Today we’re making history indeed as they say!

Honoured to be a witness expert called in for the inaugural Evidence Session of the UK Government All-Party Parliamentary Group on metaverse, web3, arts & culture at the House of Lords.

An incredibly focused session, with key questions asked to the experts invited. A thought-provoking meeting, which will help the UK Government’s direction on arts & advanced technologies. Respect to #baronessuddin and #afaghmulazadeh for conceiving this initiative.

As curators working at the crossroad of contemporary and digital arts – contributing to merging the two – we indicated the main opportunities that lie ahead for the sector:

1) Fostering inclusion, diversity, equity, and access to the art. Not only for the audiences but also for the practitioners who can now create, distribute and sell their works directly to collectors and institution worldwide. And that is important for sustaining creative careers no matter background of geography.

2) Opportunity for cultural organisations to engage with new generations of audiences through broadening their remit – offering a wide range of cultural projects both irl and online in order to nurture the future patrons of the arts.
To achieve this, museums and galleries of the future must build in-house expertise and capacity and this calls for partnership with tech enterprises. Culture organisations and tech businesses must come together.

3) The environmental sostenibility of this merging between contemporary art and digital art allows producers, artists, institutions, the art market itself and its audiences to interact with each other for a fraction of the carbon footprint of the same exchanges irl. Engaging in a meaningful way and enjoying the experience of art is now more sustainable in terms of climate justice.

Digital art is not a replacement of irl experience but it’s a meaningful expansion of it. As curators, we are here to make this possible and to help artists, art institutions and creative businesses to achieve this.

Call it the arts & advanced technologies manifesto if you like.