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.
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Digital Works Podcast
Episode 022 - Stuart Buchanan (Sydney Opera House) on new ways of engaging with artists, institutional dynamics, and responding to the pandemic
Back after a bit of a break with a chat with the Sydney Opera House's Head of Digital Programming, Stuart Buchanan.
We chat rave culture, the Royal Court Theatre's website in the 1990s, employing digital to explore new ways of engaging with artists, wrangling institutional dynamics, responses to the pandemic and loads more.
Stuart has worked with organisations such as ABC, Disney, SBS, Sydney Festival, The Guardian, MONA, Royal Court Theatre and TED, and as founder of digital cultural agency The Nest. He has presented radio programs and podcasts on ABC Double J, FBi Radio and London's Resonance FM, and is the curator of the New Weird Australia music initiative.
Hello, and welcome to the digital works podcast. The podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector, my name's Ash. And in today's episode, episode number 22, uh, we speak to Stuart Buchanan. Stuart is the head of digital programming at the Sydney opera house Stuart and I spoke last December, December, 2021. Uh, and obviously it's been about six months since then. So there's a few things that we discussed, particularly the UK Australia season, that Stuart mentions that are no longer available, uh, for people to view. But I think that there's lots in our discussion that will still be of, of interest and relevance. If you are grappling with how to make digitally native work, how to engage a wider institution in, in the work that you doing. I think Stuart's reflections on his career to date and particularly on, on having a bit of a baptism of fire, uh, in early 2020 with COVID a fascinating observations. Um, so enjoy, so we'll just get started. Um, so, so I I'd love to start with, as I just described it, your slightly weird CV, uh, because you've done so many different, interesting creative things, and you're now head of digital programming at the Sydney yacht house, but what, what does the journey of Stuart Buchanan Scottish man look like that's ended you up in, in Sydney, Australia.
Speaker 2:I mean, that story would take maybe three or four hours. So if you try and condense that into something that's, um, pithy somewhat, um, I mean you can play also, you can play guess my age as well, right. As, as, as we go through this story, because as I start to describe a little things, it's clear that, um, we're talking about a particular period in time that will, will date me very quickly. So, um, I was kind of, you know, I'm not old enough to be, to have lived through punk, but I am old enough to live through rave culture, right? So I, I left university and I was highly vested, I guess, in rave culture or the culture around that. And part of that is very much a DIY culture, right. You know, as, as, as you, you know, for, for those, um, who didn't live through it, as you, as you look at, you know, all the documentaries being made by folks now that sort of look back to the nineties, you can tell when people are, you know, driving around the M 25 looking for, um, parties and so on. And the, the, the whole thing is just based on community. It's based on DIY it's based upon just doing it. And it's very kind of anti-establishment. Um, so naturally I find myself in the arts as a result of that kind of journey, but I brought that kind of DIY sensibility with me, you know, which, which indeed, right when you're particularly in, you're starting out, particularly know you're working in the small arts sector. So it actually stood me in really good stead, you know, um, not that I was, you know, um, producing big parties or anything like that, but I was, I, I was producing small scale events, uh, Zen publishing, so on, and as part of that produced my first website right back in the back in the nineties. Um, and so when I joined an arts organization, they're like, Hmm, internet. I was like, oh, I know how to do that. I've done that already. You know, um, I can build a website, um, and that's kind of, that's how it kind of started, you know? And so, um, build a website. Um, first, first website that I, that I produced was for the Edinburgh festival fringe. And for anybody who's worked in any kind of fringe you'll know that, um, you know, that, or, or try and sort of think back to a time when a fringe was just a printed brochure, that was 2000 shores listed alphabetically. And like, how the hell do you make any kinda sense of that whatsoever? And so when you go, Hey, how about this kind of website thing where you can categorize and you can search and you can maybe write reviews. Um, and hence, you know, the first website was, was born in 96, I think it was 96. Um, and that gave me the taste. I was like, oh, this thing works, this, this internet thing as far as kind of opening up the fringe to people who, you know, to, to give people a bit of a different way into the program and thus engage with, you know, the artist who are in the program, this internet thing seems, seems like it can work. Right. Seems like a good idea. Um, and yeah, so that was my first taste. I then went and did the same thing for the Royal court in London for a number of years, which I hugely enjoyed as such fond memories of working at the court. And it's, I still cherish that time. Um, and not long after that found myself in Australia in a, in a variety of, of, of different roles, some arts related, some kind of tangentially. I was in community radio for, for many years, um, both as a, uh, managed a radio station, but also as a, as a broadcaster and presenter. So making again through that, um, I, uh, cut a long story short. I, I, I started my own digital agency, which focusing just on the arts and so across kind of five or six years just made a huge number of, uh, mistakes.<laugh> made a huge number of projects, um, for arts organizations, big and small, you know, websites, apps, content, you name it. Um, and that's really where I cut my teeth, I think because we were doing such high volume, we were, um, because we an agency therefore, you know, um, I couldn't afford to make too many mistakes and I couldn't afford, I didn't have the luxury of institutional budgets. And so on. I had to every single dollar, you know, um, needed to be accounted for, I needed to work more importantly. Um, yeah. And, and that was, um, again, hugely enjoyable just because the variety of projects that, that we had, um, through that. Um, and then through some other stories, um, landed, landed to the opera house about three years ago. That's a very con I dunno if that condensed or rambling, I can't quite<laugh>. I dunno,
Speaker 1:It was pretty condensed. I think you, you did a good job of, uh, shoving 30 years into about three minutes, so, right. I think that's condensed
Speaker 2:<laugh>
Speaker 1:And looking specifically at the op opera, you know, as I mentioned earlier, your, you know, your role is head of digital programming, which I would suggest isn't a job title. You see that often at cultural organizations, and I'm interested to hear a bit about how digital stuff existed at the opera house when, when you arrived. Cause obviously it's changed hugely over the last couple of years, but was the opera house seeing digital as a way of sort of making and sharing artistic output? Or was it seen as a, as a sort of marketing channel?
