John Kelly in the chair…

Question to David McKenna RTE… does RTE still see itself as Andrew Keen described the BBC ?

Never did.  This is a small country, listeners and viewers.  They feel they own the space we work in.  The stories we tell are their stories.  Very important we have that relationship.  New media is qualitatively different.  Ideas of judgement and expertise come from the Web (eg Trip Adviser) What could this mean for the Arts? There is no lack in freely available opinion.  It’ll be the interaction between the panelists.  And the conversation could continue afterwards. 

Curation of a public space: not suggesting we hand over the space to the audience for the benefit of the audience.

Dance in the box website.  I’ve not seen it.  Daily dance blog. Not just a review.  Immediate opinion.  Combining:

what happened,

who was there,

and review.

Stephanie O’Callaghan, Arts Council.

We want to start a conversation today… aware of the potential of new media… artists using media to produce new work… really open up a discourse and dialogue among people working in the arts…

Has the AC got the expertise to sustain this?

We don’t have the answers… we’re keen to enter into partnership… we can lead… the discussion here today… 

Andrew Taylor, Bolz Center: are we having a conversation we should have had a long time ago?

No, this is the conversation I hear at conferences all over the place. A great time to be having it now. Extraordinary opportunity Ireland has: a small market… a few major funders, boulders.  You could become a hothouse for innovation if you wanted to be… Less could be more…  now everyone has to have a blogger on the staff… (no one suggested the blogger should be on the staff)… we should be doing this, but nothing getting done… Systemic blockage…  Pull some levers and see what happens…

Open to the floor:

(1) Man, question: Arts Council needs to lead and to fund…If we delay, will be miss it all.

Artists act and then think about what they’ve done: act first, reflect later.  In other words, do it now, and think about it as they are doing it. Reflective practice. An art organisation should focus with extraordinary clarity on what it can do best…. Tiny interventions that change the systems: pay a blogger a penny for each ticket bought.

(2) Damian Mulley: could I have my content back… hand it over to people who would look after it… put up all your archives… more people would become interested in art… you have to give it out to them… you can’t download it… and it’s shit quality.

RTE response: let’s park the archive thing.  Legal issues.  Beckett experience was so hard for us to use the archive material.  Resources involved in clarifying the legal situation,

Andrew Taylor: release all right to future content… a new contract… a fair use agreement…

JK: I wouldn’t resist.

RTE: we’re setting up systems… Issues around revenue: the content we have is worth money on the internet… impediment: if there’s any possibility of getting revenue from it, they won’t agree to this idea.  arts@rte.ie: move to centralise media and data… our use of it could be more sophisticated