Chris Unitt

A short history of who builds arts websites

I made a fancy widget, and this post is my excuse to put it somewhere. You’ll have to scroll down to see it. If you can delay gratification for just a moment, though, I’ll tell you a quick story. When agencies ruled the land Once upon a time,

Digital project types revisited: reactive vs proactive

A few weeks back, I wrote about mapping digital project types as a way of understanding what's meant (or perhaps should be meant) by 'digital transformation' in an arts and culture context. If you missed it, or your eyes glazed over too soon, I came up

Mapping digital project types in the arts and culture sector

For some reason, the phrase 'digital transformation' has reared its head a few times recently. I sort of hoped it had gone away. It's possibly because we're going through one of those occasional periods of digital instability (particularly around social platforms and the potential

Defining 'data' for cultural organisation: data horizons

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve read and listened to a couple of good things about ‘data’ in the cultural sector – the challenges, opportunities, and what to do about it all. In doing so, it occurred to me that a term as broad as ‘data’ is only a

Obstacles to developing digital-centric business models in the arts

The other day I was asked how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted the business models of UK performing arts organisations. More specifically (because obvious answer is obvious), has there been an increase in the number of digital initiatives, or have there been other important implications? I sent back the answer

Actually yes, people do want virtual museum tours

UPDATE: this was written in July 2020. As of December 2024, people aren't searching for this stuff anywhere near as much. Short version: Contrary to what you might have been told, lots of people are still searching online for virtual museums. Also, be careful with Google Trends data,

Questions about the cultural sector's pivot to digital

I’ve been wanting to write something about the digital aspects of how cultural organisations have reacted to the shutdown, but… Well, firstly, there’s just too much going on. Every ‘what if…’ thought experiment from the past twenty years is currently playing out allatonce. There’s been a flood

The what, why and how of Cultural Digital: Streams

I’ve put together a simple website at streams.culturaldigital.com to list lots of the performances, classes, and more that are being put online by cultural organisations while they’re closed. Here’s a bit of info about the what it is, why I put it together, and how.

Future-proofing websites

A recent tweet asked… Almost every website brief we receive has a section titled ‘Future proofing’. What do other people put in that section? How can a website be future proofed? — Cog Design (@cog_design) September 30, 2019 The short answer Use widely accepted web standards and a well-supported

A list of cultural / digital development programmes

Over the years there have been all sorts of publicly funded programmes aimed at getting cultural organisations to do more/better digital stuff. Details of many of these programmes are fading away, with domain names lapsing and pages being culled as part of website redesigns. So, for posterity, here’s