Speaker 2:It was definitely the former, you know, um, and, you know, at some point during this conversation, I might as well do it now, like huge shout out to all the folks on whose shoulders I stand in order to be able to, to do the role that I do. Um, so I, I think it's maybe about 10 years ago that the, the house dipped its toe in the water, and that was exclusively around education to begin with for the first couple of years. And that was in the form of, um, uh, workshops that were streamed live to schools essentially. Um, a few years later, it then started to move into, um, live streaming, particularly, um, contemporary music shows as well as talks. And I did that for a number of years. And I think probably, uh, for those years, maybe let's say the first kind of seven years of doing it, it was reasonably skewed towards artistic programming, but it did still have a, quite a large marketing output slash Ambi. I don't know if ambit is quite right, but it certainly could be viewed or construed as being more marketing led or promotionally led content. Um, and it's probably at this point that I'll then, you know, say that, I call that how, how we've started to talk about it internally is we refer to that as content. And we refer to what we do in digital programming is programs or programming, right? So content is, is, is exclusively used when we're talking about marketing or promotion promotionally led, you know, um, media. Um, and, but when I came in and it was, it was, we, I was keen to jettison as much of the content part of it as possible and, and look at it through the lens as, uh, essentially an artistic program. Um, and it was sort of set up that, that, that my job wasn't that difficult in terms of being able to convince people that that was the way to go. There was a whole lot of other things I had to convince them to do, but, but in terms of like skewing it towards artistically, because what they had done was they had digital producers, um, essentially embedded in art form areas, right? So contemporary music had a digital producer talks and ideas and a digital producer, there was a, you know, et cetera, et cetera, but they were kind of, you know, uh, in terms of their line management, they were responsible to their kind of art form head. Now those art form heads are event producers who used to putting on live shows and, and sort of liked the fact they had a digital producer, but they were too busy really to kind of vest too much time in it, cuz they're trying to put on live shows and make them work, you know, artistically and financially. Um, so what the house decided to do was create this new department, this digital programming department remove all those digital producers from their own art form areas and put them into a new department. So, so I, I, when I started, there was already four people who were, who'd already been doing that across those departments. Um, and then they put me in charge of, of, of the department. So very quickly it became, you know, a thing in and of itself. However, I was dealing with the fact that there were other art form producers who were used to having these people report to them and now they were no longer reporting to them. And well, sometimes that was easy. Sometimes that was difficult. Um, but, uh, but yeah, but, but the house was definitely, you know, had made that decision, that it was an, had an artistic focus and appointed me into the role with that, you know, um, uh, direction
Speaker 1:And about 12 months into, into your role, maybe a little bit longer that COVID arrived
Speaker 2:Six months,
Speaker 1:Six months, six months. Yeah. Six months into your role. Welcome. Welcome to this for us. Yeah, exactly. COVID arrives. Yeah. And suddenly we're all in lockdown, we're all set at home. The only way that cultural organizations can deliver programs to audiences is digitally. And it was really fascinating for someone like me to see that initial reaction to lockdown. And you know, that Sydney op opera house responded with quite a, you know, fulsome program of, of work because you, you had that back catalog. Um, and, and then that evolved into the house, making new forms of, of digital work and sharing that, which then evolved into stream, which is your, um, how would you describe it? Video on demand platform, digital stage. Yeah, sure. All of this. So talk, talk to me about, about that, about that initial 12 months perhaps of the pandemic. Yeah. Where, you know, all the whole sector was just lurching from crisis to crisis uncertainty, to uncertainty, but trying to put out a meaningful response. Yeah. How, how prepared was the opera house to be able to deal with that?
