Edinburgh Festivals to go global with digital boost

Festivals Edinburgh, the strategic umbrella organisation that represents and works on behalf of Edinburgh’s twelve major festivals, has been awarded £300,000 from Creative Scotland’s National Lottery Fund to set up the Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab, a two year initiative to lead the digital development of Edinburgh’s Festivals.

The Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab, believed to be the first of its kind in the UK, will enable Festivals to work with leading thinkers, technologists, artists, audiences and digital communities to develop and prototype ideas that improve and inspire the audience experience. It will tackle themes such as helping festival go-ers make the most of their experiences, new ways of distributing festival content and making the festivals greener.

Everything from special developer tech events and webtools that transparently “crowdsource” ideas from the public, to a brand-new “geek-in-residence” position working across the Edinburgh Festivals, will be developed. The Lab will also support improvements to core infrastructure, enable the digital distribution of content and support the exploration of digital programming.

The Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab will run alongside Creative Scotland’s Amb:IT:ion Scotland programme, which currently supports Scottish arts organisations to build their digital capacity and enhance their effectiveness using new technologies. In line with the aims of Amb:IT:ion Scotland, the Innovation Lab will provide organisational capacity, resources and access to expertise, to take advantage of opportunities in digital innovation, technology and culture in order to provide public benefit.

The Innovation Lab is a natural development for the Edinburgh Festivals, who in the past twelve months have supported, delivered or piloted a number of digital projects including: the Festivals’ first iPhone application; the creation of the Festivals’ first official online TV channel edinburghfestivals.tv; “Festbuzz”* and the crowd-sourcing via Twitter of the Fringe 2010 programme artwork.

Read the full story on the Creative Scotland website

Back to listing