 Good afternoon or good morning or good night depending on where you are. My name is Ricky Burdett. I'm a professor of urban studies at the London School of Economics and director of LSE cities. I'm very quickly going to introduce the evening and then pass on to the chair Adrian Ellis. Welcome to the urban age debates. This is the fourth in a series of discussions about the future of cities in the 2020s, organized together by the Alfred Herrhausen gazelle shaft and LSE cities research center here at the LSE. As I say it's a series which has started in January looking at issues of changing patterns of work in the city, then we looked at public space, then at public transport, and now today this evening on the issue of culture. We will then conclude the series later in the year with a discussion of similar one on changing patterns of retail. Now to have a very good debate about the issue of culture, we've decided to work with a person who knows about what he's talking and that is Adrian Ellis. Adrian Ellis is an old friend and an expert in this field of culture he's been working in the field for over 30 years running a consultancy called the AEA Consulting and very relevant to tonight's event. He's also the chair and the founder of the global cultural districts network, which brings together an enormous number of cultural districts from different parts of the world and I want to thank them for partnering as knowledge partner in this event. So thank you for joining in to this event, and I now pass on to Adrian Ellis. Adrian, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Ricky and thank you both for inviting me to moderate this event and and to give the GCD and an opportunity to contribute to this series. You mentioned that I have been in this sector for 30 years that 30 years. Yeah, pretty well that 30 years there has been a long sweep of investment in culture, and particularly in cultural infrastructure, arts buildings if you like. A lot of that long sweep has been informed by or prompted by urban policy, rather than cultural policy per se. If you think about all that investment in arts buildings. It's often as a prompt to the regeneration of city centers. It's been about priming for private investment in downtown areas. It's been about the stimulation of the knowledge economy and creative economy, the sort of the sort of arguments that are associated with Richard Florida. It's been about stimulating tourism, and it's not just been about single buildings it's been about complexes or clusters from West Caloone to to Saudi Island. And that trend is not may have started off in Europe and in the States but obviously it's also a trend in China, the Middle East and increasingly in Southeast Asia and India, and in sub Saharan Africa. A lot of it is, is policy informed, if you like, the most successful are usually where that investment is in the context of an overall strategy which includes transport which includes all sorts of other aspects of urban policy. Sometimes you have a somewhat naive belief that build and they will come, and you are left with cultural infrastructure which is which is more challenging to to activate. But the trajectory has broadly been consistent over those 30 years on the last four or five years before COVID. There was an investment of about 10 to 15 billion US dollars per year in cultural buildings either new or or significant renovations. On came COVID. COVID ground that process to a halt for all the very obvious reasons, exactly how that halt worked out was a really a function of different public health policies in different countries. The, the trajectory of COVID in those countries and it was also about, to some extent, the public sector response in terms of emergency a practice packages which varied enormously around the world, but we are now emerging, and from a period when we affect the, the, the sector, as I say ground to a halt, international travel local travel compulsory closures, and of course, equally on the, on the, on the performance side or on the real challenges in how you operate and under circumstances as we emerge, the critical question is, are we emerging into the same world, or are we emerging into a different world, and are we still we, in other words, are the cultural institutions that are emerging changed by the experience and by other things that have gone on. We know, or at least we know that the trends in international tourism are going to be critically important, particularly for larger institutions in city centers. We know that the behavioral patterns may be changing as a result of the period of COVID. We know that people sensibility about that international travel, as I say, no flight shaming behavioral changes. We know that there was during COVID a flight to digital engagement with culture, which is not therefore place based will that remain will that grow will. We know that remote working has become increasingly significant. We know there are other changes happening downtown. So the question that we're asking ourselves this evening, the questions we're asking ourselves is, is how do cultural institutions larger and smaller respond to this and what is the part that they will play in the urban debate going forward. I have three outstanding colleagues to to address these issues. I'm going to go to Ibadel, who is the chief executive of the South Bank Center, the South Bank Center, which is opposite, more or less exactly opposite the houses of parliament and Westminster, and which grew out of the, the 1951 festival of Britain is I think probably Europe's largest art center and is an anchor to a cultural district which stretches from that West End along the East to to take to take modern and Elaine has experience of all the complexities of large scale cultural infrastructure. Gabriela Gomez Mont Gabriela is I think currently in Edinburgh lives in Amsterdam and has deep experience and wide experience her deep experiences in a in a very innovative position in the Mexico City Government. In a think tank working on that interface between the urban and the, the urban and the cultural and she is I was going to say a serial fellow at TED MIT Yale and other places but I think