Speaker 2:Um, this is probably, you know, this, this is a story I I'll tell to my great-grandchildren and their great-grandchildren, which is that, you know, when, when, like when you start in any kind of any role that requires some, um, you know, reflection and direction, um, I was tasked with forming a strategy on day was like the first task. And it was, you know, Stu spend your first kind of three or four months, um, looking at that and, and developing it, which I, which I truly did. Um, and you know, it was, it was tricky because it was, it was even though I, even though the digital producers had existed prior to this was a new department that had been given you responsibility, but the house, you know, which is staffed by hundreds of people, of course being the size of institution, that it is, it took a long time to educate people as to what we're talking about still to this day, two years later was still educating. I probably will continue to do so for, you know, for some time. Um, so I developed a strategy and, and I finished the strategy and delivered it to, um, my direct, the director programming, uh, I think early February. And it was kind of sad on for a couple of weeks because it needed to then go to executive and da, da. Um, and I was like, look, it's fine. I'm not in a rush. You know, this, this, this strategy that I've, that I've mapped, heard, it's like two to three years. Right. So, you know, do you take, take your time? Uh, and then of course, like three weeks later COVID hits and you know, this gets pulled out of the top drawers saying, oh, maybe, maybe we could use this as a response. How ready are you to, I was like, I mean, you know, fake it until you make it. I was like, sure, we're ready. We can do this. Let's go, let's do it. Um, and that three year strategy essentially got rolled out in about three months, um, which is exhilarating as a rollercoaster ride, terrifying as a horror movie. And, but, you know, we made, again, you know, we made so many great mistakes.<laugh> in such a short period of time that really just sort of, um, fast tracked and escalated, you know, what our, our thinking, um, and, you know, having the, the kind of privilege and space and freedom to try all these different things, you know, that were all entirely hypothetical. Um, and, uh, so it gave us the, you know, it gave us the real, uh, they experience the data to, to, to determine whether or not these things were gonna fly in the, in the, in the long term. But I mean, if I'm candid, like, like everybody, we thought it was gonna, like in March, 2020, we thought this thing was gonna be like a month or six weeks. So when someone, someone, so they said, Hey, Stu you know, there's this strategy in the top drawer, can this be something we can do? Um, I thought to myself, I've got a bit six weeks worth of programming. That's fine. We've got enough licensed in the catalog right now that we could do six weeks. We structured it and sort of as like a regular opera house week. So we were releasing stuff, I think, five nights a week. I thought, yeah, there's enough in that there's enough in the drawer to, to, um, put things out for about six weeks. And then of course it became clear that, um, that was not gonna fly for too long. And hence we, we started, as you say, to, to record new material until live streaming across that first period of closure, which was about seven months, I think we did about 50 live streams, um, from the John Sullivan stage, all various different scale and complexity and, and, and so on. Um, which was great. And now I guess the reflection looking back on it is like, does that work still stand? Right. So from an artistic perspective, when you look at that, and I would probably say that maybe like 20% of it still stands, like I can go back and watch about 20% of it and go, that's just great. We nailed that. The other 80%, I think it's, it's, you know, if it's lost to the ether, that's probably okay. You know, so, uh, yeah, so we can have a whole discussion about artistically what that meant, but from the house's perspective, you know, the, the speed and the volume at which that season, um, evolved, um, you know, kind of was far outpacing, what else was happening in Australia. And so by just by virtue of that, um, it became something of a kind of focus, you know, on, in, in Australia for here's arts things to watch online, not to say that no one else was doing it. It was just that, you know, because of the scale and the size of the opera house and so on, um, that, uh, you know, we were, were lucky to have that impact.
Speaker 1:And it it's really exciting to see that that initially quite, uh, you know, reactive response to exceptional circumstances seems to have grown into a pretty robust considered, um, central part of what the opera house is now doing. And I believe that stream is sort of fairly, if not central, it's definitely a big part of the opera house's planning, um, moving into 20, 22. Can you talk a bit about what those discussions were like, how do you sort of convert an emergency response into something that is sustainable and has the sort of quality that is expected and required and is sort of deliverable over the, over the longer term? Did, did it require a lot of convincing or were you you the one having to
Speaker 2:Be convinced? No, no, no, no. I was the one out there, you know, um, thumping on the tub and, and, and trying to convince, you know, whoever I could ensuring up as much support as I could, and some people loved it and some people LD it. Um, and, uh, you know, it was as, as you would expect, really, um, look, I, I think like a lot of my background as, as maybe it was sort of clear at the top is in marketing slash digital marketing slash you know, that, that, that kind of broader professional area. Um, so strategy has guided me from day one, right? So data and strategy, like data informed strategy and strategy then informs, you know, the, the kind of tactical activity that, that, that we do. Um, and so, you know, right from day one, whatever decisions we were making, I knew that, that the passage of those, the passage of decision making would be made easier. The more closely was aligned to all the various different strategies that the institution had. So part of my job was, was joining dots was, was literally to say, we wanna do this, which how does that then respond to the strategy? And if it doesn't respond to strategy, we either say we don't do it. Or we say, this is gonna be hard, and we've gotta, we've gotta make a much stronger case or a different kind of case in, in, in order to do that. So they've the, the quick answer is that it was meticulously built on the skeleton of all the other