Future Art Ecosystems 5: Art x Creative R&D
Arts Technologies Annual Strategic Briefing
The evolving landscape of art and advanced technologies (AxAT) has witnessed significant transformation over the past decade, with Creative R&D emerging as a distinct domain integrating artistic experimentation, technological innovation, and cross-sector collaborations. The fifth volume of the Future Art Ecosystems briefing series—Art x Creative R&D (FAE5)—examines this critical nexus and offers concrete recommendations for its development and impact.
The publication comes at a pivotal moment as the UK Government develops its Industrial Strategy and Sector Plan for the Creative Industries. With formal policy documents on cultural policy, digital cultural policy and creative industries still in development, FAE5 presents a timely intervention to help shape these emerging frameworks. The report offers policymakers a deeper understanding of AxAT’s distinctive contribution to innovation ecosystems and the specific support structures needed to realise its full potential.
Bringing together insights from over 60 leading voices from across the field including – artists Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Anicka Yi, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Natsai Audrey Chieza and Ian Cheng; innovative organisations 221a, Trust, Watershed, Royal Shakespeare Company, RadicalxChange; and key policy stakeholders including Creative UK, AHRC, DCMS, British Council and many more —FAE5 reveals the substantial impacts and public value that R&D generates as a core dimension of cultural production. The report demonstrates how artistic production processes and dedicated organisations can function as essential spaces for societal experimentation with advanced technologies, offering distinctive approaches to innovation.
About Future Art Ecosystems
Future Art Ecosystems (FAE) was created to support organisational innovation in the arts, specifically around ecosystem design for art and advanced technologies (AxAT). While critical discussions on technologies like AI, blockchain, and immersive media are well established, attention to the operational and infrastructural conditions that enable AxAT practices has been limited.
Since 2019, FAE has brought together artists, technologists, cultural institutions, and civic actors committed to building systems that drive creative and organisational innovation.
About Arts Technologies
Serpentine’s Arts Technologies at Serpentine proposes critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on advanced technologies through artistic interventions.
Supporting artist-led experimentation that challenges and reshapes the role that technologies can play in culture and society is at the heart of Arts Technologies’ commitment to Serpentine’s public mission. The programme supports artists in nurturing ambitious ideas and developing artworks that work with advanced technologies as a medium, tool or topic, often evolving iteratively and operating beyond gallery walls.
The foundation of the Arts Technologies programme is located in an evolving R&D Platform that supports the development of infrastructures for ongoing artistic exploration and interrogation of wider technological conditions within society.
