Future of Arts, Culture & Technology 2027
Making It Work: A practical look at digital readiness and your organisation
Tickets
| General | $250 |
|---|---|
| AMAGA Member | $225 |
| ACMI Member | $225 |
When
FACT returns in 2027 in a more focused format: a single-day, practitioner-led workshop and an in-conversation event. We’ve invited Ash Mann to Australia to lead the workshop. Based in Göteborg, Sweden, Ash is an adviser, strategist and facilitator who has spent years helping cultural organisations sharpen their digital thinking and activity.
Pressure to adopt something new, whether from funders, your board or wider trends, often arrives before anyone has asked whether your organisation is actually set up to make it work. In recent years this has accelerated at the same time as our audiences have diversified and budgets have tightened.
About the workshop
This practical workshop is for you if you commission, plan, lead or deliver digital work in a cultural organisation. It focuses on a specific decision or question you’re facing (such as adopting a tool, replacing a system or introducing a new way of working) and asks whether your organisation is set up to make it succeed. Before the workshop, you’ll complete a short readiness assessment on your chosen decision, so we can focus on real situations and challenges.
The day will draw on original research, including Beyond the Promise, on why digital projects fail, and The Hidden Cost, on the invisible labour of digital work.
This whole-day workshop is for digital practitioners and organisational leaders, working together in the same room. Much of the value comes from each group seeing and hearing the other’s perspective.
By the end of the day, you’ll be able to:
1. Judge readiness for a specific decision.
Give an honest account of whether your organisation is set up for the decision you’re facing, before the pressure to adopt it turns into a commitment.
2. Explain why your organisation sits where it does.
Use four lenses (structural, cultural, political, and behavioural) to identify the conditions behind your position, and tell which ones you can influence.
3. Describe the gap between what digital work is and how people understand it.
Be more specific about what digital work involves, where colleagues, funders and leaders miss or misread it, and what impact that has.
4. Locate ownership and accountability.
See where responsibility, authority and workload sit on a given decision, and where they’re not assigned or are poorly understood.
5. Leave with a way forward.
Name the most likely ways your decision could fail, with a few specific actions to reduce those risks across readiness, understanding and ownership. You’ll also take away a method you can run with your own team.
Ash Mann
Ash Mann is an adviser, strategist and facilitator. For two decades, he has helped cultural organisations sharpen their digital thinking and activity. In that time, he has worked on hundreds of projects, from training and consultancy to complex web builds, design initiatives, new product development, and research and development. In 2017, Ash started Digital Works, a program of content and events about all things digital in the cultural sector. As part of this, he hosts the Digital Works Podcast and programs the Digital Works Conference.
Ticket Payment Options
After booking you will receive a confirmation email. If you have opted to pay by invoice it will be sent within 1-3 business days after your booking with payment details. If you have opted to pay by credit card you will receive a Tax Invoice shortly after your confirmation email.
More from FACT 2027
In Conversation: Ash Mann and Dr Indigo Holcombe-James
Join strategist Ash Mann and ACMI's Head of Research as they unpack why digital work can still feel so tricky for cultural organisations, and what could make it easier.
Tue 16 Feb, 6.30pm
Supporting Partner
Previous FACT highlights
Get a taste of what FACT is all about by viewing videos from previous key note speakers.
Visual artefacts from FACT 2026
View the graphic recordings of ACMI's 2026 symposium, made by artist Jessamy Gee of Think in Colour.
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