strategies that the institution has. Now, the opera is lucky because of the size of it, that it's got a million strategies. And so, therefore it's not hard to find a strategy to latch onto, right, because they're, they're bountiful. Um, but in many other organizations, small to medium organizations there, perhaps aren't that, you know, aren't that many strategies, uh, or certainly ones that, that might not provide the nuance to be able, as I say, to kind of latch something onto, but primarily, you know, the main things that, um, kind of drive the house more broadly are things that you would recognize that I'm sure many institutions would recognize, you know, which is to do with, um, like one, one being perception. You know, so the perception of Sydney opera house, um, unfairly, but understandably is that it's about opera and fine art and classical arts and traditional arts where that's probably about 50% of what we do. And the other 50% is the complete opposite to that. Um, so there's, there's there's perception and there's also, you know, that key audience development piece, which is that no matter what we try and do, we we're, we're still very firmly rooted in the, in the traditional core arts audience. Um, you know, and we, you know, we can, we can probably all have a bit of a shorthand for, you know, knowing what that traditional horrors audience, um, you know, is consists of. Um, and so cutting against perception and cutting against the, the kind of core traditional audience were obviously the two key drivers that we knew something like stream Purdue, you know, because it's, it's not only attracting a younger audience, but it's also, as it's clear from the very specific programming choices, we've made it intentionally bends away from traditional art, classical art, um, and, and puts the focus on other things much to the eye of the traditional list that has to be saved. We still get letters from folks saying, where's the, you know, where's all the opera. And you're like, well, you either said the operas and like, well,<laugh>, you know, what's in a name, you know, like it is, you know, opera is, is, is a, is a large part of what we do and we love it, but it's not all we do, you know? Um, yeah, so, so aligning aligning to aligning to strategy was, was, was really key. And I think when we started to see the data from that first COVID period, which showed us that, you know, at least 25% of people who were watching had never been to the opera house before, or hadn't been for a long time, there were at least 10 years younger than, um, the traditional local house audience. Um, they were local, um, in know, at a scale of which was, you know, we hadn't seen before through digital channels. Um, so those three things that, you know, at least initially were brilliant indicators that there's something in this. Um, I also managed to get stream, I guess, through, through the various hurdles, by positioning it as a way for us to sell tickets to live stream. So it's a purely, you know, purely kind of, you know, tactical response to a business, to potential business, you know, area of, of, um, trying to, uh, recoup some costs from livestream production by, by ticketing. So here's, you know, we, we need a solution for that. So here is a solution, or by the way, this solution also offers us all these other things in terms of free video and demand and subscription and et cetera, cetera, et cetera. So, um, so those two things combined, I guess, you know, that, that, that it was, I wouldn't say it was, it's not a revenue generation exercise, but it is a let's, let's call it a kind of budget relieving exercise, you know, it brings in some returns, um, and, uh, as well as it being that sort of, you know, broader artistic and audience development play. But I haven't actually talked about artistic though. So maybe we'll come back to that in a second.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We will. Um, but first I want to sort of zero in on audiences because as you, as you mentioned there, and I know we've spoken about this before, but it's, it's pretty impressive from my perspective, what the sort of shape of the audience for this work has been. And I, I was wondering, have you seen, because it feels like a lot of cultural organizations that did digital stuff during lockdown experienced similar things in that they were reaching a lot of new people. Yeah. Um, and I was wondering how much that's persisted now that people can leave the house again. Are you finding that the shape of the audience is perhaps shifting and maybe looking more like an Inver come as normal Sydney operas audience, or, or are you still seeing that sort of newer, younger audience continuing to engage with this digital work?
Speaker 2:The, the latter, because we are purposefully programming for that audience, you know, so rather than stream trying to be reflect purely reflective of the opera house, as we see it, um, let me just do a quick 32nd explainer. I work for part of the opera house called Sydney opera presents, which is internal programming team. And we produce and present it by 50% of the operas program. The other 50% of the opera house program is a mix of like our resident companies, including opera Australia and the Australian ballet, and so on and commercial hire of, of, of, of the enterprise. So, you know, 50% of what you see in stage come comes from our unit. So therefore I'm, I'm really driving our bit of the program, you know, like I'm, that's because I have access to it. I can license it. I can produce, I can work with all the producers to create this content in terms of working with, you know, our resident companies, you know, that's, that's a, that's another kind of layer of complexity that we're continuing to solve and continue to add their work to stream as it becomes available, but it's much less accessible from a licensing point of view and a cost point of view than the kind of work that we produce already within our, within our team. So I can understand that there is a tension there that we present stream as the opera house, however, it's, it's coming from, you know, very much a, a kind of part of the opera house, um, and trying to kind of maintain that balance. And, you know, people have charged not charged, but, you know, I've, I've, I've heard people kind of go, it's kind of program is a bit weird, you know, which that suits me fine. Um, but because it's not what they expected to be and to my kind of counter to that is great. That's then we're doing our job if it's not what you expect it to be. Um, and yeah, so, so I think understanding that that was the audience that was coming in, we're now purposefully programming for that audience.
