“Over the last twenty years, audiences for museums, galleries, and performing arts institutions have decreased, and the audiences that remain are older and whiter than the overall population. Cultural institutions argue that their programs provide unique cultural and civic value, but increasingly people have turned to other sources for entertainment, learning, and dialogue. They share their artwork, music, and stories with each other on the Web. They participate in politics and volunteer in record numbers. They even read more. But they don’t attend museum exhibits and performances like they used to.”

The text above is a statement from the preface of The Participatory Museum: a book/guide to working with community members and visitors for cultural institutions. All the more alarming is that the statement is actually based on research done by the National Endowment for the Arts on arts attendance in the United States. Nina Simon (also the principal of Museum 2.0) decided to write The Participatory Museum as a practical guide for museums and other cultural organizations to help them become more connected to and entwined with their community. As she continues in her preface:

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This blogpost is in Dutch, because the article it refers to is also in Dutch.

Op de Incubate Pirate Conference leidt Atze de Vrieze (3voor12) morgen het panel na de keynote speech van Matt Mason. Op zijn blog plaatste Atze gisteren een mooi artikel over piraterij / voorbeschouwing van de conferentie. Lees hem hier in zijn geheel.

“Feit is – daar ben ik van overtuigd – dat piraterij niet meer weg gaat. De hardnekkige pogingen van bestrijders doen denken aan een spelletje van drie lange jongens die de bal van een klein jongetje overgooien. Waarom het niet meer weg gaat? Omdat er technisch zoveel mogelijk is dat het niet te stoppen is. Maar vooral: omdat het helemaal te gek is. Dat moeten de meeste artiesten/muziekprofessionals ook zien. Zij zijn toch ook muziekliefhebbers? DJ /rupture zag het. De dj uit New York is vrijdag ook te gast in het panel na afloop van Matt Mason’s lezing. Rupture schreef in 2007 een ode aan Oink, een torrentcommunity die door politie en piraterijbestrijders uit de lucht gehaald werd. Defending The Pig, naar het schattige varkentje uit het logo.”

“Oink was inderdaad geweldig. Je kon er alles vinden wat je maar wilde, in gegarandeerd hoge kwaliteit. Die garantie ging zelfs zo ver dat het gratis te downloaden Radiohead-album In Rainbows, dat uit 160 kbps mp3′s bestond, er vanaf gegooid werd wegens slecht geluid. Rupture zegt er dit over: “Oink had everything by certain artists. Literally, everything. I searched for ‘DJ Rupture’ and found every release I’d ever done, from an obscure 7″ on a Swedish label to 320kpbs rips of my first 12″, self-released back in 1999. It was shocking. And reassuring. The big labels want music to equal money, but as much as anything else, music is memory, as priceless and worthless as memory. About a week after I shipped out orders of the first live CD-r Andy Moor & I did, it appeared on Oink. Someone who had purchased it directly from me turned around and posted it online, for free. I wasn’t mad, I was just more stunned by the reach and usefulness of the site.”

On September 12, Charles Leadbeater will open the Incubate festival week with a lecture on social innovation and the role the arts can play in this process. Charles Leadbeater is a leading authority on innovation and creativity. He is Tony Blair’s favourite corporate thinker. He has advised companies, cities and governments on innovation strategy and drew on that experience in writing his latest book We-think: the power of mass creativity. This book charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation from science and open source software, to computer games and political campaigning.

In 2009, Charles Leadbeater wrote the essay ‘The Art of With’; a most interesting and highly recommended text on the practices of the (avant garde) art and how it stands in opposition to the art and the world of to and for:

Often in the name of doing things for people traditional, hierarchical organisations end up doing things to people. Companies say they work for consumers but often treat them like targets to be aimed at, wallets to be emptied, desires to be excited and manipulated.

The arts, and the modern avant garde in particular, has stood in opposition to this commodified, regimented world of to and for. The arts offer a space for contemplation and reflection, challenge and controversy, higher meanings and deeper purpose. Yet in its way the modern art world and modern arts institutions embody the principles of to and for just as powerfully as the modern factory or school.

The modern, iconoclastic avant garde starts from the idea of separation and specialism. To produce good art, artists have to separate themselves off from the society around them – physically, emotionally, morally, socially – the artist as a self-styled resistance fighter pitted against the trivialising distractions of popular culture. The untrammelled imagination of the avant garde artist is one of the last redoubts against bourgeoise, traditional, commodified culture.

Further on in the essay, Leadbeater goes on talking about the resemblances and role of the web within this context; how the art and the web of with drive innovation:

The appeal of the web, however, stems from the way it connects to and amplifies the idea of with in other areas of life. The working ethos of open source communities, Wikipedia and the web more generally is a culture in which people work with people. In the world of the web the main principle is that you can freely communicate with anyone you need to regardless of title or hierarchy.

Innovation invariably comes from a version of with: creative collaboration and conversation in which people share and blend their ideas. With should be the guiding principle of politics in liberal communities: politicians working with people to find solutions to shared problems. People want a more gown up, bottom up, conversational politics rather than being spun messages or broadcast to from on high.

Download the full essay by Charles Leadbeater here in a pdf file. The text is licensed under Creative Commons. Presale for the Charles Leadbeater lecture & panel has begun. Tickets are for sale through the website of Incubate.

After the success of his book The Pirate’s Dilemma, Matt Mason is of course talking all over the world about innovation in the cultural scene, youth cultures and how to compete with pirates. Here are some interesting videos on some of his talks, in preparation to his keynote speech at the Incubate Pirate Conference on September 17. First off, here’s a great promotional clip for his book, which is a great introduction in the subject of his book, if you haven’t read it yet:

Remember, you can still get a digital copy of the book via the Pirate’s Dilemma website, and you’re able to name your own price for it. Next is a video of a speech Matt gave at the Deutscher Trendtag last year. In this presentation, he discusses the topics of his book. Entitled The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, he talks about how underground cultures have brought on the most innovative ideas, which later often have been adopted by many businesses. He also explains how to compete with piracy, stating that it not only has negative effects but that pirates sometimes also create solutions that literally change people’s lives. Again, his conclusion is very clear and clever: if you want to beat pirates, copy them: