REMIX Summits Co-founder Simon Cronshaw was recently commissioned by INSPIRE TÜRKİYE to produce a new online talk on the theme of ‘The Disruptive Mindset’ as part of its INSPIRE masterclass series.
WARNING! This talk is designed to be provocative and uncomfortable, just like disruption. It’ll hopefully spark debate and reaction… disruption is not the cosy, controllable word we often like to use it as.
In this talk, Simon explores three tensions currently bubbling under the cultural and creative industries; outlines a set of principles that are consistent across cultural disruptions that last; and considers some practical strategies that can increase the likelihood of success for major new disruptions across our cultural and creative sectors.
The Disruptive Mindset: Transcript
by Simon Cronshaw – Co-founder, REMIX Summits · February 2025
Contents & Quick Links
I. DISRUPTION IN THE CULTURAL & CREATIVE SECTORS
II. PRINIPLES FOR ‘GOOD’ DISRUPTION (THAT STICKS)
III. ACTION POINTS FOR SUCCESS
Introduction
Today I’m here to talk about disruption and the disruptive mindset.
To begin with, I just want us to pause for a minute and think about what we mean by that word: disruption. Disruption is a word that is often overused; it’s often used very casually. Yet disruption can have deep ramifications.
Disruption means interruption. Disruption means radical change. Disruption is not the incremental improvements we often associate with innovation. No – disruption goes far, far deeper than that. It involves a total and utter reinvention of our norms, of our expectations, and of our assumptions. Disruption completely reimagines how we do things and what we take for granted.
Disruption also upends current structures, gatekeepers and interests.
When we think about it, the power structures of the cultural and creative industries involve many different gatekeepers. They can filter and restrict access to resources and audiences, to distribution channels, to cultural capital – to what’s considered cool or important versus what’s not. These powerful incumbents can come in the form of cultural institutions, funding bodies or commercial operators. Within the cultural and creative industries, they create centres of power, centres of influence; and they have significant impact on how and where cultural value is created.
Because disruption involves such big, fundamental change, it can be terrifying to live through. If you’re an incumbent – with power and influence – being on the wrong side of history in a disruptive moment can be a serious threat to your very existence; it can be both scary and disorientating. The future you planned and assumed suddenly no longer even exists. There’s no guarantee you’ll have a place or a role or any ongoing power and influence within the newly-disrupted order of things.
Much of my talk will be viewed through the eyes of the disrupter, rather than the current incumbents, or the disrupted. But I want us to bear in mind that for every disruptive winner, there are also losers from disruption. For every Netflix there’s an incumbent Blockbuster Video; for every Canon, there’s a incumbent Kodak; for every Amazon and Spotify, there are thousands of incumbent local record stores and book shops.
So if you are an incumbent in the cultural and creative sectors at the moment, in a position of power and influence, I cannot stress enough how important it is to consider your response to the issues we’ll explore in this talk.
Adapt or die.
That is the rule of disruption. And the cultural and creative sectors are not exempt from this.
I’m going to explore the disruptive mindset in three sections. Firstly, I want to look at where disruption is currently emerging within the cultural and creative sectors, focusing on three deep-rooted tensions. I then secondly want to move on to introduce what I call ‘rules for good disruption’, or a set of principles that I believe are consistent across the disruptions that last. Thirdly, I want to consider some practical strategies and approaches that I believe will increase the likelihood of success for major new disruptions and which I’d like to see enacted far more widely.
I. DISRUPTION IN THE CULTURAL & CREATIVE SECTORS
So firstly, where is disruption currently emerging within the cultural and creative sectors?
I suspect you’ll be expecting me to focus on disruption from new technologies: Artificial Intelligence, immersive art experiences, decentralisation, new digital platforms and so forth. These do indeed represent huge disruptions, opportunities and threats, and we’ll certainly reference them. But I believe there are even more fundamental disruptions bubbling under the surface of the cultural and creative sectors. Technology may even help resolve some of the tensions; but technology is always the tool – never the solution in and of itself.
So going back to basics, disruption erupts from tensions. When tensions can’t be resolved, they eventually split whole industries and operating models apart. And in our case, new disruptive solutions will emerge – and are emerging – which rewrite some of those core assumptions we have as a cultural sector.
Let’s look in detail at three tensions currently within the cultural sector. These tensions are accelerating and gaining in strength; already forming the basis of major disruptions yet to come.
The three tensions I want to talk about are:
- A crisis of legitimacy
- A crisis of supply versus demand
- A crisis of competition
A crisis of legitimacy
So let’s begin with the first tension, the crisis of legitimacy. Nearly 20 years ago, John Holden in his work for UK think-tank Demos argued that culture needs a democratic mandate: it couldn’t continue to largely benefit one section of the population alone. This is a pattern we see repeated around the world when it comes to cultural engagement: exactly who participates in cultural activities should be a cause of major alarm to all cultural professionals; specifically, how utterly limited participation is when viewed through the lenses of class or wealth, gender and ethnicity.
In their 2020 book Culture is Bad for You, with an updated version due next month, academics Orian Brook, Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor delivered a compelling analysis. They carefully argued that the creative and cultural industries are not open, egalitarian or meritocratic. Culture – irrespective of whether it’s mass-market pop culture or more high-brow culture, excludes. And exclusion from culture begins at an early age and persists thereafter in both audiences and workforce across gender, ethnicity and class.
20 years on from John Holden’s work, the situation has not improved. It’s actually got worse.
This is now an existential threat for the future of the cultural sector as we know it.
Why? Because we’re living in an era of budget constraints, difficult public spending choices, and, most importantly, consumers faced with an overwhelming array of options competing for their finite time and attention. Arts and culture as we know it is in a dangerous position.
We hear over and over that culture improves your wellbeing and health; that culture unites communities; that culture is good for you. These and similar messages are endlessly repeated by both policy makers and cultural professionals. We also use increasingly sophisticated measurements to try and quantify impacts such as these.
Yet despite significant investment in audience development over these last few decades, little overall has changed in terms of the general composition of audiences for arts and culture. 20 years on from John Holden’s work, we are still facing a crisis of legitimacy: our cultural provision continues to still largely benefit only one section of the population.
Audience Development
So let’s look a little deeper at this question of audience development: how we frame and approach the development of new audiences is a critical question. Those of you from a cultural policy background are likely to be familiar with these concepts, but I’ve recently spoken to several arts practitioners and cultural professionals for whom these concepts are less familiar, so I think they’re worth mentioning.
In his recent book, Audience Development and Cultural Policy, Steven Hadley of the National University of Ireland traces the relatively recent history of audience development.
He explores the tensions between two schools of thought: the Art Lover tradition on one hand, which seeks to widen public access to existing culture – also referred to as the democratisation of culture. In other words, cultural professionals and institutions sharing their love of great work and thereby broadening public taste.
The second school of thought is the Social Justice tradition, which seeks to enable a more democratic cultural base – put simply, it means widening what we define as cultural activity, perhaps to include activities such as shopping, gardening and internet use; also referred to as cultural democracy. This school of thought considers the outcomes of engagement to be more important than the art form.
These two schools of thought – the Art Lover and the Social Justice traditions – aren’t mutually exclusive nor are they in total opposition. But they are engaged in a constant dance towards reconciliation; searching for an equitable balance between the democratisation of culture (or widening public access and engagement with existing culture), and cultural democracy (or widening the definition of what constitutes what is defined as culture).
Hadley uses Arts Council England as a perfect illustration of this tension. In its annual report from 1976, its chairman Lord Gibson said they were “totally opposed” to “the belief that because standards have been set by the traditional arts and because those arts are little enjoyed by the broad mass of people, the concept of quality is ‘irrelevant’. The term cultural democracy,” he goes on to say, “has been invoked by those who think in this way, to describe a policy which rejects discrimination between good and bad and cherishes the romantic notion that there is a “cultural dynamism” in the people, which will emerge if only they can be liberated from the cultural values hitherto accepted by an elite and from what one European ‘cultural expert’ has recently called ‘the cultural colonialism of the middle classes’.”
Fast forward to 2020, and Arts Council England’s Let’s Create strategy stated that: “We do not believe that certain types or scales of creative activity are inherently better or of greater value than others.” Indeed, everyone is – or at least has the potential to be – creative. “…excellence can be found in village halls and concert halls,” it goes on to explain, “and in both the process of participation and the work that is produced.”
These deep conflicts and tensions within the field of audience development cut to the heart of this crisis of legitimacy. Many incumbent cultural institutions have attempted to resolve the crisis by trying to broaden their audiences. But in doing so, they face some of the issues associated with the problematic notion of cultivating taste: defining and promoting the ‘correct’ culture we should all be consuming, as decided by them as cultural gatekeepers.
Moreover, how do we overcome what is referred to as the ‘problem of non-participation’? Or as Steven Hadley goes on to explain, the assumption that if only we remove physical and psychological barriers to accessing arts and culture, the general population will consume the culture we supply. This can be easily seen as both patronising and corrupt. Or, in the challenging words of Professor Jonathan Neelands from Warwick University:
“…it’s patently ridiculous for a bunch of slightly detached, possibly elitist, quite kind of obscure cultural practitioners, who are themselves shunned, rejected and excluded from the mainstream of society, to lament that society is excluded from them.”
This crisis of legitimacy – the democratic mandate for what we do as a cultural sector – may be resolved through the democratisation of culture and/or through a more democratic cultural base. Both options are tensions ripe for major new disruptive forces: how we distribute our cultural content more effectively, and how we widen what we regard as cultural activity. indeed some of these disruptions are already here. You could easily argue that Instagram is the world’s number one gallery. It’s where many people go to be creative. Netflix documentaries and history podcasts are where you go to learn. The population – perhaps – has already voted with its attention.
Now with this first tension, I’ve fallen into the trap that we often do as a cultural sector. I’ve started with us and what we do, rather than the general population, and where their hearts and minds are at.
A crisis of supply versus demand
This leads me straight into the second tension: the crisis of supply versus demand. What we’re supplying as a cultural and creative sector versus what the general population – and particularly non-users, the majority of the population – are demanding.
Let me begin with the good news. We’re making good progress as cultural and creative sectors to better represent the people we serve through our programming and collections; widening the cultural base of what we’re offering. This involves highlighting more inclusive and diverse stories, backgrounds, histories and talent. When I look through the schedule from January’s REMIX Summit London this year, there are so many great examples of cultural institutions broadening their output.
To highlight just a handful, I’d mention:
- Manchester Museum – who have pivoted to become an ‘empathy machine’, understanding and encouraging an emotional response to its collections, and creating an inclusive, imaginative and caring museum, and embracing the city’s South Asian population;
- Or London’s Young V&A, Art Fund’s Museum of the Year, and their incredible work in reaching out to Gen Alpha and their parents;
- Or the BBC’s new Radio 3 Unwind channel, tapping into younger audience desires for using classical music for wellbeing and to escape the pressures of daily life;
- Or Sadler’s Wells East – a new kind of dance venue at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, offering a flexible theatre space and six studios to combine East London’s local roots with national impact and global perspectives;
- Or artist Yinka Ilori’s approach to making his work accessible to all – for example his joy at seeing Nigerian ladies at the airport carrying the shopping bag he designed for high street retailer Marks & Spencer, beaming with pride at the sight of a Nigerian artist’s name on the shopping bag;
- I can also mention Drake Music, and their pioneering work in creating accessible musical instruments so that disabled and non-disabled musicians can work together as equals. Musician John Kelly noted that “Access is not a bolt on or choice. Access, when embedded, becomes an aesthetic”;
- I myself am also in the process of launching a new digital-first museum, Pendle Hill Museum, which is possible thanks to Historic England’s Everyday Heritage grant program, focused on uncovering and celebrating England’s working-class heritage.
I could go on and on. There are many brilliant examples of organisations and creatives broadening the scope of the people, stories and experiences we reflect and celebrate as cultural and creative sectors. In many ways, it goes back to the wisdom of the advertising industry, that people need to see themselves represented in order to feel seen, welcomed and get that real sense of belonging.
But this is only half the story. Despite all this, we’re still not reaching enough people. What we supply is still not reaching or resonating with the majority of the population. There is still a fundamental mismatch between supply and demand.
Back to what I said earlier, could this be the problem of non-participation? In other words, that even if we remove all barriers, some people just aren’t interested in arts and culture? That’s a very fair question, but in response I’d very strongly argue that this second crisis, that of supply versus demand, relates to distribution models, formats and mediums. In other words, it’s not what the cultural content is, but how it’s reaching people.
Let me explain this further.
It’s my argument that members of the general public are indeed seeking out knowledge. They are demanding unique, meaningful experiences. They are expressing themselves creatively and enjoying other people’s creativity. Generally, however, this is taking place outside the walls of our traditional cultural sector. Knowledge today comes via Wikipedia, Youtube or Netflix; experiences via new immersive entrants; creative expression via Tiktok or Roblox.
In my opinion, consumer demand is not the problem; rather, it is our failure as a cultural sector to adequately respond to this demand that is the problem. Our failure to get our expertise, knowledge, insights and cultural content to where people are actually looking for those things.
It’s another existential crisis for our sector.
Knowledge-sharing
Take knowledge-sharing as an example. There is a mismatch between where and how people search for knowledge versus where and how the cultural sector supply it.
Most people discover knowledge online by searching for topics and interests, hence the dominance of Wikipedia. Yet the cultural sector – our great knowledge-sharing institutions – primarily share knowledge in-person, through physical exhibitions.
Digital is an obvious solution to this. But when we look at the online presence of most cultural institutions, the overwhelming majority limit their digital presence to advertorials for physical exhibitions (with very limited knowledge-sharing content: maybe a blog article or two, or an interview with the curator). Or they provide searchable catalogue listings, suitable only for researchers and expert users, and providing very little value for wider audiences. Put simply, If their knowledge is not available online, geography is a major barrier to accessing it. By implication, the knowledge contained within our cultural institutions and public collections is limited to the few who can travel. This is not only exceptionally poor value for money for taxpayers; it’s wrong and it’s unjust.
Yes, there are some exceptions to this generalisation, including the absolutely brilliant Tank Museum in Dorset in the UK. The Tank Museum is the most-watched museum on Youtube with over 410 million views, 1.2 million subscribers, and around a third of its £6 million annual turnover coming from non-visitors, through online sources.
But this, sadly, is a rare exception rather than the norm.
True, we’ve also seen considerable innovation around the digital capture of physical exhibitions, for example 360-degree tours or using tools like Google Street View in-gallery. We’ve also seen the creation of virtual galleries, as well as the digital augmentation of physical experiences through audio guides, visual search and AI guides.
But going back to our first crisis, that of legitimacy, we as a cultural sector underappreciate the danger of ‘threshold anxiety’. It’s easy to forget just how alien and unnerving cultural experiences are to most people. A recent British survey found that 1 in 5 people think galleries are too ‘posh’, 29% worry they’d find it boring and 14% think they’d struggle to understand the art they are looking at. These statistics should be a wake-up call for all of us.
Unlike sport, most of us aren’t taught the ‘rules’ of galleries and theatres at school. We had little exposure to art, classical music or the great canons of work. Yet somehow we’re expected to understand what to do, how to engage, and simply parrot that culture is ‘good’ and ‘essential’. No surprise therefore that it’s far easier to reject arts and culture as “not for me”.
So I’d argue that simply capturing a physical gallery experience and putting it online is not enough. It does not overcome these fundamental barriers to accessing knowledge. We need to provide much more familiar, accessible entry points and stepping stones for the general public, and reach them where they are currently at, using formats they are already comfortable with.
Our job is to show (not tell) how culture can fit into their busy lifestyles; to prove (not presume) the benefits culture can offer to the population at large. To fit us as a cultural sector around them. Not dumbed-down, overly simplistic or patronising. But connected, relevant and widely accessible to everyone.
The way in which the general population consumes knowledge or expresses their creativity is just one of many consumer trends we can harness as disrupters to reinvent the very foundations of our cultural and creative experiences – whether digital, physical or hybrid.
Intersection of Culture and Consumer Culture
Fundamentally I believe that the best opportunities for disruption lie at this intersection of culture and consumer culture. We know what we do well as cultural and creative sectors; and we can also know what non-users care about, where they’re currently at. Where these two worlds overlap presents countless opportunities for disruption, for new models, for new audiences and for new revenue streams.
There are many consumer trends we could explore through this lens: that’s what disrupters do so brilliantly. For example, in experience design, Dig Ventures have reinvented archaeological digs; repackaging them as unique community experiences, crowdfunding millions of pounds to support new digs and research, harnessing a vibrant and global digital community, and pioneering large-scale citizen science projects.
Or another consumer trend – wellbeing. We’re yet to see the cultural equivalent of Headspace or Calm.com launching – in another life that would be a business I’d love to create! Combining consumer demand around wellbeing with the power of the arts to relieve anxiety, see the world through different eyes, better navigate emotions, or reframe common life experiences.
Consumer tech trends are also the source of huge disruptive opportunities. We don’t have time today to go into many specifics – I could talk for hours about immersive arts and artificial intelligence as just two of many examples.
But to take one further example, Julien Fleury is Creative Lead at Snapchat AR Studio. He sees the potential of augmented reality to fundamentally reshape arts and culture, and gave an inspiring talk on this subject at REMIX London last week. The Snapchat stats are staggering, and impossible to ignore. Over 300 million Snapchatters engage with Augmented Reality every day – 375,000 creators have built over 4 million Lenses, which Snapchatters engaged with more than 4.5 trillion times in just the last year. The opportunities for reimagining cultural experiences and reaching major new audiences through these technologies are open goals for the taking.
I also want to reflect on the following observation from another of our REMIX speakers, May Abdalla, CEO at Anagram and Emmy-nominated XR creator. Technology allows us to turn expectations upside down: creating art experiences in environments where they are least expected; and adding layers of reimagination and reinterpretation to spaces where culture is traditionally found.
There are many, many other consumer trends just like these. We can look at physical places where people are already gathering; we can look at formats and platforms people are already using; and so much more besides. Taking inspiration from norms and behaviours outside the cultural sector as our starting point, and then applying our cultural content and expertise to these new contexts to dream new disruptive formats and models.
The core point is that if we’re swimming in the same waters as wider society, we can be alert to their behaviours and trends which we can harness for new opportunities.
Suffice to say, it is in these waters that the best disrupters always swim.
There is a lot more to say about this mismatch between demand and supply. I believe our current distribution models for cultural content are totally unfit for purpose. We create innovative art and tech; we offer brilliant perspectives on society; but we then expect people to enter our unfamiliar, imposing buildings before they can see or hear them. We champion art’s impact on wellbeing and emotional health, but only if people happen to be browsing our website or already standing in our galleries. We’re actively restricting our potential audiences through these limited models.
So we need to envisage new models in which demand drives supply, not supply always trying to create demand. We need to start with non-users: to dream up models and experiences that collide cultural content and expertise with real-life needs and behaviours.
A crisis of competition
Let’s move onto the third tension for the cultural sector: a crisis of competition.
When cultural institutions do not adequately supply this consumer demand, disrupters are stepping in to do it instead. I’d argue that many disrupters and new entrants are doing the job of the cultural sector far better than many of the institutions and current incumbents that are paid by taxpayers to supposedly do it.
Critical to this tension is the realisation that the general public doesn’t really care who produces its cultural experiences. A new era of cultural experience design is disrupting a traditional museum format that hasn’t changed for centuries. The historic, reassuring dividers between ‘museum’ and ‘visitor attraction’, ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’ are collapsing at a rapid pace. Visitors are demanding unique, memorable experiences and quality days out that inspire, surprise, challenge, inform and delight – irrespective of who provides them. Museums are facing an existential fight to keep pace with a surge of new entrants that excel at this experience design to deliver historical, educational and creative storytelling.
The rise of social enterprises and purpose-driven business models, including B Corp status, blurs the boundaries between for-profit and non-profit. Substantial educational impact can be delivered by a for-profit entertainment company, just as mediocre impact can be delivered by a non-profit arts institution. The reassuring old assumptions no longer hold firm.
The accusation I hear from incumbents and entrenched interests is that the new entrants aren’t serious enough; that they aren’t rigorous enough; that they aren’t really interested in education or quality. Rather, they’re just about the mass market, chasing money, the spectacle, pure entertainment; all surface-level without any real thought or depth.
I hear this often from cultural leaders, overly confident of their superiority. Above all else, this opinion angers me so much; it’s lazy inertia in its most dangerous form.
Why? Because the history of business and disruption teaches us over and over that quality, expertise and rigour can be attracted by investment. And most new entrants in the cultural and creative industries have the financial firepower to invest in exactly these qualities. Not least thanks to impact investors, that mix of public and private sources who are able to appreciate and value the cultural and societal returns on their investments alongside the financial returns. We can produce a popular, financially-sustainable business and deliver great, educational impact. The two are no longer mutually exclusive.
Take Grande Experiences, an Australian business who have sold over 250 immersive experiences in more than 180 cities to over 23 million visitors in 33 languages. Their Van Gogh Alive experience was the most visited immersive experience in the world, but despite their staggering ticket sales, Grande faced the same snobbery from incumbents and entrenched interests.
So I want to focus on their Leonardo da Vinci experience – the largest, most comprehensive exhibition collection to tour the world.
Critically, Grande’s da Vinci experience blends digital technology with physical artefacts – including the display of pages from Da Vinci’s original notebooks, the Codex Atlanticus, on loan from Milan in custom-built display cases with specific lighting and climate control. They also display Leonardo’s machine inventions, for which they worked in collaboration with a museum partner in Rome. They have the objects, they have the rigorous research, they have the collaborators, they have the digital immersive experience. The disrupters are coming.
A second Australian example, Mona – the Museum of Old + New Art in Hobart, Tasmania – is possibly my favourite museum in the world. It’s the largest private museum in the southern hemisphere, envisioned through the eyes of local billionaire David Walsh as an anti-museum; the type of museum he’d personally like to visit. Its impact is incredible: Lonely Planet named Hobart the 7th greatest city in the world; Robbie Brammall, former Chief Marketing Officer explained that in 13 years, 5 million visitors have been, with 75% of those travelling from interstate. Mona contributes $200 million a year to Tasmania’s economy, and is the cornerstone of the state’s visitor economy. 150 cruise ships will visit Tasmania this season, up from 19 before Mona began. $800 million worth of new hotels have come on in the last three years; the airport has been extended for increased demand.
Economically the Mona effect is substantial; but to my point, culturally the effect is much more miraculous. Robbie says the characteristics of the entire state have been redefined: where Tasmania was once conservative and tranquil, it is now risky and rebellious. The state now revels in its reputation for doing things differently. It has a confident, new, creative swagger. These ripple effects are incredible. And it was built by a disrupter, an outsider, showcasing great art in truly exceptional ways. Central to this is a relationship built on trust with its users. It doesn’t patronise them, or boss them around. Instead, it challenges them, provokes them, makes them think. What better advert is there for the cultural objectives of an art museum? Putting audiences first doesn’t mean doing everything they demand. Rather, it means understanding them so you know exactly where to lead, challenge and provoke them.
Or we could touch on The Rest is History podcast, with over 200 million downloads and half its listeners under the age of 34. So much for history being stuffy, old-fashioned or boring. It has recently branched out into live tours, adding a full orchestra and selling out London’s Royal Albert Hall to explore the lives of Mozart and Beethoven alongside musicians playing extracts from some of their works.
Mass culture has been splintered and the old incumbent gatekeepers can no longer bar the way of brilliant disrupters like these.
These examples – Grande Experiences, Mona and the Rest is History, are just three of many disrupters I could highlight. I’d argue that because of – not in spite of – their popularity, they are doing the job of the cultural sector better than publicly-funded institutions: reaching more audiences with higher-quality arts and culture. They are not shallow and meaningless, as some lazy incumbents and gatekeepers would love to be able to dismiss them as.
Suddenly the ‘wide blue ocean’ between museum and visitor attraction, between old incumbent and new entrant, between education and entertainment, all seem to be getting much smaller. And will only continue to do so. Why? Because new entrants are first and foremost focussed on supplying for demand; if there is no demand, they do not supply. Unlike incumbent cultural institutions, they have no historical baggage. They can experiment with bold new visitor journeys, new innovations, new experiences. They don’t have assumptions and expectations weighing them down.
In this context, we do also need to seriously consider the question of competition versus collaboration between disrupters and existing incumbents. If certain new entrants may be better at repackaging cultural content and designing new experiences, are there models in which old and new can work together for their mutual benefit? Perhaps. But this needs a lot of further exploration and work: I can point to several recent examples of incumbents abusing their power to try and inflict damage upon new entrants and preserve their own interests, irrespective of any wider public interest.
So just a quick recap. I’ve painted a picture of these three undercurrents within the cultural sector, which are slowly but surely creating conditions ripe for major disruptions to our established models and interests. The crisis of legitimacy, and the need for a democratic mandate for what we produce as a sector; the crisis of supply versus demand, and the need to reimagine our distribution models to meet non-users where they are already at in formats they are comfortable with; and the crisis of competition, with the growing threat of new entrants that are sweeping up the demand when existing incumbents fail to respond.
II. PRINIPLES FOR ‘GOOD’ DISRUPTION (THAT STICKS)
Some disruption sticks, whereas other disruption fades after a brief period.
I want move on to what I refer to as four rules for ‘good’ disruption; a set of principles I believe are consistent across the cultural sector disruptions that last.
2025 is the 20th anniversary of me first stumbling across the arts world after answering a job advert aged 23. So these observations are based on my last 20 years instigating and celebrating innovation across the cultural and creative sectors, both as a cultural entrepreneur and as one of two co-founders and curators of REMIX Summits globally.
Rule #1: Original principles still work
I find the history of the cultural sector fascinating. Many of our global museums, galleries, theatres, libraries and other arts institutions themselves came from pioneering disrupters. These disrupters wanted to liberate knowledge, offering free and universal access; to create centres of excellence; to offer a university on every street corner for everyone; to collect and preserve for ever; to transport and challenge audiences; to show the world through different eyes; and so much more. Looking back at these founding principles is revelatory, and a world apart from some of our stuffy, irrelevant institutions today. Those original aims and objectives are as relevant today as they’ve ever been.
Our failure as a sector is to freeze our delivery models in time: the audience experience at a museum remains largely unchanged since Elias Ashmole founded the first public museum in 1683. Ditto for most galleries, libraries, performances and other cultural gatekeepers, save for somewhat superficial layers of technology. Yet how much have our needs and expectations as audiences changed in those hundreds of years?
Many opportunities for disruption can be found very simply by returning to those founding principles, and starting from a blank sheet of paper to find ways in which we can combine them with today’s audience needs.
Rule #2: Look for creative collisions
All the best disruption happens at points of intersection. Cross-disciplinary should be our default: how do we find more ways to collide different artforms, different industries, different models?
One brilliant example from last week’s REMIX London is the BAFTA long-listed Grand Theft Hamlet, which is a documentary feature film about two out of work actors attempting to mount a full production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet inside the ultra violent world of Grand Theft Auto. It’s shot entirely in game, and offers a brilliant collision of cinema, gaming, theatre and documentary. As such it appeals to many different and new audiences.
Another opportunity is to collide different models and industries. What models can we transplant from other industries and apply to the cultural and creative sectors?
My first ecommerce business, CultureLabel, fit that thinking. Way back in 2008, we saw the growth in ecommerce sales, the growth in consumer demand for original products, and used it to launch a marketplace that was one of the first to sell affordable art online alongside artist-designed homewares and gifts from over 800 museums and gallery partners. Most importantly, our reference websites were all mainstream high street retailers; we wanted to transplant their models and apply them to the cultural sector.
This kind of lateral thinking creates so many opportunities for disruption – the answers are often already out there. You just need to see the world laterally, and apply existing models and ideas in a completely different context.
Rule #3: Bake in sustainable revenue models
The beauty of designing a disruptive model from scratch is that you can build in sustainable revenue streams. If users love what you create, they will and indeed should pay for it. Ensuring public access from a wide cross-section of society is important, so having free or heavily discounted opportunities should always be part of your model; but fundamentally, your revenue is your lifeblood.
For me as an entrepreneur, it gives me the greatest sense of legitimacy when someone chooses to part with their hard-earned money for what you’ve created. Unlike with grants, your destiny is not decided on the whim of one decision-maker or on how well you fit their funding strategy and priorities.
Instead, you answer only to your users. No-one else. I see that as both exhilarating and liberating.
Obviously there is still an important role for public funding, but as I would also advise with Venture Capital funding, I strongly recommend that you approach it wisely and strategically. This so-called ‘free money’ often comes at a cost: potentially distancing you further from your audience, and potentially orientating your organisation towards the funder, rather than your users.
Rule #4: Technology as the tool, not the objective
The major technological disruptions are often imposed on the cultural and creative sectors rather than originating from within them. In some ways this echoes the earlier discussion about supply and demand.
Researcher David Storey described entrepreneurship as building a boat, placing it in a fast-flowing river, anticipating the next wave of opportunity and preparing the crew to take advantage of the wave as it passes. Each of these is a skill in itself: building a boat, choosing the right river, watching the waves and being prepared for the right wave. Too often we see entrepreneurs only focus on boat building. Without being in the right river and correctly anticipating the movements and timing of the wave, there’s absolutely zero chance of success.
Along with other consumer trends, I like to place technology in this same context. If you see the likelihood of mass adoption for a new technology, it becomes a brilliant opportunity to imagine a bold new model for the cultural and creative sectors.
We can then view our original founding principles through this lens of new technologies; we can look for creative collisions and the application of approaches and models from other industries; and we can bake in sustainable revenue models from the outset.
But technology alone won’t solve the challenges we’ve been discussing. We still need a genuine point of connection to our audiences – their needs, behaviours and emotions – if our disruption is going to stick.
III. ACTION POINTS FOR SUCCESS
To start drawing this talk to a close, I want to end on some very specific strategies that I believe will enable the cultural and creative sectors to respond to these disruptive opportunities and challenges.
Ultimately, we need visionaries inside cultural institutions, working hand-in-hand with motivated disruptors outside. This combination is truly effective. It can relentlessly drive ideas forward; enabling both parties to navigate stifling structures as well as circumvent entrenched interests.