Speaker 1:And I do now want to talk about sort of some of the artistic programming choices that you've made, because, you know, as you said, you've heard the, the work is a bit weird and it, I, what I quite like about it is it isn't just, um, you know, multi-camera capture or live stream of a performance happening on the stage. Actually, it feels like, you know, there is some of that, and that is completely legitimate of course, but what you've also, it seems tried to do is play with some of the unique things that working digitally gives you sort of using digital as a bit of a canvas and using it as a creative medium. How, how have, how have you gone about that? Is it, is it that you've had lots of ideas cooking up in your head for a while? Or is it, is it collaborative? Are you collaborating with artists or are you sort of taking ideas to artists and getting their buy-in? How, how does that programming piece work for this?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Um, well, I think we've only very recently managed to articulate it in a way that gives us all comfort and peace of mind. It was always quite difficult to articulate that as you've, as you said, um, and it comes down to, and it's, it sounds very, very simple because I think it is simple that essentially now we've divided our work into, into tangible what we call the stage program. And that is literally pointing cameras at the stage in a variety of different and creative ways, of course, um, and the screen program. So we are making work for screen. It's not, it may never have a stage presence. Um, it is work purposely designed for that. And so now we can look at our work and say, yep, it's pretty much split, maybe 50 50 in terms of investment. It's maybe 60 40 in favor of, of, of the live streams. Um, and certainly audience is probably skewed, maybe 70% live stream, 30% screen stage and screen. That's fine. Like that'll all shake out in time, but certainly there is now, you know, a concerted, um, if you like, um, resources within digital programming that is purely dedicated to screen based work and driving. Some of that is, was actually, you know, coming out of co watching what was being produced during COVID and watching, I guess, what we've sometimes refer to as the kinda snap back to do what we did before is to say there was so much great work being done all over the world during COVID, as far as screen based, you know, um, arts programming was, was, was concerned. Um, and it was, it was fascinating and it was evolving really quickly. And the potential of it was really exciting from an artistic point of view. And then we lost a lot of that. A lot of it just disappeared as people as, as quite rightly people, you don't have the time and the resources to be investing in digital programs when the core business is theater, let's say, so it's totally understandable, but we have the privilege, I guess, and the resources to be able to try and continue that. So that's kind of, part of the thinking is let's not lose what we've gained as, you know, screen based arts programming. Let's, let's try and see if we can continue to provide a platform for it. Um, because there's still, obviously a lot of people making great work. Now, you know, we, we then have discussions, you know, like we had bloody yesterday, which is like, you know, um, that's a totally valid question. You know, when you, when you film theater without an audience for the screen, when does that just become TV? You know, when a, a, a war point in that kind of, um, uh, you know, uh, end to end process, do you lose sight of the fact that it's theater, um, and it becomes something else. Um, now in my head, it's clear when I see it, I can't quite articulate it, cuz I watch a lot of this stuff obviously. And when I see something, I go, that's clearly theater from the screen. That's not TV. Um, it's, it's obvious, but I still can't quite articulate it. And, and that's, I guess what we're trying to get to is trying to find that language in lexicon that allows us to, um, more easily articulate what we mean when we talk about screen based arts programming now helping us out here, which is, um, great timing for this podcast now that I'm trying to spook anything per se, is we're working with the British council on the UK AAU season, which sees Australian artists. It was originally gonna be Australian artists performing in the UK for six months and then vice versa for six months. Of course, that didn't happen. Um, so we basically licensed about 20, 25 British works to put on stream over the next few months. And that's been fascinating, not just from a talking with cuz we are contracting each of those companies individually. Um, so having great conversations with, with producers and, and companies that are making screen based work, how it's being licensed, what it costs, you know, who it's what's, what sort of questions are being asked, but also fundamentally what is the work? You know, what is it, what is being produced? And, and the things we've licensed do run the gamut from a couple of shores, but very small, obviously maybe like 15% of the works we've licensed are cameras at the stage. The rest is works designed for screen that I think when you see them, you'll, you'll, you'll say it's not, it's not television, it's not film. It is, you know, it's screen based art or whatever you want to call it. Um, so yeah, so, so the driver of that kind of weirdness as you, as you write, they call it, um, is ensuring that that screen based work has that the practice of, of that screen based work is supported. Um, and in Australia, the artists who are interested in making that kind of work, that there's a space for them at the house. We know that the artists who are seem to be more keen in that area are younger artists, you know, um, which works for us. That's terrific. Um, you know, that, that the diversity of stories that are being presented through these forms seems to be more diverse than the, the stories that are told on stage, which is great again for us. Um, so yeah, so that, I guess that screen based practice is, is really where I see, um, as not necessarily tipping the balance on live streams, but it, it will hopefully settle down to a bit of a 50 50 balance.
