Here are three things from last week.
Cost of living
Last week I had a long, interesting, and sometimes slightly depressing conversation with someone who runs a fairly large theatre in London.
We were doing a bit of ‘speculative futurology’ about the role that culture might need to play in the UK in 12–18 months time. The country will be undoubtedly poorer, public subsidy will have declined, things will probably have become more divisive.
What people will be looking for from their cultural experiences is likely to be different, to a greater or lesser extent, than it has been over recent years. They will also be far more discerning with their spending, and will have numerous other, cheaper, easier ways they could choose to spend their time.
We didn’t come up with any definitive answers but it does feel as though things need to change. These aren’t new questions (this article by Lyn Gardener in the Guardian from almost 10 years ago asks “Why is so much theatre so dull”) but the urgency with which the sector needs to engage with them is only going to increase.
Collaboration over competition
Last week we held the most recent of our Partner Forums which are a part of our Tech In Culture EDI Alliance work. These Partner Forums provide a space for the organisations who have joined the Alliance to come together, share their experiences (successes, and challenges), ask questions, and have an honest conversation about their EDI work.
I am so grateful that almost 2 years after we started the Alliance that the Partners continue to so wholeheartedly engage. These conversations are so valuable, and they bring together such a diverse group of organisations working in, with, and adjacent to the cultural sector including many who would be, in other setting, direct competitors. I think it speaks to the importance that organisations are placing on this work that they’re willing and able to set that competition to one side in order to try and make widespread progress.
This time around we talked about how to reach and engage with more diverse candidates (and talked about thinking about diversity through a variety of lenses), how you can further improve your recruitment practices once you have addressed some of the ‘obvious’ barriers to inclusion, how to honestly and constructively share progress (and challenges) around EDI initiatives, and much more.
Hospitals
I had to spend some time in hospital (specifically Homerton hospital in east London) last week and had a few observations:
- Hospitals are a UX/Service Design nightmare. The wayfinding alone drove me into furious, helpless confusion. I ended up walking to every part of the hospital, it took me over 40 minutes to get where I needed to be. Signs which bear no relation to any of the words you’ve got on the various letters and texts you’ve received, you’re told ‘you are in the green zone’ with no indication what the green zone is, how you got there, or what colour zone you might want to go to. It feels like a straightforward thing to try and get right when your users are people who are likely to be in distress, or at the very least, quite stressed.
- The staff are amazing. I’m not saying this is the case everywhere but when I was eventually being medicalised I couldn’t have felt any better looked after, everyone was so kind and considerate, they made sure I felt safe and knew what was going on. I have nothing but good things to say about them.
- Having also recently spent time in a German hospital (it has been a summer of ill health) I was struck by how sad and run down our hospitals felt in comparison. Nothing massive, the German hospitals weren’t gleaming palaces of steel and glass, they just felt tidier, more cared for, and more modern. This is almost entirely due to political decisions in the UK, but it feels like we need to have a proper conversation about how we fund our healthcare system, and what we spend our money on as our population ages and increasingly struggles with long-term health problems.
