From ideas to pilots: shaping a digital community for the cultural sector

On Monday I ran two short workshops to continue our digital community conversations. This time the focus moved from 'what’s missing' to discuss 'what’s worth trying first'.

As with the first session, the starting point was simple: too many people doing digital work in culture are doing it in isolation, without the support, peer connection, or shared infrastructure they need. That is something that has come up again and again in the conversations I've had, and survey responses I've received, since the last workshop in June.

We have started to set up an initial online community space on a platform called Circle (get in touch if you'd like an invite: [email protected]), so this phase is about testing small, useful pilots and spotting where the energy is.

Who was involved?

Across the two workshops we had colleagues from across artforms and roles - museums, theatres, festivals, agencies, suppliers, and freelancers - bringing perspectives from the UK, Europe, and North America.

We used Mural to gather and refine ideas, asking:

• What itch does this scratch?
• Why would someone show up?
• What’s the smallest version we could test?

Key ideas that emerged

From the group discussions, a few concepts stood out as having real energy behind them:

• Fail Safe: an informal, safe space for sharing lessons from failure, potentially themed and with options for anonymity.
• Digital Work Reading Club: short, focused monthly discussions on relevant books, articles, or reports, with an emphasis on practical takeaways.
• Mentoring, shadowing, and exchanges: lightweight ways to connect people at different career stages or contexts for one-off conversations or ongoing knowledge swaps.
• Showcase & co-creation spaces: places to share work in progress, test ideas, and get feedback from peers.
• Bringing in outside expertise: short sessions with speakers from beyond the cultural sector to spark new thinking.

The focus was on smallest possible versions; a single post, a one-off Zoom session, a short thread - to get ideas moving quickly without burdensome commitments or complexity.

What’s next?

Over the coming weeks I’ll be setting up initial spaces in the Circle platform for:

• Spotlight Sessions to hear from non-digital colleagues doing work in the sector
• The Fail Safe spaces to encourage people to share and learn from stories of when things didn't go to plan
• The Book Club
• Plus more traditional 'forum-like' spaces for quick questions, peer support, resource recommendations, and general discussion.

I’ll also start testing some of the pilot ideas above with a small 'pilot group'. If you’d like to host, shape, or try one of these, let me know.

The next workshop in this series will take place in September and will focus on long-term sustainability, andcommunity culture. If you’d like to be part of that conversation, drop me a line: [email protected].

This community is taking shape through the people who show up. If we can make it genuinely useful, even in small ways, it feels like it's worth doing.