Public Expectations and Public Use: The Case of the UKs Creative Archive

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Public Expectations and Public Use The Case of
the UKs Creative Archive

• National Digital Forum, Auckland November 2008
• paul.gerhardt_at_archivesforcreativity.com

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• CHILDREN TALKING
• Day Trip to Calais
• 1967
• Harold Williamson joins a party of boys and
  girls from Lauriston School, Hackney for their
  first visit to France

MAN ALIVE Vince, Paul, Lawrence and
Richard 1971 Denis Tuohy looks at the past and
present lives of four young teenagers and their
families
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The project included BBC in the East End
updated A film by Chris Dorley-Brown
Its about us! - Comment at the exhibition
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BBC Archive
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The explosion in audiovisual creativity
is sowing the seeds for a more participative, expr
essive democracy...
VIDEO REPUBLIC Demos 2008
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• Read?
• or
• Read/Write?

TV Archives
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Language connects us simply
communication
thought
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Writing creates barriers
communication
thought
text
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.with its own ecology
communication
thought
text email print books
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and distribution system
communication
thought
text email print books
publishers retailers second hand libraries
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From text.to rich media
communication
thought
text email print books
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text email print books audio
communication
thought
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text email print books audio music
communication
thought
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text email print books audio music stills
communication
thought
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text email print books audio music stills moving
image
communication
thought
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but with new owners and distributors
text email print books audio music stills moving
image
communication
thought
publishers archives broadcasters
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• The written word is central to how we renew
  our culture.
• Why should it be different for moving images?

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The cinema is a much more momentous invention
than printing. Before printing could affect you,
you had to learn to readnow, the cinema tells
its story to the illiterate as well as to the
literate. That is why the cinema is going to
produce effects that all the cheap books in the
world could never produce. George Bernard Shaw
1914
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• Society acknowledges literacy as the source of
  skills and creativity central to public value
  and economic growth

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5 types of digital literacy

• Photo-Visual Literacy Learning to Read from
  Visuals
• Reproduction Literacy The Art of Creative
  Duplication
• Branching Literacy Hypermedia and thinking or
  multiple-domain thinking
• Information Literacy The Art of Always
  Questioning Information
• Socio-Emotional Literacy
• Towards a Theory of Digital Literacy Three
  Scenarios for the Next Steps
• Aharon Aviram and Yoram Eshet-Alkalai
• http//www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Aharo
  n_Aviram.htm

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The challenge
In the world of print, creator generated content
depends upon access to 500 years of the printed
word. In the new world of digital literacy,
we need to open up access to 100 years of moving
image and recorded sound. Where is the low
hanging fruit? Public service broadcasting.
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Public service broadcasting

• straddles the boundary between the social
  economy and the monetary economy
• Who paid for it?
• Who owns it?
• Who curates it?
• Who can distribute it?
• Who can deliver it into the heart of mass digital
  literacy?

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The case of the BBC

• new Charter
• towards an Open BBC
• sound archive one of worlds largest.
• 2m items. 300,000 hours
• TV archive major cultural resource.
• 1.5m items. 600,000 hours
• Photo stills. 4m items.
• 1000 hours of TV added every month

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The Creative Archive proposition

• Free access to selected content for learning, for
  creativity and for pleasure.
• From home, members of the
• public will be able to
• search for legally cleared TV
• and radio content from
• extracts to whole programmes
• preview and download
• modify and create their own versions
• share with others and with the BBC on a
  non-commercial basis

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• The BBC established a strong advisory panel,
  drawn from
• Industry
• Rights owners
• Independent producers
• Opinion formers
• Creative Commons
• Museums, Libraries and Archives

