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Ash Mann

📍 Sweden

Reimagining purpose, value, and dealing with pressure

Many cultural leaders admit their organisations feel unsustainable. True resilience comes from reimagining purpose, not outputs or buildings, but the core that makes them indispensable to the public.

This week's best things

Lessons from a museum cyberattack, Welsh AI content support, the EU’s plan to fix cookie law chaos, a doomsday prediction tracker, hat/haircut/tattoo decisions, why writing in books boosts memory, Amazon’s decline, team focus research, cultural bias in GPT, and sitcoms in Yugoslavia.

Not all decisions are equal (or why you shouldn't treat your hats like tattoos)

In cultural organisations, too many decisions are treated as irreversible. Using the “hats, haircuts, tattoos” framework could help leaders distinguish between low-stakes and high-stakes choices, speeding things up and building a culture of trust.

This week's best things

ACMI’s new experience principles, org design beyond charts, Neil Williams’ monthnotes, Tonga’s offline crisis, post-literate society worries, attention as agency, NGO ad parodies, Maintainers study guide, and positive results from Basic Income for Artists.

This week's best things

Copenhagen trips, upcoming talks on AI + digital failure, and a load of good reads: on daydreaming, content structures, gateopeners, the myth of engagement, and why prompting is a design act. Plus rain maps, Lego Globe, shark tracking, and a truly dreadful novel.

DACI, RACI, RAPID, and PANDA: ways of assigning roles and responsibilities

Clarity doesn’t kill creativity but confusion definitely can. When roles and responsibilities are unclear, projects stall, decisions unravel, and frustration grows. This piece explores practical frameworks that bring just enough structure to help teams cut through the mess.

Build vs buy? That's possibly the wrong question

Cultural organisations often ask whether to build or buy digital tools, but that skips a more important question: are you ready for what comes next?

This week's best things

From change fitness and polytunity, to Edinburgh’s innovation role and why councils should share more. Plus: taste as intelligence, AI tutors, immersive art takedowns, a reminder to join the new digital culture community, and System of a Down cover bands.

This week's best things

Venice Immersive highlights, SEO AI implications, content maintenance, knowledge systems, organising structures, bottleneck leaders, project vs product funding, disintermediation, music discovery, fortune tellers, and more.