Logging On: Culture Participation and the Web, is the new Demos report by John Holden that finds that culture and technology are becoming more interactive as the number of online users continues to grow.
The report also provides an overview of the work of Culture Online, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) funded pilot initiative that ended in March this year.
Of the 26 Culture Online projects, 25 received awards including three BETT Awards for SoundJunction, ArtisanCam and Stageworks. The report’s author and head of Culture at Demos, John Holden, says the initiative has been immensely successful.
Holden says: ‘What these trends have in common is a movement from passivity to engagement, from uni-directional flows to interactivity, and from the few to the many.’
‘Digitisation has changed everything. It has created public expectations for on-demand, constantly available, individualised access to products.’
Elsewhere the report looks at convergence of technology changes, the way people engage with culture and the Government’s aim of increasing democratic participation in culture.
Looking ahead, Holden expects ‘ever greater numbers of citizens will have their cultural lives enriched, whether through ease of buying tickets, or uploading their own music.’
In line with Demos’ open access policy and Creative Commons license ethos, the report is available as a 1.2mb PDF here.
This article first appeared on Hannah Rudman’s blog 5th June 2007.