Social scientists are working alongside the Engineering team on the project, to understand the impact of streaming rural events to remote audiences. We are particularly interested in how streaming these events might positively impact on rural creative practitioners' networks and connectivity to wider audiences and client bases.
Does streaming these events increase the visibility of arts organisations struggling to be seen in remote rural environments? Arts organisations in such locations benefit from certain advantages - a rural setting can be inspiring and an attractive place for fellow artists to visit. Yet they also face disadvantages related to their remote geographies, particularly in terms of participating in their relevant professional communities.
Does streaming their events help them to connect with and participate more with these communities? We will explore the benefits which arise from connecting with new networks for example, forging connections with new organisations might result in new collaborative projects and activity. We expect that streaming events online from rural organisations will help them to increase their visibility and connect to new networks as well as revisiting old ones.
The research described here is supported by the award made by the RCUK Digital Economy programme to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub; award reference: EP/G066051/1.