is really helpful.
Speaker 2:And also presumably alongside that, institutions need to think about their models of artistic development and their models of production. Yeah . Because it feels like it's a lot of like all eyes on the prize, which is putting a show on a stage or an exhibition in a room. Yeah . And everything else is steps to that final destination. Yeah . And actually quite often a number of those steps will be inherently valuable in and of themselves if you Yeah ,
Speaker 3:That's such an interesting way of looking at it. Definitely. And I think it does, that's hard work, right, of course . Be thinking about everything in that way. Yeah . None
Speaker 2:Of this is easy, there's no sort of easy answer in this, but it does feel like these are necessary difficult conversations that perhaps understandably, again, not enough cultural organizations are engaging with because there are lots of other difficult conversations they're thinking about.
Speaker 3:And I guess there's like, to a certain extent there are question marks about what is that? You know, maybe there's an extent to which people don't wanna jump because maybe it is gonna be marshmallow and Fortnite or you know, what is gonna happen with the metaverse? How are people going to interact with things? What is the future of live shows and live performance? I'm thinking, I was listening to Talking Heads on the Way here, so I'm thinking about American Utopia, which was just such an amazing show and I love that people who didn't get to see it can just watch it Yeah . There as a resource
Speaker 2:And have this amazing designed experience with that film. Yeah , exactly. You know that isn't
Speaker 3:It ? Yeah ,
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. But that it was designed both to be performed to that audience in the theater but also Yeah . To be captured and delivered in a completely different way to an audience in a cinema or on a sofa. And it feels like thinking about, that's a horrible word, but how you present and exploit <laugh> again another horrible word, the artistic product. Yeah . In different channels, in different formats is something that the sector isn't necessarily fully engaging with. It's still, okay, we'll put a show on a stage and we might stream it, but we'll stream it pretty much as it was designed for a live in person
Speaker 3:Audience. And that's a really expensive and glitchy and challenging and there's that gap isn't there? It's what will people pay for and how do we do that? And who owns the distribution and what are our options? So again, you know, I think it's really important that what we're doing, I should probably talk about that briefly. So the arts impact investment work that we do at Nesta Arts and Culture Finance, that's gonna be spinning out into a separate charity. So we will do the, the impact investment from a separate organization also ,
Speaker 2:We were talking about this right at the beginning of when I pressed record. Yeah . So
Speaker 3:Yeah, it feels fundamental to us that what we're doing is charitable. So it does look like it's and is for the sector, you know, it's an organization that has a charitable objective to provide a service for the sector that's required. And I think that is very helpful in building trust. So becoming a trusted broker to work for the sector. So I think, you know, when you're thinking about that kind of platform development, there is well qui bono, you know, what's going on here, what are the dynamics? I think if you've got someone independent making those assessments and thinking about how to develop stuff that hopefully is helpful. I'm thinking specifically about platform challenges and who do you work with and what are commissioning models for content. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that isn't all left to the cultural organization. Yeah , exactly . Try to navigate their way through this. There is some some ,
Speaker 3:Because I think that is really challenging and I think there is a lot of kind of incumbency about around how all contracts are structured and N I P shares happen and you know, the thorny problem of rights and all of that kind of stuff. I , I feel like there's a gap in the market for a trusted broker who doesn't benefit in any way other than by fulfilling their charitable objectives. Yeah . To do some of that work.
Speaker 2:And with this new entity that you are describing here, you know, if people listening to this, lots of whom work in cultural organizations and maybe have ideas that they may bring to you, you know, we spoke before that historically it's been a lot about defining that quite specifically and the funding is relatively restricted to the delivery of whatever you've described. What you're planning to do is different. What is your sort of ideal approach from a cultural organization? What are you gonna be looking for? Hoping for?
Speaker 3:Well I'm gonna give you a meta answer that might feel like a swerve <laugh> , but I think the thing that we most want to do in the first six months of the new organization is to do a lot of sector consultation. So trying to work out, you know, not a , well what do you want? Well what do you want? But have a bit of a meat in the middle in terms of what is the real gap in terms of what people need, what is stopping people from doing this kind of work? But again, balancing that with, okay cool, but this isn't just for you. You know what we're doing here to help you. It's supposed to have a wider reach within the sector, albeit people should benefit from the work that they do and the development they do. And IP is gonna be a really big question for us and something we think hard about throughout everything. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it feels like historically, you know, there's been the intent to learn in the open, but the practical outcomes of that have been perhaps you and far between. I think
Speaker 3:One of the big things that we'll be trying to learn with our first few initiatives and probably start with small initiatives and then, you know, always incorporate the learning of those is what is that balance between peer learning? So I, I think there's a huge value to being in a group together to feeling part of something to learning together. You know, whether that's you are getting legal advice or you're getting financial advice or your understanding how to buy in the services that you don't have or even what services you need to buy in for what you wanna do and specific problems. So how do you define a program? Do you say we want to help regional theaters do 360 filming or do you say, what's your biggest problem you come to us and what's the balance between those two? What is helpful to do together? What is helpful to know for everybody and what do you need that's individual to you and how do we balance those things? And also I think what structures are helpful? So whether it's you know, small r and d grants and then bigger development grants, you've then got the potential downside that you are , that you're introducing the element of competition, which can be undermining of the peer group. Do you do sort of a big challenge prize where you're actually not telling people how to spend the money but you're working towards a certain thing. We did that with our alter narratives prize and that was fun. I think that one worked and they didn't feel too competitive. They were individual creatives, which I think is helpful.
