Project blog

Katherine Jewkes making sure we knew when each session's time was up

Following the Digital Producers Lab that Watershed ran in collaboration with National Theatre Wales at the start of the month, we held a catch-up session with the Digital Producers in Cardiff. The twelve digital producers, selected from a range of creative disciplines, have had a few weeks to digest the contents of the lab and we were eager to see what impact it had had upon their work. With this in mind, the theme of the last day was financing projects.

In the morning Seth Jackson from Strange Thoughts spoke to the group about his work in brand based funding. He explained that there are two ways in which ideas get off the ground: sometimes he receives a brief from a brand and knows someone with an interesting project that fits the brief, so he approaches the artist, pitches the idea and then works to find a common ground between the artist and brand. At other times he receives a brief, and creates a round table of interesting people to come up with an idea, and then pitches this idea and those people to the brand.

He was really frank, that this way of working does use art as an advertising medium, that relationships between artists and brands can be high risk and usually involves making some degree of compromise on both sides. A large part of Seth’s job is managing these relationships and understanding each party before and during collaborations. When it works it can be great and symbiotic but sometimes, even if it feels like you're making a big compromise as an artist, it can give you a heap load of cash that will fund projects you do want to do for the following years. It’s certainly an interesting, and currently relevant area to consider.

In the afternoon the Digital Producers split up into smaller groups to take part in a series of discussion groups with invited guests.

These guests included (amongst others):

Lisa Mathews, Arts Council Wales

Rob Ashelford, NESTA

Shonagh Manson, Jerwood Charitable Foundation

Kieron Kirkland, Nominet Trust

Iain Tweedale, BBC

Huw Marshall, S4C

Erin Bunting, British Council

Guests introduced themselves and their institution, explained how their funding is being focused in the months and years to come, and discussed what their organisations priorities are currently. Some institutions saw digital products as an interwoven strand of the arts; others were more interested in add-ons to more traditional formats. The guests also offered professional development advice. They stressed the important of networking, developing contacts and relationships both with individuals and institutions.

Clare Reddington led the final reflection session. This was an opportunity for the conversations that emerged though the smaller groups to be fed back to the group as a whole. It was also clear that the Digital Producers Lab has fostered collaborations within the group – some have already taken place and there are quite a few more in the pipeline. As a final exercise each participant was asked to contribute three words that they felt summed up the programme.

You’ll be able to see what people had to say when we release the video that we’ve been making throughout the Digital Producers Lab, later in December, and in the meantime, you can check our out Storify here