From the challenge of the coronavirus, opportunities have emerged to access culture online. How museums, concerts and theatres are reaching people directly.
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of culture. The restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus have prevented many people from physically accessing cultural venues and events such as museums, concerts and theatres – reminding us, therefore, of how much we truly need them. Fortunately, the digital world allows us to access these places even from a distance. Museums, musicians and theatres around the world have found new opportunities to bring culture online, opening up to the virtual world and making their offering accessible to more people.
The economic impact of the pandemic has been devastating. Along with tourism, the cultural and creative sector is the worst affected, according to the OECD. Not only have cultural venues been deprived of their revenues, but uncertainty has overwhelmed many workers, such as freelancers who cannot always benefit from the same level of support as other categories of employment.
"These sectors have a significant economic footprint and generate employment," the OECD report reads. "They are catalysts for innovation across all economic areas and have a positive social impact on several levels. In the medium term, the decline in tourism, purchasing power and private and public funding for the arts could amplify the negative consequences already recorded."
In this scenario, it is therefore essential to find approaches that are not only beneficial for users, but that also allow workers to sustain themselves economically. With the hope that these new models will have positive effects not only in the immediate term but also in the months and years to come.
We begin our virtual journey through the digitalised galleries of museums. Ninety-five per cent of the approximately 95,000 museums around the world had to close temporarily due to the pandemic, and a tenth risks never reopening, according to a survey by Icom, the international museum committee.
"In response to this crisis, museums were quick to develop their online presence," according to a Unesco report. Activities such as exhibitions and conferences were digitalised, and social media campaigns were launched to engage users alongside special initiatives to ease the difficulties of lockdowns.
Many museums have opened their doors to virtual visits. Chinese museums, for example, began doing so as early as January, and on the Google Arts & Culture platform it is possible to view more than 3,000 of them from around the world, including the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, the MoMA in New York and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Others can be accessed directly from their own websites, such as the Vatican Museums in Rome and the Louvre in Paris, which saw its virtual visits quadruple to 400,000 a day.
In this way, the treasures held in these places have become accessible to many more people, and thanks also to new communication strategies, museums have reached new audiences. The thousands of entries to the #GettyMuseumChallenge by the Getty Museum, for example, delighted millions of people with the originality with which participants reinterpreted works from the Los Angeles art collection.
"There are opportunities in this crisis," comments Rebecca Kahn of the Hiig, the Berlin-based research institute on the impact of the internet on society. "The digital potential for offering rich museum content that fulfils the role of these institutions as sources of knowledge and scientific outreach is extremely promising."
What matters is that the online culture offering should not simply be a copy of what exists in the museum. For example, the British Museum in London has created with Google the Museum of the World, a microsite that allows visitors to explore thousands of its objects on an interactive journey through time and across the globe.
The world of music has also digitalised in innovative and engaging ways to address the losses recorded across the entire concert production chain, from which musicians earn three quarters of their income, according to research by the World Economic Forum.
Especially in the early phase of the emergency, artists opened their homes, their living rooms and their bedrooms to listeners for intimate and unprecedented performances. Such as the members of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, who played for fans on the social network WeChat. Or the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who dedicated a performance to people confined at home during lockdowns. Or the Bolivian chamber music society that organised thousands of free mini-concerts for healthcare workers and Covid-19 patients. And so too did Bono, Sting, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and many other music greats.
Now, however, the situation has evolved. New formats of digital concerts have emerged that make the best use of technology, with significant results. More than 12 million users tuned in to the live show by American rapper Travis Scott broadcast through the video game Fortnite – far more than the capacity of any arena or stadium. And during the week of 19 to 25 October too, it is possible to watch artists of the calibre of Billie Eilish and Pearl Jam perform.
To access these performances, fans are asked to purchase a ticket. Many musicians have shown their willingness to offer free performances, "but if we do it for free we only generate money for the platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitch on which they're streamed," commented Sara Quin of Canadian pop duo Tegan and Sara in the Guardian.
"I know people don't appreciate it when we say we'd like fans to pay for what we offer them, but I think that as artists we have to be able to talk about it openly." Platforms such as Vivendi and NoonChorus have therefore emerged to meet this need, allowing musicians to receive all the revenue from sales.
"But can streaming replace live music?" Rolling Stone asked those in the industry. "No, it's a completely new kind of experience." Not everyone can do as the Flaming Lips did — the Oklahoma City rock group that organised a concert in which both the band and the audience were inside isolation bubbles (literally) — yet it is true that the music world is reinventing itself in various ways to respond to the pandemic.
The lack of contact with an audience is a considerable challenge for the theatre world, which has suffered enormously as a result of the suspension of performances. In Italy alone, 150,000 workers operate in this sector across more than 1,200 venues throughout the country, Andrée Ruth Shammah, director and artistic director of the Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan, explained in an interview with LifeGate.
"Theatre without an audience does not exist," she added. "That said, what we must do now is create a connection that today, for obvious reasons, we have lost. This is the function of theatre: to create a dialogue."
And that is exactly what is happening. Even before the pandemic, institutions such as the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the National Theatre in London were broadcasting some of their productions in cinemas. Now, performances from across the globe are available on our devices, and Italian examples are plentiful too, such as the Teatro dell'opera in Rome, the Piccolo in Milan and the Fenice in Venice.
"Streaming attracts a younger, less affluent and more diverse audience, including in ethnic terms," according to Erin Sullivan of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. Beyond socioeconomic barriers, this is partly due to the codes of behaviour — the requirement to remain still and silent — that must be observed in a theatre. Online performances, by contrast, give audiences more freedom. As a result, Richard Bean's play One Man, Two Guvnors, broadcast by the National Theatre, recorded over 2.5 million views, well beyond the reach of the London theatre itself.