they overlap so I think it's quite serial. Our third participant is Andreas Gergen. Andreas is the head of the German Foreign Office culture and communications department, and in that role has extensive experience of both cultural diplomacy but also domestic cultural policy to and I think Andreas who's obviously based usually in Berlin is speaking to us from a bourgeois in Nigeria, where he is currently I think in the the fray of the interesting issue around restitution. So, and his experience draws not only on the on the on the in public service but also in Siemens, where I think senior position Siemens and began his career with the billionaire ensemble so crosses the crosses the the whole trajectory. So, let one more, one more comment before we begin in earnest. We will be opening this up to questions so send your questions as you have them to the, to the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen and please say who you are, and if you have a position that you want to declare an affiliation you want to please put that there too. So, Elaine, South Bank, you're at the very sharp end of all this. Tell us, do you see as you as you and the South Bank emerge, do you see yourselves emerging into a permanently transformed position vis-a-vis your immediate and larger community. And is your institution itself changed in ways that will impact your relationship to that community. Good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me along. I mean, I think the short answer to all of that is it's too early to say. It's been fully open since September we are an 11 acre site with four venues, including the Hayward Gallery but three concert halls. And we didn't have the whole site fully open till September. We closed for a large part of last year but we've managed to stream events from behind closed doors. As you referred to earlier, we discovered just how much we needed digital at times like this. And frankly, it was a wake up call because we were not a very digitally savvy organization before the pandemic and that will definitely continue beyond. Literature return is pretty volatile. We have the advantage at South Bank of doing a range of events so we do contemporary music we do classical music. We do dance we do comedy. We do visual arts. I would say that contemporary music is showing every sign of being alive and kicking and almost every gig that we've had has been sold out. It's a similar pattern. A lot of the literature talks that we have been doing very well attended classical music, I would say is still showing signs of caution. And so you would draw from that quite easily. I think a suggestion that there's a demographic issue here older audiences tend to be the demographic the overall demographic for classical classical music and that looks like it's a bit slow to return. But it is not reluctant to come to the halls which I think people understand are incredibly covered safe I mean we went through so many precautions last year to make them covered safe much much safer than supermarkets for example, despite our lengthy closure. So we are definitely impacted by people's reluctance to use public transport, particularly the older demographic. And in London we have a very central London we have a very specific issue around the congestion charge and increased parking restrictions which were brought in a couple of years ago and, and have also put those constraints on people who might want to drive. Tourism obviously was a huge part of our ecosystem so the 11 acres incorporates bars and restaurants and a number of retail. We were the previous year, I think our visitor numbers was something in the region of four and a half million. We have 50,000. So we have had a massive impact in terms of overseas tourism, and to some degree out of town tourism as well. So the things that I think are lasting are the digital platform is going we are doing a number even though we're fully open. And we desperately want people to come back and come and have the live experience. We're doing a number of hybrid events where we are simultaneously streaming, and that isn't going to go away. And we are post pandemic investing quite heavily in that digital infrastructure, but there was a report out today saying with a number of regional theaters in the UK that had relied on digital broadcast of their performances last year are reverting only back to in person. And the thing we have to remember about digital is a purely economic one which is at the moment you don't make fast amounts of money from it. Nothing compared to ticket sales for example which is a huge part of our financial kind of makeup. So it is, it is one of those areas in which you have to invest hugely to get going and the, you know, the likely results are as yet a bit hard to work out and certainly everything that we did last year was free. So the streaming was all easy to access. May I just ask one question. You mentioned one aspect of the demographic which is clearly there may be a reluctance with older audiences, not so much to be there but to get there. Yeah, that has an impact, but, but you didn't, you didn't mention at all the phenomenon of remote working. And I'd be interested to know what you think the long term impact of not just remote working but with it a sort of emphasis on the, on the local and sort of stay local. And remote working for your own organization but particularly for all those workers who are around you and those audiences for whom, for whom a visit to the South Bank was, you know, a short post post workday, you know, across London commute. So we are very affected by it. We keep saying that Thursday night is the new Friday night because many people are choosing to work from home now on Fridays, specifically Fridays. So we're finding the site very lively on Thursday nights. We're definitely affected by it. Again, we're sort of hammering out how what sort of lasting effect this change in work pattern is going to have on us. So in terms of our audiences, there's no question that you know deciding to go to an event after work when you work in central London is an easy hop and a step. If you've been working at home it involves the commute in it's it's all