Speaker 1:And it it's, it's really interesting to hear you talk there about, about that dividing line between, you know, when does performance filmed without an audience become, you know, TV. And I think, you know, we've had lot lots of conversations around that topic over the past 18 months. And I think as you say, no one could quite articulate it, you know it, when you see it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you can't quite define what the, the specific characteristics are.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I dunno if you've seen, make it fall over that line, Ian, Ian Ricksons uncle Vanya that was filmed, you know, like that's a fascinating example because it's super theatrical, right. Um, in its, in its presentation, you know, given that Ian is such a preeminent theater director, but it's such an amazing piece of filmed theater that is neither theater nor film clearly. And it exists in this space in between. Um, but it's such a terrific example of it. And that when I watched that, I was so excited when I saw that. Cause it's like, again, I can't ex express what this is, but it's such a good, um, you know, it's such a good example. It,
Speaker 1:And you mentioned that some of that, the artists that you're working with on this sort of screen screen focused work, you know, younger, more diverse, have there been any conversations around how you act as a bit of a, I don't know, sandbox, maybe for artists perhaps trying to develop practice in this area, because it feels like there aren't lots of organizations who have invested in the way and to the level that that sun house seems to have in this area and are continuing to do so. And as a part of that sort of continued focus in this area, do you see there being, um, do you see it, what's my question. Is it important that you do create space for people to test ideas, I suppose, as well as deliver work for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent, um, 110%. Like we, we, we have a, and we've actually devised a specific program for that, um, which is called shortwave. Um, and it's a kind of Microcom mission program for, you know, early career artists to explore, you know, um, this form, if you like. Um, and, uh, that's been, you know, that's been fascinating to look at the types of works that are being pitched or that we produced in that program. And maybe we produced, we started it earlier this year. We maybe produced six works, I think, with another foreign commission. And we'll the, you know, the, the intention is to continue that, you know, into the far future. Um, but how we talk about it is, is in some respects, um, as much as it's about a sandbox for practice, it's also onboarding to the opera house because, um, you know, in order for you to present a work on stage of the opera, you, you know, you generally need to be able to fill at least 300 seats, right. In our, in our kind of smallest theater. Um, and even then like, that's, we tend to not gonna do one off performances. We'll tend to do a run of four or five shows. So 300 to 1500, which a lot of, you know, a lot of artists either can't do or are not really producing the type of work that fits that. Whether it's a, you know, um, whether it's a black box or whether it's a process, whatever it is, they're not really producing that, that type of work. So we're trying to find ways that we can onboard artists into the broader operas ecosystem. Um, and that maybe they'll come out of one of the digital programs and present at work on stage maybe, or maybe they'll just continue to present digital work, or maybe they'll collaborate with someone over here and so on. So we're trying to kind of broaden our, you know, pro our pool of, of artists that, that we work with understanding that digital is, you know, a hundred percent digital is one trajectory, but they may actually then veer off into, into other venue, into other avenues and, and collaborations.
Speaker 1:And you touched on something there that I wanted to ask about, which is sort of how, how this venture is viewed by the opera house more broadly. Is it seen as revenue generation? Is it seen as audience development? Is it seen as artistic development because it feels like it has a, a foot in all of those yeah. All of those camps and is producing results in all of those camps as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think the short answer is all of the above. Um, and I think if we, if we take the stage program with the live streams and so on like that, that will need to wash its face, right. That, that in in time will, will, if we're essentially saying, look, we've built this platform in order to, um, or one, one of the reasons we're building this platform is to be able to sell tickets to live streams. Then we've gotta prove that that's working where I've sort of, you know, throw my hat down as far as that's concerned is, um, for the next couple of years, if we can kind of, if we can return like 10 to 15% of that investment, then we're doing okay. And that seems to be okay at the moment that that seems to be a fair, um, you know, a fair return in time. I'm sure that will incrementally increase and so on. And that's fine for the stage program. But as far as the screens program concerned, there is that's, that's all free. It's not ticketed. That will always be a hundred percent investment. Um, as far as the house is concerned. So, um, you know, it therefore has to fulfill both artistic aim and audience teams, you know, um, and which I believe that, you know, it is doing on, on both of those counts. So splitting the stage and screen to say the stage bit is the bit that's gonna be your revenue generating part. And the screen bit is not, is just like any performing arts center where the commercial stuff is subsidizing the non-commercial stuff. It's exactly the same relationship. Um, albeit you know, with, with slightly different components
Speaker 1:And specifically on that sort of the economics of it all, you know, I've heard anecdotally colleagues working in cultural organizations where they did, you know, great digital work and are suddenly being have, or they're suddenly having to field expectations from boards. Usually that the digital stuff that they did from a standing start, you know, in 2020 is suddenly going to generate significant amounts of revenue to replace, you know, the shortfall we're all dealing with and people are finding it challenging to sort of wrestle with those expectations and reset them, or at least push people's timeline horizon out beyond next year. Yeah. Did you find yourself having to have similar conversations that yes, there, there, there may be a, a revenue benefit here, but it's going to take a while to achieve that because we need to generate the audience. We need to generate momentum. We need to build, start to build efficiencies into that process, or was that already understood at the house?
Speaker 2:I think it was, I think it was understood. I think like, you know, an institution of the scale of the house understands that things take time, you know, um, there's, you know, there's, there's, there's a classic viral video, you know, of, of a very, very, very long truck trying to do like a three point turn and a tiny little lane. And it does, it's like a 49 point turn. That's kind of like a major institution, right. Where it just incrementally just finally gets there. Um, so there is an understanding that it will take, it will take a long time. Um, and whether that's three years or five years or more, um, you know, we're prepared to see it out, you know, like before I arrived, like they might have investment in the program to be candid. Hasn't actually increased since I arrived. Right. Um, and actually you could argue no, because we're expected to return revenue that arguably it hasn't decreased as such, but, you know, um, uh, so it hasn't, it hasn't, hasn't, hasn't increased the level of which, um, the house is investing in digital programming is the same. Now what we're able to do though is say with that same amount of in investment, we're able to return something back to you, as well as achieve these new goals, you know, new artistic goals and, and new audience goals, um, that there was being achieved in part prior to that, not necessarily with that broader strategic layer wrapped around it, not necessarily plugged into the broader strategies, the house and so on. So we're sort of saying to them, look them as we, so essentially what we're saying is with the same amount of investment, we're, we're, we're doing more with that investment, you know, than them than we ever have done. And so therefore at the moment, it's a bit of a win-win situation, you know, because it's like, well, we weren't expecting you necessarily to do these things. And that's why we haven't, you know, invested more in it. We're just gonna continue to invest at that level. Now, whether or not in three years time, the house kind of looks at its Naval and says, we decided we could no longer invest in this area. You know, I, I don't have a crystal ball. Um, but as long as I can, you know, continue to achieve the, that kind of triad of little bit of revenue over here, you know, little bit of audience development over here, and some really great artistic wins over here. As long as those three things can continue to work harmoniously, then I feel like we'll be allowed to stick around.
Speaker 1:And as we come to the end of 2021 and, you know, still dealing with the pandemic to varying degrees around the globe and you stop, as I hope you're able to over Christmas and sort of reflect on the last two years, what, what do you think the biggest lessons are that are emerging from the, the fog? What do you, what do you feel you're going to carry with you having been through 2020 and 2021?
Speaker 2:I think it's something that probably a lot of us have learned at various points. And anyone working in digital has, has, has learned and understood at various different points during the career. And whether in book, whether or not they carry that with them and whether or not they think about it daily is another matter. Now this, what I'm about to say, we do carry it with is we do think about it daily, and it's become a bit of a mantra, which is change is a constant, you know, the minute that you think you've got it nailed your a step behind right now in, in the kind of commercial tech, that's obviously, you know, a, a guiding mantra, um, in our world less so, um, but in terms of setting people's expectations, you know, it's that this idea that changes a constant from a programming point of view, from a technology point of view, investment point of view, et cetera, cetera, um, that, uh, whatever we say today, you know, we reserve the right to have completely different opinion in a few months time, whatever we say today, that change, it will, it will constantly change. And, you know, if, if you think you've got a model and you want to, you know, pin your, you know, pin your pin, your whatever on, on that model, then, uh, that might be fine for an amount of time, but it is not fixed. You know, so change is a constant, I think is, is, is the kind of thing that we now just quite happily and in a relaxed way live daily, because it can, that can put a fear of God into institutions. Change is a constant, what are you talking about? Stuart? That's a nonsense as far as institutions are concerned, but we try to have to live that, you know, there was a time where we started to have, um, and you'll appreciate this, but we started to have little DAS around the idea of trying to introduce agile into the house. And then after about two weeks, we just like, you know, we all had a laugh and went, that's just insane. What are we trying to do? What are we trying to do? And trying to bring, bring an agile, you know, um, framework into the, into an institution like this. It just does not. It's like oil and water. It does not work. So, um, yeah, so like, you know, we, we have to try and I think the learning is that, how do we introduce this idea that change is a constant throughout that organization throughout the organization more broadly and bring people with us on that particular journey. Because I think if the more that people tune into that and just, and, and, and relax into that rather then, you know, the better, um, we all enjoy our jobs more, but I think the better outcome is, is, is, is built from that. Um, yeah, that's probably the main, that's, that's the number one thing I think that we're sort of living with right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it it's, it's so true. And just picking up on that.<laugh> how have you found the process of trying to get the wider institution comfortable with the discomfort of ongoing evolution and sort of iterative working and yeah. You say change being and ever present.
