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.
Join us at the first Digital Works Conference in Leeds, UK on the 24th-25th April 2024.
Digital Works Podcast
Episode 58 - Clare Reddington (Watershed) on leadership, digital confidence, organisational culture, and embracing risk
A conversation with Watershed CEO, Clare Reddington.
Watershed is an independent cinema, cultural hub, and home of the creative technology community, Pervasive Media Studio.
Clare was one of the keynote speakers at this year's Digital Works Conference and in our chat she expanded on some of the themes and ideas that were touched on in her keynote session. Ideas of digital confidence, leadership in difficult times, embracing risk, understanding who your audience is (and is not), and acknowledging when you aren't the right person or organisation to take a lead on something.
Clare is a really effective, inspiring and thoughtful voice on digital (in all its many manifestations), technology, and the role of cultural organisations in the 21st century.
We also discussed Undershed, Watershed's new immersive gallery, which is a great example of some of the traits and principles that Clare's leadership embodies.
Clare is also a Visiting Professor at University of the West of England. She is chair of Emma Rice's Wise Children, and is a trustee of of RSC and British Council.
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 58, we speak with Claire Reddington. Claire is the CEO of Watershed and is a visiting professor at the University of the West of England. Claire also sits on the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the British Council and she's chair of Emma Rice's Wise Children. Claire is a really thoughtful and insightful and inspiring thinker and leader when it comes to digital. Her perspective is really ambitious but also rooted in the realities of running a cultural organisation in the UK. Enjoy, we'll start, as we do all of these conversations, with the claire reddington story. What is your sort of journey look like through to today, where you are at watershed?
Speaker 2:huh, well, I grew up pretty near to Watershed, so about 15 miles away, in a kind of weird suburban commuter town. I mean, I bunked off school quite a lot and got into lots of trouble. But including bunking off school to go to Watershed when I was young but always really loved drama, the arts culture knew that that was where I would end up. I did not bunk those lessons, I guess, and I did private drama lessons and helped teach drama, from when I was about 12, I think, and just really really loved that, loved being near Bristol. Because I was naughty, I was sent for counselling and they were like, well, we could either expel you or we could send you once a week on a bus to Bristol City Centre to meet a therapist and I was like, yeah, that one. So I feel lucky that I grew up near Bristol and I went to Birmingham University and studied media and cultural studies. If anyone knows anything about cultural studies, birmingham is the home of it. It was where it was invented and I guess I'm only realizing now how lucky I was to study the work of Edward Said, thinking about Orientalism, john Acumpra, loads of work on race and identity and cultural politics, which I understand now that it shaped me and feel really blessed to have studied there.
Speaker 2:And then I did a few boring things. I couldn't really get a job, but I moved to Cheltenham and I eventually joined Cheltenham Arts Festivals as a sponsorship assistant, asking people for money, looking after posh people, which was great. I loved working there. I loved my the team. I was working on the literature and the jazz and the music festivals and it gave me a real good grounding. I think it's a great thing for everyone in culture to go learn how to ask for money, like it's a very useful skill to feel comfortable around.
Speaker 2:And then one day, like everything seems a bit accidental, obviously, but one day they were. Everything seems a bit accidental, obviously, but one day they were starting a science festival and the guy who they decided was going to be the director of the science festival just like went AWOL and ghosted them and they looked about and were like, do you want a science festival? Do you want to run a science festival? So I took that job and it was just amazing because I got to shape with the directing team what a culture led science festival would be in a place where I already worked, and so I had loads of support and help from my colleagues. But I guess at that point I really learned that I love the edge and the cross sector and the boundaries. So that was science and art and I had a real blast.
Speaker 2:We did the science of like drugs. We had Alexander Shulgin, who was the inventor of MDMA, come over with it Like I hung out with him and his wife. That was really great. We did sex and chocolate and like it was. It was really fun and it was back when there wasn't really that work happening. And like it was, it was really fun and it was back when there wasn't really that work happening.
Speaker 2:And then I got really bored of living in Cheltenham and so wanted to go somewhere with a more diverse culture offer. So I applied for some jobs. I applied for a job at Encounters Film Festival and I didn't get it. And the lovely David Sproxton, who was the owner of Aardman, emailed me and said, like I loved meeting with you, can we stay in touch? And I thought, oh yeah, like you run Aardman, like you're never going to stay in touch. And then he introduced me to Watershed and I started at Watershed on a six month project management contract to run the first experiments in cloud computing with Hewlett-Packard, and so we gave access to the clouds to 3D animators to see what they would do with it, and naturally I made more of my job than they had imagined, made myself indispensable and haven't left.