together a much different schlep. And so I think we're definitely I know in particular I think theaters are finding that they're very affected by that one of the things that West End has done has been to introduce the Sunday performance. Of course, the air has never opened on Sundays here in the UK, but because of that shifting pattern we're all having to think about slightly different ways of providing art and activity for people. We are closed currently on Mondays and Tuesdays which is the result of the pandemic and the squeeze on our finances we used to be open seven days a week. So it's partly to cater for that issue of, of people not London just not being as busy as it has been in terms of our own staff. Again, we're sort of still hammering it out. We're currently two to three days in the office and the rest of the time, sort of hybrid working from home, but we've never run a site that's open fully five days a week with that kind of working pattern. So of course we have some stuff for whom there's no choice they their jobs require them to be on site, because they're very directly involved in the delivery of the, of the cultural program so again I think it's, it's hard to draw any lasting conclusions from it but there. I think that the West End theatres think that probably the Sunday performances are here to stay. Gabriella. So, your perspective on the same issue, both with respect to the larger often city center located cultural institutions, and I drawing on Mexico City, Mexico City is one of one with one of the cities in Central South America probably all the the richest legacy of particularly museums of national international significance, which are in turn also significant tourist attractions or have been historically, but also whether you see, or whether it's too early to see a, a sort of tilting public sector priorities from larger legacy, but are often known as legacy institutions to more community based ones that are more locally based and outside of city centers. Those are great, great questions agent. So basically, I think one of the, the provocations that I'd send your way in terms of many of the shifts that I've been seeing both with the cities that I'm working with in Europe as well as Latin America is first of all I believe that very much in the DNA is this and perhaps not phrased like this but that cultural institutions and cultural infrastructure I think is starting to think about how do you become infrastructure for imagination if you will that I think is is actually an additional layer if you will to how we've been thinking about cultural institutions. As of now, I think that there's a expansiveness and an experimentation that is happening in the civic realm. So many times a public amazing public space, for example, can be strangers meeting in space, but there's also this way of thinking about civic space which is no longer about strangers but how do you actually build communities and networks that actually have these specific meeting spaces but that also that it's a thing in in space but it's also a thing in time, because many of these communities actually are working on much, much longer term projects. So basically in Mexico City specifically I'm seeing many museums such as Centro Cultural Digital that used to be led by Grace Quintanilla that unfortunately passed away some months ago but now by Mariana Delgado, which besides becoming a fantastic place for exhibitions and all of these things that we've seen that museums have has function as since they have such a deep feminist agenda it is becoming a meeting space for the feminist community of Mexico City in many ways. So sometimes this will take the place of let's say thinking about what electronic publishing looks like sometimes it will be about get togethers and expanding the role of digital tools. But it has a social intention that allows for this infrastructure for social gatherings to happen which I find incredibly interesting. So on one hand in terms of the larger public institutions I do think that there's a multiplicity that is happening, as well as a added experimentation. I've also been very intrigued with OD and Helsinki with the Centro Library that is now thinking of itself less like as a library yes but they call themselves like a living room. Nowadays it's not only about doing research and seeing and going to check out a book, but it also is meeting rooms and it also has, you can actually host events there yourself so it's becoming like the space of that you can take over as a citizens which I find fantastic as well as the Centro Library in Mexico City the biblioteca Vasconcellos when Daniel Golden was the director. You had a place where you could do musical recordings where they were teaching sign language because there was a community it turns out around the library of people with certain disabilities that were using the library but they didn't have access to these type of tools, etc. On a smaller scale what I find incredibly interesting is perhaps vis-à-vis this multiplicity they were speaking about a specificity, how many communities and many smaller projects are actually functioning as spaces where new civic typologies are possible. So nowadays you're seeing everything from community kitchens that are also like tool sharing or you're seeing places such as Colectiva in Mexico City where same thing like you know the feminist communities are gathering to teach skills. And I'm quite intrigued about how the symbiotic nature of both the shifts and the changes in terms of the experimentation nature and this expansion of possibilities. And this, as I mentioned this shift towards infrastructure for imagination, what the future could be like in Amsterdam right now where I live. I've also been very intrigued how places such as the National Dance Theater of the Netherlands has a fantastic project which is called Switch, where they're nowadays allowing for the dancers themselves to have budgets so that they can become choreographers. So it's a place of continuous experimentation and then they have like the whole facilities of the theater at their disposal everything from being able to create costumes, as well as the stage designs and