Speaker 2:Sounds like there's so many important questions that you're gonna be Yeah . Engaging with and it's nice to hear that you are not going, this is our incredibly specific hypothesis that we're gonna sort of try and ram into the sector and actually you're going to try and be more not at
Speaker 3:Collaborative than that . Yeah . It is much more about consultation. What do you need, what do we not know? You know, obviously we've got a particular perspective, but that's only as valuable as the stuff you admit into that perspective. Right. So we don't automatically know anything, everything 'cause of our position in the market, we still have to do the work to understand what the perspectives are and to, you know, balance those perspectives and , and come out with an answer. I don't think we're always going to get it right first time, but as long as you're committed to learning from what you've done, I think the other thing we really wanna do is kind of create a community. So community of practice around whatever we're doing. We do that a little bit in our investee around building projects and you know, trying to get university accreditation. So whatever your particular problem is, I think it's helpful to try and solve it together. I think being that hub where someone knows they can come to us and we might be able to connect them with somebody else or we might have some resources or we might understand what works better or what the evidence base is around a certain intervention that has singing for C O P D or something like that. So I , I think having that central space, if it doesn't sound too self-important or being glorious, I think there is, you know, we are trying to look for those things and we don't find a central resource that has them . So I think creating a community, like I said, Nesta , we've been quite poor at keeping in touch with past grantees. That's certainly something we want to address. So, you know, creating that kind of family. I'm just thinking of something I saw on LinkedIn yesterday that was like the perils of using family in the workplace. <laugh> ,
Speaker 2:I think that's
Speaker 3:Interesting , but also I just saw the , the , the headline, I didn't read the whole thing so I dunno what they are, but I don't wanna use family in a , um, in, in some kind of , uh, I think the
Speaker 2:Hypothesis is that a more helpful comparison is a team, a sports team rather than a family. 'cause family comes with all sorts of emotion .
Speaker 3:Exactly . Emotional difficulties, baggage obligations, <laugh>. Yeah . So yes, not about obligation. Yeah . Much more about team learning together, working together, feeling supported and having a kind of support structure. And like I said earlier, a a shared learning environment. So that's only gonna work if we're building that in conjunction with the sector that we're seeking to serve. I think.
Speaker 2:And this will be time limited , uh, section of the people listening in in 12 months is less relevant. But in terms of how that consultation's gonna be conducted, do you have a sense of that yet ? Is that gonna be, yeah, how will that work? Will you be inviting people to get in touch? Will you be reaching out to specific people and organizations or a t
Speaker 3:C ? Always happy to hear from people. There will be some kind of structure around it. We haven't designed it yet, to be honest. We , you know, we haven't secured the funding completely for this yet. So it's , there are dependencies on this. So at the moment this is a proposal rather than a thing that's definitely going to happen. But we will, yeah, certainly be looking to engage with the sector hopefully in inventive ways and open for suggestions as to what that could be. But I think some sort of curated groups, whether we might, yeah, I mean we could either do it by art form. I think one thing we want to focus on is interdisciplinary work. So thinking about how we do that, you know, maybe there's value to having decidedly plural focus groups rather than focus , focus groups. But then that might be totally overwhelming. So again, we'll probably do it certain ways, it up and try and do it another way. I dunno if I'm allowed to swear <laugh>
Speaker 2:Swear all you like . Well thanks so much fan . It's really exciting to hear your plans and fingers crossed in 12 months time we can have another chat and you can talk us through all the things that you've learned .
Speaker 3:That would be great. Yeah, it does feel really exciting and I , I hope we've done the work to check that this is actually something that's beneficial for the sector rather than us post rationalizing our weird set of expertises from Nesta into a coherent future organization. So any thoughts on that? Welcome as well. But I think there is a huge opportunity here and I think there is a gap here and I hope that we can fill it with something really constructive.
Speaker 2:And that is everything for today. Thanks for listening. You can find all episodes of the podcast on our website where you can also sign up for the digital works newsletter, subtract.com/digital works . You can also follow us on Twitter, which is what we will continue to call it. We are at Digital Works and I'm at Big Little Things. Our theme tune is Vienna, beat by Blue dot Sessions. And last but not least, thanks to Mark Cotton for his editing support on this episode. See you again soon.