Speaker 2:So that was 20 years ago that I started at Watershed and that was all of the technology. Work here had been going for a couple of years but was quite project-based and quite sort of nascent, and I helped to formalize that into something that was more of a year-round offer. And then we grew the Pervasive Media Studio and all the other bits and then maybe, like I don't know six years ago I became CEO. That seems unbelievable now, but uh yeah. So I was a project manager, then a producer, then I was the creative director of Watershed, which I think was the funnest job, and now this now I'm the CEO, which I think is like you know. I'm very proud of it, but it's quite a lot of HR and toilets, I guess. One thing that I've been thinking about a lot which.
Speaker 2:I think has resonated maybe with loads of women in the culture sector but maybe with loads of people who don't fit in proper holes, or like is that I was really ashamed that I'd worked at Watershed for 20 years I've spent, because I got this feeling that people were like what don't you want to go and try for the Barbican? Or like go and run somewhere proper in London. And I guess there is this notion of sort of I think, quite patriarchal career progression which is like it fits a certain curve and you have to go forward and go bigger and bigger and bigger. And what I've really come to understand about Watershed post-COVID is that the kind of changes that I'm interested in making in the culture sector require a very deep trust and understanding and engagement with the communities that we're part of. And so I'm sort of really celebrating the fact I've been here 20 years and trying not to listen to my inner patriarch who's saying like you're not ambitious enough, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:and I think as well you know we'll talk hopefully a bit more about this later some of the partnership work and the interesting and perhaps surprising opportunities that Watershed seems to follow, I think, only seem possible because Watershed seems to be run by people that know it very deeply and really know where it's come from and its position within Bristol and the Southwest and more broadly, the UK's sort of cultural ecology wouldn't be as visible or explorable to someone who had only just come into watershed and been there 12 months or two years or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's true. I guess there's a danger in that we become a little like inward facing and like enclosed, and I think I love it when new people start at watershed because I'm like this is precious, don't, like, don't, don't become institutionalized too quickly, like collect all your questions, speak up whenever you don't understand something. But I do think I guess you know partly, my job has changed so much and Watershed has changed so much. Being comfortable with change and embracing risk is definitely something that requires some sort of scaffolding and safety to be able to do and to take people with you on that journey. So, yeah, I think there is a bit of what you say, but I'm also really conscious, as a fairly privileged white woman working in culture, that I'm also taking up space, and that's something that I don't take lightly, given that I've been here so long.
Speaker 1:You know, in your sort of scene setting then I didn't realise just how long sort of a serious technology focus I suppose had been a part of the work of Watershed.
Speaker 1:You know, and that was your initial way in, and you know you spoke at a Digital Works conference earlier this year about, I suppose, the benefits of being an organisation that is comfortable with digital stuff and in your session you spoke a bit about how that can deliver benefits in areas outside of just sort projects per se.
Speaker 1:I'd love to talk a bit about that now because it seems that being digitally confident or digitally mature or at least fairly conversant with those ways of working has had all these really positive knock-on effects of how Watershed goes about its general activity. And I suppose the first area I'm interested in looking at is this sort of idea of being iterative in the work that you do and the sort of ideas that you pursue and also being, it seems, really user or audience-centric. It feels like you know many, many cultural organisations talk about this idea of centring the audience. But it feels like you know many, many cultural organizations talk about this idea of centering the audience but it feels like a watershed that's really sort of tangibly part of the everyday rhythm of the organization. So, yeah, I mean, I'm just hoping you could talk a little bit about that. You know, both within a sort of strictly digital context, heavy quotation marks and, and more generally, the benefits of, I suppose, this way of working that you see more regularly within a digital context, I suppose yeah.
Speaker 2:so watershed was set up in 1982. And it was set up as the first media centre in the UK. So, although that wasn't necessarily digital at that point, that notion of an expansion of what culture and media could offer, that coming together with the communications industries, was part. So it was set up with an exploration like. There's not a sense that there is a resolved art form or a canon at the heart of what we're doing. There isn't a kind of a silo that says this is the traditions that you must uphold, which I think builds into a DNA a sense of exploration and possibility and engagement.