whatnot so shifting roles and allowing for these places, especially during shutdown where there was no public events to actually become spaces of deep experimentation that then will go on to become public showings of what is happening behind the scenes as well and during the pandemic so hopefully these will be some of the things that will happen beyond the pandemic. The aspirations seem that the aspirations to be a community anchor in in new and imaginative ways, and to act and have a social function as a social function and a function, a deeper function in community seems to me to be something that is the four for all institutions during during COVID large and small. I guess the question for many is, are there buildings suitable. Do they have the skills to do it. And above all, do they have the business model, and Elaine I know I remember talking to your, I think your predecessors predecessor, Michael Lynch, who always had the ambition that that Elaine stated it and I'm not sure whether it was his coinage but he used it very effectively which was to be London's living room, which was to be an open space where people gathered, and the ideal was that they would come and then decide maybe to go to see or maybe just a hand, but that it served an underlying social function, which alongside it's it's it's performing its function and performance in the visual arts, and yeah. Sorry, it was, yes, it was an extraordinary innovative piece of architecture in 1951 so the, the Royal Festival Hall is actually, we call it an egg in a box so the concert hall is suspended in a much larger square space and the whole point of the square space around and underneath and above the concert hall was that it would be civic space, and it would be available for people to use as they want so it's also been called it was called the people's place I think so, and there was always this absolute kind of guiding ideological principle that it would be open and available for anybody who wanted to go in so we open our doors at 10 o'clock and anybody can come in. And they come into work they come into play they come into have a drink they come into think sometimes they come because they literally have nowhere else to go. That's fine, we welcome all of them, and they are joined eventually by concert goers and hopefully some of the cultural events and talks or the dancers rehearsing that we just have going on also in that civic space kind of those things bump into and therefore people get a kind of introduction or an insight into some element of our artistic program and that will gradually kind of draw them to to to our main ticketed program but if it doesn't that's fine. And we alongside that run very very specific programs of course for social inclusion and participation so we run, you know, monthly tea dancers for those suffering from social isolation or dementia. You know anybody can come and turn up, even if they don't have a partner and they do, and everybody takes part and so we have that delicious thing of the sort of unplanned and unprogrammed meeting our sort of orchestration of it. So that we can seduce people into participation, or just to observe if that if that's what we want to do, but it has always been a space that belongs to the community that was the point of it but you know and many many community groups use our space purely for rehearsing and book the spaces and we don't charge them and you know because they're from the local area and we, that is a very also a very important part of the ecosystem. Andreas, you're involved in an international dialogue about exactly these issues which is what is appropriate cultural infrastructure. What are the roles that it needs to play in urban development what he's playing cultural development etc. As you look at Western Europe in general Germany in particular, and even Berlin in particular. What do you see about the extortability or otherwise of the model that we have broadly lived within in Europe and the states over the last few decades. It's very challenging to say to say just in that right moment because I'm in Abuja in Nigeria. I don't know how the situation is in Berlin, but just getting getting back to the initial question I think, or my my two lessons from the pandemic is a learning about vulnerability. I'm in the same time a personal vulnerability, which gives another sense to personal presence and the vulnerability of a society which is basically a threat for the idea of an homogeneous space in a nation state, and which leads us to a more enhanced understanding of our communities. And now going back to your point. So what we have seen in Western Europe and in Berlin is as all in all the countries, a sharp decrease in tendencies in the museums in the public sector with a high amount of money spent just to maintain the infrastructures, which is good on the one hand. It's a anti Schump, Schumpeter effect. So, so perhaps, perhaps we are on the way to continue to sustain organizations, which do not longer fit to the effects of the pandemic, meaning to the effects of a reshaping and redesigning of a public space or the citizen space, and which do not correspond to the, to the needs to the need of the level of society to rethink about homogeneity and homogeneity in our societies means to deal with the two key issues diversity and sustainability. And on in international level. So I think there is a catch still a catch up effect. Be it in in in Lagos with 50 million people be the actual conversation about the Benin bronzes at the future of the need city. There is a real catch up effect but but I'm quite confident that the design of the to build public spaces or cultural spaces in those countries would just start with light slightly defer from what has been built in Europe. And slightly defer from what has been exported for example to the Arab countries 20 years ago. So, it's very interesting by by anti Schumpeterian. I think what you're saying is that there is in the evolution at least of the private sector process of creative destruction, in which established institutions are pushed aside by capital markets, etc. And that one spring up, because either they are. There is some pro revolutionary