The Digital Culture Public Sphere - Calling all GLAMs!

Hi everyone, this is a call out from the Office of Senator Kate Lundy

On 6 September 2011, the Office of Senator Kate Lundy, in collaboration with Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean, launched a Digital Culture Public Sphere. This initative is an important part of the National Cultural Policy consultation, as it is a chance to engage with  digital voices in the arts, industries and cultural institutions to help shape a new ten year cultural policy for Australia that meets the challenges and opportunities of the 21^st century.

We are talking to folk in film and animation, music and media, digital arts, games development and, importantly, folk from the cultural institutions including galleries, libraries, archives and museums from right across Australia, be they regional, metro or national.

There are immense opportunities for the GLAM sector to engage the broader community in our cultural heritage and the arts through new technologies and of course the Internet - whether that be digitisation of cultural assets or using new technologies to collaborate across the sector for productivity gains and a better online cultural experience. There are also significant opportunities with emerging technologies to create immersive environments where citizens can engage with their cultural heritage digitally in a personal and meaningful way.

Digital cultural heritage and the arts are exciting areas. Australians from right across the country have produced a number of world leading cultural initiatives. This consultation presents an opportunity to showcase the quality of these initiatives, and to establish a compelling national narrative of Australia as an international hub of cultural excellence and innovation.

So as well as your ideas for how Federal Government can support Digital Culture through the National Cultural Policy, please contribute your digital cultural heritage case studies.

This is a call out to the GLAM sector to get engaged in the Digital Culture Public Sphere. You can get engaged by:

• Edit the draft submission directly by going to the Digital Culture Public Sphere wiki.
• Post comments, links to papers, case studies and ideas to http://www.katelundy.com.au/2011/09/06/the-digital-culture-public-s... – comments will be summarised and presented at the event as part of the proceedings.
• Tweet with the #publicsphere hashtag so we can find your ideas, collate and include them as part of the contributions.
• You can also contribute to the topic by emailing or sending us a letter, but please note all topic correspondence will be published on the topic blog for public transparency and peer review.
• Run your own discussion or roundtable event and post the outcomes in the blog comments.
• Join us for our Live Event (Sydney on Oct 6^th 2011), which will be video streamed online so you can also participate remotely. Please register to reserve a spot because spaces are limited to the venue capacity - http://digiculture.eventbrite.com/.
• Submit a (maximum) 10 minute talk by video submission by adding a link to the comments at the bottom of this post.

The event will facilitate discussions and peer review of ideas to set the vision and narrative for Australia in this space.

We look forward to all your ideas. So help get the word out, so the Australian GLAM sector is well represented in all its diversity.

Pia Waugh

Digital Culture Public Sphere Coordinator
Pia.Waugh@aph.gov.au