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Integrating public and monetary value
Public Value home use learning/creative
applications amateur creator generated content
Commercial Value collections brought to the mass
market upgrade path commercial licensing
investment opportunities
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BBC pilot campaigns
LearnXpress (Schools)
Where I Live
postcards from planet earth
Open News Archive
Radio 1 superstar vj
August 2005
Oct 2006
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I used the clips to challenge myself to write
music to them. I used it as practice for the TV
Composers competition the BBC ran. (Composer)
I downloaded the nature clips and used them to
help teach my son (14yrs) how to edit and apply a
voice over. So it had a real educational element
to it. But it then got really fun as we had a
laugh putting our own silly commentary over the
top like creature comforts or Ricki Gervais
Animals (Producer)
I use the clips to download onto my laptop and
then amalgamate them into my lesson plans I pull
them up onto the whiteboard within the lesson
itself. Showing video engages children much more
than a book will. (Primary Teacher)
I have used the clips as background to a
presentation I have pulled together for work,
moving images make it much more dynamic and
interesting (Management Consultant)
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Did you understand the Licence?
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What did you not understand about the Licence?
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What resolution do you want for video?
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What form do you want?
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What kind of content do you want?
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What will you use the content for?
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Summary of PVA Scores for Creative Archive
7.6
AVERAGE
7.6
BBC APPROVAL
The overall average for the service was 7.6 out
of 10. Questions regarding whether respondents
considered the Open Earth Archive service to be
Innovative/Original and Interesting/Appealing
received high scores of 8.0. Worth the BBC
providing received a very high score of
8.6. The Personal Impact statements, Change
internet usage for better, learned something
new, and impact on reputation of BBC were all
scored below average at around 7.0, as was help
society to progress.
7.8
QUALITY
PERSONAL IMPACT
7.3
CITIZEN IMPACT
7.5
VALUE
8.6
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Vision Creative Archive UK
a Creative Archive for the nation, drawing on
moving images, stills and sound content from a
range of public and commercial sources
Members
Public Value home use/learning/creative
applications
Commercial Value Wider publicity/profile Upgrade
path/commercial licensing/investment
opportunities
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Creative Archive vision

• Creative Archive UK will provide the public with
  online access to a rich heritage of moving
  images, pictures and audio for downloading,
  keeping, using, re-mixing and sharing. This
  unique and growing resource, supplied by
  broadcasters and national and regional archives,
  will support learning, self-expression and
  creativity.

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Appeal of concept of the Creative Archive UK
website
Does the idea of the Creative Archive UK website
make this kind of service more or less
interesting/appealing to you, than just the BBC
offering only its own clips? The idea of the
Creative Archive UK website is
In total, 91 of respondents agreed that the
concept of the Creative Archive UK website made
the service more interesting/appealing to them
than the BBCs Creative Archive website on its
own. (2272 respondents)
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Estimated use of the Creative Archive UK website
Please think now about how often you have been
using the existing BBC Creative Archive service.
If the Creative Archive UK website was
launched, do you think that you would use it more
than if the service was as it is currently, with
only BBC material ?
In total 82of respondents claimed that the
launch of the CA UK website would result in them
using the service more than they currently do the
BBCs Creative Archive.
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Headline results of the BBC pilot

• 500,000 downloads by the end of the 15 month
  pilot
• 100,000 registered users
• BAFTA for interactive innovation
• Commercial sector endorsement
• International support
• Only two minor breaches of the licence

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Eight Lessons

• Design a future proof system
• Co-opt all stakeholders
• Prove concept with a pilot, including planned
  implementation
• Open up to creator generated content
• Develop infrastructure with other content
  partners
• Demonstrate public value
• Offer revenue generation
• Stimulate user examples through local and diverse
  communities

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But..

• New regulatory regime
• Public Value Test
• Pressure on funding
• delay on implementation
• Risk to pilot data

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http//www.bbc.co.uk/archive/index.shtml
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BBC Trust
Management control through the public value test
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An American Archive?
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The concept

• PBS and NPR station archives rich but dark for
  the public
• Funding strategy for public broadcasting
• Reaching out to other museums and archives
• Uniquely American narratives
• Now in development following the election

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Legitimising creativity Trying Things Out
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paulgerhardt_at_archivesforcreativity.com