process that they have adopted that pushes the other ones aside. There is a capital market and that capital market. People looking for a rate of return or the highest possible rate of return, either rationalize as the euphemism is or close or move, move the parts around. There is no direct equivalent in there is no direct equivalent of the capital market in what I take it in the not for profit, or the public cultural sector, which means that when the cards are played, they tend not to be replayed easily. And therefore there may be great creativity and great fertility, but it's not necessarily taking place inside those larger cultural institutions that preempt the resources. And the reason I'm sort of unpacking that and spelling it out is that that does seem to be one of the potential implicit one of the potential movements that one has seen during covert, which is to say that there has been extraordinary creativity that has been innovation, both, both in terms of content and distribution, but the larger cultural institutions have inevitably been preoccupied with institutional survival, and their priorities and their fiduciary priorities are about keeping their show on the road. And I'm wondering, all three of you, whether you see a growing tension, if you like, between the fertility of creativity that may be taking place outside institutions and institutional preoccupation with with organizational survival, or whether you see whether you see the relationship between creativity and cultural institutions has been more harmonious. So we can't sit side by side, I mean certainly in the case of South Bank Center, which by the way is not wholly publicly funded so public funding is only 37% of our total funding so we have always been necessarily entrepreneurial flexible on our toes thinking about opportunity. But a recent example I don't know if, if everybody is aware of an amazing artistic innovation in Peckham car park, which was the transformation of a multi story car park into an extraordinary art space. And out of that came the multi story orchestra and and who who introduced classical music to different kinds of audiences. And we have started working with them at South Bank Center so that they can bring that style of introduction to music, for example to families last Sunday, we have them here. And they did a series of introductions to instruments players, music for families and children so so I think here is a really innovative. I think it's like disruptive kind of art inspirational art organization that I think we can work very kind of hand and glove with because we have wonderful spaces to into which these, these events can happen but I, but I would not be so pessimistic about the role of the bigger institutions. I think in the end the very reason that South Bank Center was born which is that a traumatized post Second World War government recognize that what a traumatized nation needed was art and culture, not alongside it needed a lot of housing and jobs and all of those things, but it actually allocated a huge amount of money for art and culture because it is so essential to a nation's health and in the end it can be uniting and healing and I think for those reasons. People will return to institutions and the wonderful things that go on inside those institutions. I agree with Elaine and one of the things I believe is happening in Latin America in terms of large institutions that I completely agree they do have their place. It seems were caught in a catch 22 if you're publicly funded a crisis comes and then certainly the huge budget cuts actually put so many museums simultaneous simultaneously at apparel. And I think that we're watching seeing that all over Latin America were were museums that were used to having like, you know, strap for budgets always but still had things budgets do things suddenly are really at odds with with where the reinventions need to happen and then if you're privately funded then you're, you're strapped into a more corporate agenda and you lose your freedom so perhaps one of the places of imagination and creativity that needs to happen is precisely what you were pointing towards a during like are there other financial models. In many ways to think of one of the, especially if you start opening up the, the conversation to the other scales of things that are happening so, for example, in terms of urban agendas in general, one of the big conversations is about resiliency and I think that pandemic has shown us that redundancies are necessarily we've thought about so much about this streamlining efficiencies and whatnot, and then suddenly when crisis hits, you actually figure out you actually need your redundancies to make your systems work. And so, for example, the way that public space has become, it's to have had this dual function if you will. I think it's interesting so you know if we certainly started thinking about cultural institutions and when a crisis hits, how those redundancies everything from these places in New York that were used as covert centers etc etc do budgets come from elsewhere. Another thing is when cultural institutions come into specific places within the city and what happens in terms of the real estate value. These are not much more thinking on broader terms in terms of the surplus capture of the of the capital gains that are made by cultural institutions coming in and that are actually not captured by corporations and by private companies but actually by the by the public if you will I think that there's interesting things to think about there that hopefully will be able to break apart this again catch 22 between being beholden to the private or to the public that many institutions right now I think is what keeps them in check if you will and enable to reinvent them or their way forward. I'm not so I'm not so convinced that the capital market equals with fairness or innovation. So for the for the public finance institutions I think even if you maintain a structure and a structure which has existed since 100 years at its own reasons to exist and may last longer than the pandemic effects. You have to put into it a small incentive for innovation. And that's actually what's