Speaker 2:I think you got it mean it's, I, I think it's probably like any organization, big or small, you find your champions, you know, you find the people that are just as passionate about that as you are. And, and you'll find them in all sorts of weird places are all different levels of hierarchy or management or, or, or whatever. And the more that you can bring those people together, even if they're, you know, displaced and, and, and disparate, that there are people who are, as we say, in Scotland, singing from the same hem sheet, that, that we're all, we're all there. And so you, you, you have allies or you have people that, that, you know, you can count on to be able to, you know, advance that, that, that discourse. So a lot of it was identifying like, you know, who's with you, and who's maybe not quite with you and, um, trying to lean into the former, um, building those collaborative relationships in places that seem quite unexpected, you know, um, and ensuring that you cultivate those, you know, um, that's been quite fascinating because I've found champions in places I did not expect to find they're completely unrelated perhaps to our area, but they love what we're doing is like, great. So, you know, you can, you, you're, you're, you're an advocate for what we do. Um, and I'll always, I'll bear that in mind so that, you know, as other conversations and discourse flows, that, you know, you you're over there, um, advocating on our behalf. So, um, so yeah, it isn't, um, uh, you know, there's not a magic answer beyond that, kind of that what we talked about earlier about trying to ensure that it's laddered into existing strategies, so laddered into existing strategies and identifying champions, no matter how strange they may seem across, across the organization, those are the two things that are, are kind of gonna be the bedrock, I suppose.
Speaker 1:And final question. So for people who are maybe listening to this hearing about stream for the first time, or heard about stream, and maybe haven't had a dig yet, what, what is the, what is a good starting point, perhaps? I dunno if you can pick a favorite child, but I'm gonna try and force you to, and then looking forward to next year and some of the plans that you've gotten, I dunno how much you can talk about them, but what are you you most excited about coming up?
Speaker 2:Um, well, there's one work. I think that we're probably most, oh, no, I wouldn't say most proud of, but one work that we're very proud of, um, is, um, so as part of that, um, kind of screen based program, we, um, developed, um, like kind of curatorial, um, I'm gonna say festival because it's, it exists online, like many seasons, like four works, um, which are, um, and we actually use this phrase jokingly sometimes because it's such a known phrase across the industry, you know, at the intersection of performance and technology or the intersection of digital and performance. So the intersection, the intersection, you know, um, anyway, so it is, it exists in the intersection of digital and performance, but essentially looking at artists who are using technology in really interesting ways in order to advance their artistic practice, you know, so it's less about purely screen based work and about leveraging that technology in, in ways that we haven't either seen before or are taking it in different directions. So one work we did, um, which actually presented in front of a small audience, but it was essentially designed to be filmed for screen, um, was a motion capture work, um, with, uh, uh, movement artists, which was then, uh, designed by phenomenal artist, um, called Sarah AFU from Western Sydney. Who's now like one of Australia's kind of leading NFT, um, artists, um, and, um, built in on real engine and rendered in real time in, in front of an audience. And it was about a 20 minute work, um, with the live soundtrack, um, and just that kind of collision of the live bit and the, and the, you know, the kind of real time rendering and the, and the, and the, and the world design. Um, it all came together, I think, in, in quite a beautiful, a beautiful way. So that's a really great example of the type of work that I think, um, we're excited about primarily because all those artists had never performed at the house before. They're all pretty much under 25. In fact, um, video Kelo, who's the, who's the who's the movement artist had never been to the opera before she was 19. She'd never been to the opera. And the first time she's at the opera house, she's on stage performing for this work, which was terrific. Um, that's a really, um, that's that, that's a really good styling point. I think, as, as an entry into the type of work we're interested in doing, um, as far as looking ahead, um, that will continue that, that thread. And that's probably the, you know, the area that I think we're, uh, very interested in. Um, there's a couple of works in development that I think will spill out into some of the physical spaces. So I'm interested now in works that can both be realized the screen based works, but might also have some live in venue component as well. Not exclusively, like that's not a direction, that's just a, an example. Um, the other thing we're looking forward to a guess in 2023 is the 50th anniversary of the house. And what that means therefore for, for our area, um, is, is really interesting because one of the things that, um, we're positioning, I guess, as part of the 50th is let's not just make it a yeha celebration of the last five decades. Let's try and through a little bit into the future and sort of think about it as the end of one point, but the start of another. Um, and so we'll be commissioning a, um, I Harbor a fairly sizable sort of digital piece for 20, 23 as part of that, um, as well. So, um, yeah, that was there that wasn't very detailed. Was it<laugh> in terms of what's coming next?
Speaker 1:No, that was, that was great. And I realized it's an unfair question as well, if it's UN and out stuff. Yeah. An absolute on my podcast, please.<laugh>.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but, you know, I think that the, you know, any kind of institutional anniversary, like that does allow certain leeway or certain kind of avenues to open that the two might not have been because of that. So that's really exciting there, lots of collaboration across the whole institution that otherwise may, may not have happened, um, using, you know, um, yeah. Kind of using infrastructure that perhaps I wouldn't have been able to have access to and so on and so on. So, um, that's really exciting.
Speaker 1:Well, on that note, thank you very much, Stuart.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
