Arts organisation looks outside London for innovation at York

THE first Interface conference was held last week in York at a “speed-dating” event for businesses in the area to pitch to major cultural institutions.

Heads from the BBC, National Theatre, V&A, Channel 4, Penguin, Royal Court, Rambert Dance Company, Barbican, Imperial War Museums, and London Philharmonic Orchestra came to York to see what the city, and the region’s businesses had to offer.

It was the third event in the Interface series, and the first in the North.

Paul Shuter, head of business development for education at London-based cultural organisation Shakespeare’s Globe who organised the event said: “There are lots of big cultural institutions based in London, and it’s easy for us to deal with those businesses.

“But there are also lots of good digital innovations being explored by startups and it’s difficult for them to get airtime with cultural institutions.

“We launched Interface designed to deal with this issue as a “speed-dating” event, to see these small, innovative businesses, and get out of the London and South East bubble.

“It’s a deliberate attempt to help us get access to regional digital businesses with great ideas.

“All the businesses we saw at York were utterly different, we saw 12 different businesses some of them fresh from university,, from Leeds as well as York.

“Cultural organisations don’t have big bucks to spend on development, though Shakespeare’s Globe is unusual in that we’re not funded by the Arts Council, we’re supported by charity, so for us finding innovation with people who are at the cutting edge is the only way we can afford to do innovative things.

“Bigger, more established firms based in London would charge three times as much, and to be honest, they aren’t as innovative; they haven’t had to be. That innovation is key for us.”

The York event was so successful that the firm are looking at bringing Interface back to the North in the coming years.