Speaker 2:And I guess I came in at this really lush time in the internet where people were like hack days and sort of there was a notion of like, let's just get together, try things out, that the internet was a place of democracy and engagement and conversation. I'm not sure for anyone who is stepping into that space today would find quite the same sort of community and collaboration that was around at that time. There was also, I think, a point where there wasn't very many of us working in digital and culture and so we had to be really collaborative and open and sharing and that teaches you some things. It's hard to be sharing and open in one part of your practice so it sort of pervades into everything you do. And I guess the other point is that media, media and digital is not seen as proper art. Therefore we didn't get funded like proper art, so we didn't have like endowments or patrons or our arts council and BFI funding is pretty small a part of our turnover compared to other organisations, so it's usually around something like 14% or 15% of Watershed's turnover.
Speaker 2:So that means our audiences are, you know, they're much more than their financial worth, but they're also a pretty large stakeholder in our business and so we can't really afford not to censor them in everything we do because, like, they're our customers and so we need to be there for them and delivering something that is of value and benefit to them.
Speaker 2:I think I've always been really grateful for that part of our business model because it keeps you really focused on on where your attention should be and keeps you relevant, I think, and delivering for audiences, and it's hard to both deliver for audiences and do R&D. I think that's possibly one of the things we might pick up on my kind of challenges of the culture sector that I don't think we really understand how to support R&D, but Watershed also has this very brilliant cinema program that exists at the heart of our business, which is about telling stories, sort of bringing people together to engage with world views that aren't theirs, and so that combination of the power of cinema and the storytelling and the narrative and the togetherness and the possibilities of the internet and the hacking and the collaboration is just part of everything we do really.
Speaker 1:And again, you spoke a bit about this at the Digital Works Conference. But this sort of multidisciplinary ethos that seems to thread through everything you do, combined with what seems like a fairly high level of tolerance to risk, that again seems to thread through the organization.
Speaker 1:You told the story that often your board is pushing you to take more risk and is very comfortable with the organization engaging in activities that might be seen as risky. And again, would you say that comes back to this sort of founding focus of exploration, and is it helped by the fact that so much digital working is exploratory and risky and has sort of failure as a very high likelihood within it?
Speaker 2:yeah, and to be relevant, like we're not falling back on a back catalogue of like Titian or something. So we are in an old building but we don't have loads of heritage, real estate, and so to be relevant, it's a fast moving medium that we need to keep up with and keep exploring and not sort of ossify in a notion of what 1980s or 90s media was, because people are very articulate about media and technology in their lives and so we need to stay up to date with that and that feels really important to us. So it is risk. I guess it's opportunism, I guess it's the ability to move into spaces quite quickly and to be able to engage and grab opportunities which are exciting or important to us or that we can see are of real value to the communities that we're seeking to support. So we don't take unplanned risk. I mean when we take a risk we're intentional about it, we've done the maths, we know what we're risking, we know what work we will need to put in to make something stick. We'll know how long the time horizon we've got to give something is, because obviously things need different times to develop.
Speaker 2:But, for instance, coming out out of covid, we were really honest how difficult it was for us. Cinema audiences were down streaming the cost of living, like we weren't completely sure what was making the downturn in audiences. Obviously, inflation was sort of killing us, like everybody else, and so we were really honest about how much money we were losing. But you can only be honest for so long and people get a bit bored. So actually what we also needed to do was to create something new and exciting, which is what Undershed is is also a move into something where we go, okay, things are really bad.
Speaker 2:We need some like bets on the future. We need to keep changing, and I think what is great about Watershed is we've just got so many examples of when that's worked for us. And like one of the things I really hate about digital, I remember going to South by Southwest and hearing that like well, you know, are you even a founder if you haven't failed a few companies? Or that all that sort of very masculine language around sort of breakthrough and bust and failure and things, and I for me, I think it's just about learning. Like risk is just about learning. It isn't like the great sort of oh, we did this and bust it. It's like oh no, we stayed really, really reflective, and we changed as we went.
Speaker 1:You've mentioned a couple of things there that I'd love to dig into a little bit more. First, is this idea of being opportunistic and actually that being a good thing and that sort of being a thing that's a part of the way that you run the organisation, and also you said that you know that it's not just send me your half-baked ideas. Actually, there is a sort of methodology to this. I'd be really interested in hearing more about that. How do you as an organization or as a leadership team or whoever's the sort of people leading these conversations? How do you go about identifying opportunities, evaluating opportunities and then deciding how you're going to pursue them, because not every opportunity is the same?