Most importantly of all, we need those disrupters to stay true to those original founding principles of the cultural sector. Yes, reinventing the delivery and distribution models for today’s audiences, but understanding that the fundamental principles and objective still remain just as valid.
To instigate disruption that lasts, we need to tackle and upend long-held assumptions. We will need to build new cultural models, new distribution strategies and new touchpoints from the ground up.
So I’ll finish by listing six action points that I believe will increase the likelihood of success for major new disruptions. Each of these strategies I’d like to see enacted far more widely:
#1: Institutions working together to grow the overall audience through aggregation and network effects – Too often institutions compete for small niches, rather than seeing the bigger picture. As a sector, we have much more chance of being heard in our noisy consumer environment if we have one shared voice with one call-to-action. Aggregation is a massively underused superpower, for all types of cultural opportunities from retail to wellbeing to experiences. It’s time to put egos aside.
#2: Smarter approaches to managing Intellectual Property without blocking early-stage innovations – As we’ve mentioned, cultural institutions often act as gatekeepers, actively blocking disruptors from using our shared culture and heritage, often especially if there is a sustainable revenue model attached. We need far more nuanced discussions about the role of institutions with regard to supporting wider innovations – how we can use public collections, assets and audiences to supercharge innovative models that are in the wider public interest, even if they’re financially sustainable and not reliant on grant funding. “Not invented here” is a dangerous default position for many cultural institutions, and we need to tackle it.
#3: Imaginative pricing strategies and revenue models to balance new income with wider public access – We need to be as creative with our business modelling and revenue strategies as we are with our cultural content. The idea of ‘all or nothing’ – simply paid versus free – is far too dated and unfit for purpose. How can we apply the best revenue models and pricing innovations from other industries to get us past this binary debate, and to balance new income with wider public access and engagement?
#4: Cross-sector operational structures and skills that respond to demand not supply – If we want to be responsive to consumer trends, we need to have the right skills and structures to do so. These are often not skills found within the cultural sector, whilst structures need to be nimble and responsive in order to operate across and between multiple institutions and other partners. There is much to be said for centralised expertise, able to drive both economies of scale and sector-wide excellence in specialist areas. But the key challenge is to avoid duplication – these disruptive new structures should be instead of, rather than in addition to, some of the current models.
#5: Easier ways for outsiders and institutions to trial new models together – how do we create a culture of trial and error, research and development, and experiments, in the full knowledge that many institutions are already overstretched. Can we work as a sector to develop shared frameworks and systems to pre-identify the most promising innovations to fast-track for testing and deployment sector-wide?
#6 Better use of language to capture hearts and minds, to use human words rather than baffling arts-speak – at its core, arts and culture reflects our shared human experience. Yet we’ve wrapped it in impenetrable words and rituals. What can we do to reconnect the fundamental humanity of our arts with the emotions and connections we seek out as individuals?
So these six strategies are the ones I’d highlight as practical suggestions. They’re based on the lessons I’ve learnt over these last 20 years watching innovators succeed and fail across the cultural and creative sectors.
The Disruptive Mindset.
It’s a mindset that sees the dangerous undercurrents bubbling away beneath the calm surface of the cultural and creative sectors.
It’s a mindset that observes consumer trends and behaviours relentlessly.
It’s a mindset that can sense opportunities for new models. For doing things differently. For thinking laterally to create innovative new connections between unlikely, disparate points.
It’s a mindset which always asks “why?” and “does it really have to be done this way?”
It’s a mindset which appreciates that success comes through delivery. And thinks for the long term.
And it’s a mindset that places great value upon those founding principles of what cultural institutions were originally set up to achieve. Reinventing them for the needs of today.
We stand on the shoulders of some truly innovative disrupters, who established the very foundations of our global cultural and creative sectors as we know them today. They responded to the demands of their time.
Now is our opportunity to strip away all these unnecessary layers, and revisit those original founding principles of cultural institutions. We can reimagine how to do justice to those original disrupters, their original disruptive objectives, and adapt them to respond to the very different demands of our time today.
It’s time to paint a vision of this bold new future.
Adapt or die.
It’s time to disrupt.
Let us know what you think!
We’d love to hear your response to this provocation. Please send us your thoughts via email to hello@remixsummits.com or connect with Simon on LinkedIn to discuss further.
INSPIRE is financed by the European Union and the Republic of Turkey and implemented by the Ministry of Industry and Technology. It is focused on capacity building for the transformation of the creative economy in Türkiye.