Culture of Innovation: An Economic Analysis of Innovation in Arts and Cultural Organisations

The report tackles the question of how cultural organisations can find ways to innovate in the tightest funding environment they’ve ever faced.

Innovation in the arts is analysed through the prism of the National Theatre (NT) and the Tate. Both are leading innovators.
The two organisations provide insights into: innovation in audience reach; innovation in art form development; innovation in value creation, and business model innovation.
Not only are new digital technologies bringing new audiences to arts and cultural organisations, they are creating new sources of cultural and economic value, and even taking the art form itself in new directions.
There remain questions surrounding this topic which would benefit from research-led experimentation on the part of arts and cultural organisations.

Seemingly a paradox exists in the arts: creativity and novelty lie at the heart of all artistic endeavour, yet funders call on arts and cultural organisations to be more innovative.

Understanding this paradox is one of the reasons why Nesta embarked on the research on which this report is based. Working with one of the world’s leading cultural economists and two of the UK’s premier cultural institutions, the report proposes a framework for innovation that can be used by both arts funders and arts organisations. It describes the rich ways that arts and cultural organisations innovate in audience reach, push out artistic frontiers and create economic and cultural value.