Speaker 2:Yeah, undershed is a good example of something that we can sort of practically talk through. So Undershed is a new immersive gallery. When I started Pervasive Media Studio, I absolutely swore that we would not have a gallery or an exhibition space, because I felt really clearly at that point that we were working with this amazing community of maybe 200 creatives it is now and that what would be useful for us is to help them to get their work shown wherever it is best suited for the work. So, rather than having our own gallery and programming very internally, we would have great relationships with other galleries and theatres and labs and all of that stuff and have this really great ecology. And it's true, we do have that. But our artists were saying to us our work isn't being shown like we're winning awards at London Film Festival or Venice or and all these other places, and they get seen by a few people at festivals, but not audiences. You're the right people to show this work because you also care about the work and it feels exciting to think about what, what is it to curate that work? And so really, I guess the opportunity came from our community and following the energy of artists and the people that we work with is something that we try to do. So we responded.
Speaker 2:But we responded by commissioning Amy Rose, who's an amazing immersive creative that was part of Anagram, who won awards at Venice and had been a studio resident for a long time to do some work on it. We paid her to think through what would that look like? What are the opportunities? Why would we do that? What's the market failure that we might be addressing? And then we also worked with the space and story futures to go wider across the sector and say is there demand? Is someone else already doing this? Like what are the challenges that exist to making this sustainable? So I guess we stepped into that space and put an initial amount of risk money behind it. We also, as is we sort of pivoted some funding that we had with AHRC. There was AHRC funding to respond to that. So we work with the University of the West of England and both of us thought, yeah, let's use this money that we've got for that question and we grew it over time.
Speaker 2:And then we realised that it was something that people were really behind and we happened to have a space in Watershed that wasn't going to be developed into a new cinema. That was the plan, but times change and so we talked with the board about what would it be like to set up Undershirt and we came back. I guess we were talking to the boards maybe four or five times. That you know from this is the idea to actually we need some money, like can we allocate some of our reserves against this to getting support from BFI and Arts Council, which we've just got? I think we're still in a risk space for it. So now our risk is how do we operationalize all this stuff? Because it's a really different thing to run a gallery in an exhibition space than it is to run a cinema, and what will audiences think like? It's actually properly scary now because it launches on October, the 25th, with our first exhibition, so it's exciting and scary and I think you know there's so many stealable ideas in there.
Speaker 1:I think I think this idea of being part of a wider community and actually being a sort of both an active voice, but actively listening to what that community needs and maybe the opportunities that that community's needs can lead you to and the role that you can play in facilitating them but also seemingly being very clear about when you don't have the answers you know we're probably not the people to work out whether or not this is a good idea.
Speaker 2:We will commission someone who is immersed in this world to explore that question on our behalf yeah, the thing I learned from dick penny, who was the ceo of watershed before me, is just pay people who are cleverer to think through stuff for you. Like we have a consultancy budget and anything where we think like, oh, like, you know what are we thinking about at the moment? We're wondering if a microbrewery might be like a cheaper way for us to do beer, and so who knows about about that? That we can pay to come in. Because, like, risk takes money, and I think that's maybe a mistake that people make is they take risks and haven't resourced them properly and haven't been serious about them. So we try not to do anything that we aren't prepared to back and put our money behind and do things and I think that's also true of digital like people still amazingly think that that, like, well, it's the internet, it's free, and don't take it seriously or put resources behind it, and I'm grateful that I inherited an organization that has seriousness of intent about it.
Speaker 1:I'd like to talk a bit about Pervasive Media Studio now, because we both mentioned it a couple of times. Maybe for people listening to this who don't know what Pervasive Media Studio is, if you could explain just briefly what it is, and I'm really curious about how it sits alongside and sort of complements or bleeds into the day-to-day life of Watershed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Pervasive Media Studio initially was started outside of Watershed actually because we didn't have any space, but now it is a kind of co-working or laboratory space inside of the Watershed building and it's 15 years old. So we set it up a really long time ago, really at the very start of co-working spaces, and we run it in collaboration with the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England and we gift space to people working on creative technology projects and we gift alongside the space so that could be a permanent desk or it could be a hot desk, it could be use of our facilities. But also we have teams of producers who are helping people think through what funding do they need, how do they structure their business model, what press or advocacy or storytelling and I guess some of the things that I know are unusual about it. So we offer a sort of institutional cover and legitimacy to people who are doing stuff that doesn't really have a home. So it's really early stage stuff that sometimes feels quite at odds with what's happening in the rest of the sector. So the Pervasive Media Studio brand provides some safety and permission, I guess like that. Yeah, it's a great idea, you should go for it.
Speaker 2:We contract for openness and generosity. So the values exchange is you have this space for free. You must be a member of the community in whatever way that means, but mostly it means please share your learning and your wisdom so that everyone gets better together and and then we're really open about what goes right and what goes wrong. We mix commercial and cultural companies so everyone is in there for free. There are startups and there are artists and that mixture of those two things makes for a richer dialogue and makes for more opportunities, I think, for everyone who's in there. We don't take a stake in any of the work, so we have a sort of saying, which is money at the margins. So like, just let's not let money be the conversation we're having. And also, you know, it's a really nice piece of property on the harbour side of Bristol with like a great view. So if we were to charge people for desks we would never have the sort of cool people that we work with. So the way that we make the business model work is that both the two universities and watershed all put a small amount of money in for running costs and for strategic kind of small projects funding and then we apply for money so that could be research council. So at the moment we're working on a really big project with Bristol University called my World and that we're managing the kind of commissioning program around that. So we get money for us, but we also have money for the wider community to apply to. We do artist residencies, we do a lot of work and I guess one of the things that's really important to us is because everyone's working on creative technology, we're also supporting their explorations around the ethics of the technologies they're using, sort of inclusion and access, who can use the work, who engages with it, who is making the work and how. So we do like it's a very intersectionally diverse community, which is very exciting, and climate justice, like what are the environmental implications of the work that you're doing, like thinking about what is our position on decolonizing technology, or like all of those things we try to again be intentional about, think through and share our learning with the wider community.
Speaker 2:It sits at the end of the corridor of Watershed and Watershed staff pass through and in the studio. So there is no. We're all open doors behind one door so the studio residents can come into the programming office. We often sit in the studio there's a real sort of mobility around the space. We also, on the corridor going into the studio, have a big annual wall planner that says all of the watershed programs and development and the idea is that studio residents might go oh, you're planning something about Metropolis, like I've got some thoughts about Metropolis, let's have a chat. So, as much as possible, trying to encourage crossover and engagement. The studio residents also benefit from a well, a bar, because, watch, there's a bar. So that's great, but also like audience public, so there are people outside who can test things and who can engage with things.
Speaker 2:So people can apply for residency for some things we do. So we do random selection for artist residencies, which is a way of reducing the labor in the application process, but for residency, we do actually ask people what they want to do, because it's not always right for everyone. Like a chaotic, noisy workspace is not, although we do have quiet spaces and those are some of the things we've learned about inclusion and access is that interruptibility doesn't work for everyone. So we have different ways of being in the studio now different desks that are uninterruptible, different quiet spaces, and I guess we use the studio as a place to test out methodology and to learn from things. So we've just finished a brilliant project called alternative technologies for just transition. That was particularly looking at how to think about the future with people who've been minoritized from that conversation. Obviously, futuring is pretty generally a kind of privileged, able-bodied, cisgendered white man sports, and because those people have the power, that is then the future that comes to pass. So this was about trying to think about what methods of safety are needed, like how do we create spaces that are safe for people who have been minoritized to talk about and think about the future and think about what technology is needed.
Speaker 2:One of the things that came from that was paying people for rest. So if you've been asked to reflect on your lived experience of being minoritized in a program, we paid you for a rest day to address that. Because it has an tax, it has an impact and Watershed. As soon as the racist, fascist riots broke out in Bristol last week, we sort of quickly identified that that approach that we tried in the studio was something that we could offer staff. So we bought rest days out of a studio program and into Watershed as a trial. We also have offered paid rest days to all of the studio community. Anyone that wants to take it up, we'll pay them cash to rest. And then, of course, we were like, well, you can't do this just for a riot. So now we're just writing a policy for a permanent rest and repair. So every member of staff will have access to three days off a year, around trauma experienced because of their cultural background or identity.
