How to commission digital projects creatively and with gusto

In March we delivered a new workshop session, with ico Design, for the Arts Council and BBC collaboration 'Building Digital Capacity for the Arts'. Our session was designed to help people in the arts put together an appropriate and creative commissioning process and write good briefing documents for their digital projects.

We worked closely with David Rogerson from ico Design to make sure that the materials, examples and workshop exercises were informed by both sides of the commissioning equation.

We got some great feedback and I think our materials may well have utility beyond the arts community and we have certainly used the thinking in many other circumstances. We created three downloadable PDFs that you can use when you are about to embark on a new commission. They are available on the Arts Council website as part of a great summary blog post of the session, and I have linked to them directly below as well.

Digital commissioning process
This pack identifies the critical stages in a digital commissioning process. It offers a series of questions and challenges for each step of the process, and finishes with a one-page overview.

Internal processes for ideas development
This pack offers six processes to help develop and test the substance of your idea so it is ready to be put into a brief.

Brief components and project brief canvas
This pack lists the key components of a digital brief, with some questions and prompts to get you started. It also includes a template to help think through your project, identify information for your brief and provide a framework to develop your idea.

Digital trends for the arts

I was recently asked by IT4Arts to present an overview of some of the significant digital trends for art organisations, artists and audiences and give some thought as to how we might apply the lessons learnt to our future activity. These are the slides I used, but with added speaker's notes in smaller text to help the slides make more sense on their own. I'd definitely suggest using the fullscreen button with this one.

It was a great evening and I got to meet a really diverse bunch of people all thinking hard about what digital really can bring to the arts.

What we do

We often have to explain who we are and just exactly what are we doing. We thought it would be a good idea to explain all that by just giving an overview of our current roster of projects. Some of them started last year and some are only just under way. Instead of waiting for everything to finish we wanted to give a sense of the range and type of project that we deliver.

We are part way through delivering a digital strategy for the global thought leader on sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene services - IRC.

We have recently begun work with Futurelearn, a new UK platform for Massively Open Online Courses supported by the Open University, for whom we have developed initial thinking around a product vision and user proposition, and are now moving rapidly into providing product management and content coordination for the design and build of the platform.

We are creating a rapid strategic framework and coordinating the development of a set of new digital products for the relaunch of the Serpentine Gallery later in the year.

We have partnered with Tellart to work with Wellcome Collection to create a new approach to user engagement around their digital collections.

We are extremely proud and happy to be continuing our work with the groundbreaking arts organisation Heart n Soul. We have been appointed as their digital associates for 2013 and will be looking to develop their approach to digital activity in support of their mission.

In our second partnership with Tellart, we are working with the BBC's Knowledge and Learning department to develop a pilot around user relationships with time and content. This follows hot on the heels of our work for KandL on the the development of their approach to 'Transmedia Commissioning'.

There are no end of collaboration configurations happening at the moment. We've been asked by the BBC and the Arts Council to create a new training workshop and legacy materials as part of their 'Building Digital Capacity for the Arts' programme. This one will focus on the thorny world of commissioning for digital projects and we've decided to hook up with design agency ico Design to ensure we have all points of view represented.

After delivering the keynote at the Arts Marketing Association's digital day we were really pleased to be asked stick our necks on the line again, this time by IT4Arts. They asked us to deliver a session that summarises the important trends around digital approaches to the arts and give some pointers on how to shape a digital strategy for 2013 and beyond. I really enjoyed the other sessions and it was great to hear the latest thinking from Andrew Downs on his approach to increasing digital engagement with the Proms. I will publish our slides here shortly.

Unthinkable gets a little bigger and better

2013 has started on a great footing for us with the addition of two new Unthinkables. We're very excited to have brought Matt Walton and Roland Taylor into the fold. Both have them have a superb digital pedigree. Matt has delivered ambitious digital projects for the BBC including the Music website, Radiotimes.com and BBC Worldwide. Recently he's product managed the educational tablet and mobile apps Atlas by Collins and Brian Cox's Wonders of the Universe both selected as two of Apple's apps of 2012.  Roland was recently the Director of Digital and Participation at the English National Opera, before that he was the Interactive Editor for the Proms and Radio 3, bringing many innovations to both.

We have also kicked off a fantastic new partnership with Tellart. We think that the combination of Unthinkable's strategic thinking and Tellart's expertise in prototyping and delivering experiences that combine the physical and the digital will be an exciting and useful one for our clients. We have begun our relationship with two new projects - a prototype for BBC's Knowledge and Learning and the development of a new user engagement approach for the Wellcome Collection.

Unthinkable to survey 2012's digital trends for the arts at IT4Arts' Digital Evening

We were very pleased to be asked back to do a session for IT4Arts. IT4Arts is a programme run by the Arts Panel of the Information Technologists’ Company (www.wcit.org.uk), one of the City of London Livery Companies, as part of its charitable work.

Our last session was on the effect of copyright culture on digital creativity and how the emerging opportunites were shaping up. This one will focus on significant digital trends for the arts and how we might make use of those insights to inform our developing digital strategies.

I'm not sure of the protocol for signing up, but if you can't make it and are interested, I will publish any materials on Slideshare afterwards.