Speaker 1:So that's a good example of try something out in the studio, stabilise and codify it, bring it into the rest of the organization and I think also a really tangible, valuable example of watershed being able to use that sort of lab space to try things out and then sort of bringing it back into the heart of the organization, but trying out ideas that are not at all technology related in nature yes, I mean, this is a little bit what I spoke about in Leeds.
Speaker 2:I don't personally believe you can be working in technology without thinking about ethics and inclusion and access. Right now, because of the state of you know what's happening on Twitter, or if you used to say X, but you know, like the surveillance technologies that are being used in our everyday experiences, I think you have to be working on inclusion and on equity and on justice, and so those things no longer have such a separation for me, I guess. I think, though, I'm starting to think carefully about how appropriate it is for us to hold ethical positions hard, because not everyone in our community agrees with those ethical positions, and so perhaps our sort of space-making and space-holding responsibility might overwhelm our own ethical considerations, which, after all, come from our own lived experiences. So I had a really interesting conversation with a great black creative called Vince Badu, who was talking about this sort of opportunity for black creatives created by artificial intelligence and we've been quite sort of careful and critical around artificial intelligence and it really made me stop and think on, like let's roll back a bit. But yeah, it's not, it's not always technology. I think Watershed's greatest R&D at the moment is how can we learn from brilliant organizations so Rising was the first people to be paying for rest days and how can we take the cutting edge, radical thinking that often small organizations doing and apply them to a middle sized cultural organization and then be really loud about it, not because we're trying to get brownie points or because we're like virtue signaling, but because it's possible and I think people think it's not possible to run a large institution in a values led way.
Speaker 1:And would it be fair? I mean the conversation that you just referenced there I was going to ask about. Well, I suppose I was going to ask about AI, although not really. I suppose I was going to ask actually about the pace of change in technology and then the implications that has on the real world and how you run organizations and how people live their lives. That pace is accelerating, it seems, and lots of cultural organizations seem overwhelmed by the pace of that change. Would you say that Pervasive Media Studio, being part of your day-to-day community and them being very much innovation and cutting-edge edge focused, gives you a better understanding of how technology is moving and where it's moving to, and then be how that may have an impact on watershed as an organization and how you might respond to and deal with some of those impacts?
Speaker 2:yes, I definitely do. I mean, mean, watershed has an AI policy which I don't think loads of organisations do have, and our AI policy is basically one that says there's loads of different ways. You know, ai is many different things In terms of generative AI, please play with it, but don't deploy it and always label it. Please play with it, but don't deploy it and always label it. And so, again, it's a sort of careful exploration of a space, and I think that definitely is something that the studio opens our eyes and points to. Again, we can follow the expertise of the communities that we're working on. But also, we've just commissioned six prototypes in a program called AI Sandbox, which are looking at. If you modeled artificial intelligence on nature rather than capitalism, like what would the outcome be? So I think that's another point of learning.
Speaker 2:I guess we should say that Watershed has not always been great at putting on our own oxygen mask, so our systems are abysmal. We've just spent like and like. I've got great teams who have not had investment for many years in our own system. So we've been doing digital innovation, but we haven't been doing systems. So we finally just got a new box office system, which is great. We are in the middle of scoping and briefing new financial systems, which is really useful too.
Speaker 2:So the boring stuff I guess we have not been great at, but what we do have is a full-time head of data and that's been really useful in being able to use technology to give us business information, to spot trends and particularly for balance and belonging, which is a way that we look at the experience of working with watershed every year. So we intersectionally look at people's lived experience and cultural backgrounds and we use that to understand whether certain types of backgrounds impact on people's enjoyment of working at watershed, or whether they feel respected, or whether they feel like they get all of the admin work or whether they get opportunities. And that's a fairly big piece of work every year and you know that's exciting and that is because we are seeped in the possibilities and opportunities of digital.
Speaker 1:Returning to an earlier thing that is sort of come out of the possibilities of digital, I'd like to talk a bit about watershed, and you know you said that was a response to a market failure. You know there was a lack of spaces where immersive experiences and immersive work could be showcased and it felt appropriate for watershed to sort of address that gap. But tell us a bit more about undershed and you know, as we sit here at the end of the summer in 2024, what your current plans are for it.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, obviously there are quite a lot of immersive stuff going on in the UK at the moment and across the world, but a lot of them are like large spectacle based pieces, so they've cost a lot of money. They're often sort of single experiences, or you know, it's Van Gogh 3D or it's Marshmallow Laser Feast at the factory, both really brilliant things, but are different to the kind of curated program that we're looking at with immersive. So Sing the Body Electric is the first exhibition. It's an exhibition in two parts that we'll be launching in October and it's about the kind of role of your body in immersive experiences. And so we very much are curating group shows that aren't all VR. There will be some VR, but it's about all of the ways that immersive technologies work. The work is coming from around the world, so it's sort of some of the best things that we've seen that respond to that theme. It's diverse. It comes from a range of creatives doing a range of exciting work. I guess, for watershed is exciting because we'll be programming across the cinema and the immersive space. So this is about theming our program. It won't just be locked in the gallery and we'll be learning about.
Speaker 2:How do you talk with audiences about this work. I don't think that's clear yet. How do you ticket the work? Like that's not clear yet. How much will people pay for it? Like all of that.
Speaker 2:So I don't expect we'll get it right first time.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's a scarily long list of questions that we don't know the answers to but we're starting to play, and then long list of questions that we don't know the answers to but we're starting to play, and then we hope there'll be three exhibitions a year.
Speaker 2:The exhibitions will be like six to eight weeks and then in the slots between there'll be a mixture of us using it for hire, probably so that we can make some money, and also other people coming in to put exhibitions in that space who've got arts council funding, perhaps for tours. None of that would result in a sustainable business for artists if it was just us. So we're also launching a national immersive network which will start with four venues that we'll be working closely with on touring, sharing, knowledge sharing, and we plan next summer to open a summer school so that we can share everything we've done. We'll publish all of our contracts and budgets and tech specs and things. So the hope is that Undershed is like an example, a kind of proof of concept that other people can build off of and use to launch their own spaces, or to use their own spaces to show immersive work.
Speaker 1:That's so exciting and it's really brilliant that the sort of watershedness is absolutely, you know, running through the work you're doing with Undershed like a stick of rock and you know it feels like all of that sharing is something our sector could do more of, I think, and so it's really exciting to hear that you're already planning to do that, maybe. Lastly, before we finish, I'm just curious to hear your perspective on our wonderful sector. You are a leader of a cultural institution who comes from well, the background you talked about. You're comfortable with technology, you are comfortable and interested in digital stuff, and you have found yourself at an institution that is also comfortable and interested in this stuff. But do you have a perspective on how the wider cultural sector, especially leadership, perhaps could be or should be thinking about? You know, digital things as something more than just marketing or a sort of commercial strand of activity. I mean, you've talked a bit about some of the benefits that can blossom from it over the last hour.
Speaker 2:I guess I personally believe that I mean, even museums need to stay relevant, but cultural organizations are not about preserving art forms. It's not about an archive of culture. It's about staying relevant, encouraging the experimentation and the opening up of art forms. Audiences and artists don't stick in silos. They definitely don't go. Oh no, I'm only a visual arts person and so if you're going to step into that space of relevance and possibility and kind of contemporary engagement with art, of course digital technology is one of the tools that you're going to be looking at within your art form. It's not the only tool, but it's something that anyone seriously facing the future I think should be looking at how they understand and support artists who are working in that space, and what audiences want and what audiences are scared by, and how we can build up those competencies. I guess, because otherwise you are just sort of working in a preservation factory rather than an exploration space.
Speaker 1:And you know, for leaders who are maybe intimidated by digital competency, you know they wouldn't know where to start. Do you have any words of wisdom?
Speaker 2:like, well, I don't know, because I've really run towards anything that scares me, like that seems important. So I think it's important that we move into challenge spaces or get out the way, like that's something I really learned from Dick Penny as well. Is that there? You know, there are times when it's important to look around and say who's doing this better than me and I, and stop doing what you're doing and do something else, or stop completely. I think that's important for culture leaders to be like okay, this is scary and challenging. What is our play in it? And if it, if it's not for us, how do we empower others or get out the way?
Speaker 1:and, on that note, claire reddington, thank you so much for giving me some of your time today oh, it was really lush.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for asking such lush questions and that is everything for today.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. You can find all episodes of the podcast, sign up for the newsletter and find out about our events on our website, thedigitalworks. You can also find us on LinkedIn, now that Twitter is a total garbage fire. 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.