happening because I see many many of that important public players opening up to another kind of community building opening up to to to to more diversity and to kind of to the to the digital space or to the virtual space to be shaped as a meeting space, even in those big elephants. What I was trying to say is, but there's still a need for more innovation, because the effects of the pandemic will last. We are trained in that model you mentioned in the early beginning, that we export products, or we deliver services and people come to request those products and services. And these products and services will change because they are under to be seen under their criteria of sustainability. So exporting big festivals will be will be will be challenged in the upcoming years. I'm thinking about Berlinale festival even on the current festival. And in the same way, what we are doing as governments, or as cultural institutions be the British Council be the growth Institute to try to export German German culture by taking by buying a ticket for an movie and by sending a film abroad that will tremendously change. Let me ask another related question, which is 30 years ago somebody in charge of a cultural institution would be primarily thinking, most of their time about what went on within it, the programming within it. You as cultural leaders are thinking just as much about what goes on outside as what goes on in it. I'm thinking about the relationship to a whole series of stakeholders in the local community in the broader community. You're thinking about the animation, not only of the building itself, but the animation of the areas around it. And you're thinking often about the animation of whole districts and your role as an anchor in those districts. I can answer this personally but how well equipped do you think we are as a cohort of cultural leaders for those responsibilities. In other words, are we, or are we, are we, we are, we're integral to the urban debate and the contribution to it, but our professional formation or professional formation is tends to be in the, in the internal side of these organizations or has been historically, do you think that there is a need for maybe generational change, but a need for leadership to, to be more skilled with more familiar with their urban role and urban strategies. I'm happy to pick that up. I mean, I, I think the one thing that the last 20 months has taught leaders or certainly institutions is that they will sink if they're not entrepreneurial flexible thinking outside the box. We have all been so challenged by business plans that are frankly totally irrelevant and have to, most of us completely rethink the structure of our organization as well as every business plan we might have hatched in the past so I think you're absolutely convinced that leaders of arts organizations are going to continue to need to be constantly thinking about what the pivot is and what it needs to be and flexible but I think many of them have demonstrated, certainly all of my colleagues have definitely formed quite a tight cabal now in the UK. I think we've all demonstrated that we are more than capable of doing that. I mean, a lot of that agent in the UK has to do with the decline in public funding. So, given that for most of us, whatever public funding we get is not sufficient to cover the costs of what we need to do. In the past few years had to find other ways of making raising producing further profits, not profit but but revenue. And so I think it's been the case for a while now that leaders have had to be quite commercially savvy and quite kind of innovative in the way that they're thinking about running the organization. You see a generational change. So I do think in Latin America in general I am seeing a museum's reaching out to other communities a lot more frequently of truly trying to build coalitions that go beyond the cultural and very much thinking about a creative ethos as a social resource. So purely aesthetic outputs that I think is a fantastic thing to have and then you know as Louise when you're at the filmmaker once had you know a, we should not only think about culture, in terms of it's, it's what it produces economically but also even a language for society that we might not necessarily see its effects right away. So in that sense I find that this need to reach out to not not being able to maintain like a monolithic relationship to the rest of the city and the rest of your society can be incredibly interesting in many ways because again like you become more multiple you're reaching out into other communities this creative ethos can travel in very different ways it can travel the scales of the city. You can become a lot more hybrid in the way that you work in many ways. At the same time I do worry seeing this again like I'm referencing right now, Latin America specifically that many times when there's a specific patron if you will for institutions then you become beholden to a more commercial agenda, and in a certain sense I think this expansiveness and this poetry and this freedom that comes from artistic practices or something to maintain so how to walk that fine balance between both of those needs between, as Aline was saying that being innovative but also you have many times being able to support practices such as experimental theater for example that might not necessarily have a huge revenue at the time is something worthy in terms of cultural writ large. But there is I think a new way of inserting oneself in the city and the society which I find quite intriguing in general. I think it's worth pointing out in the UK I mean, there's a very good point about the pressures of commercial funding. I mean let's face it this government has provided 1.57 billion pounds in the in the form of a cultural recovery fund, and that was open and accessible to institutions as well as to the smallest arts organization that was struggling to survive so I think the recognition of the importance of those organizations but also of the role that art and culture has to play I think we have to acknowledge that there was an absolute recognition of that. I'd like to open this up to questions. This is from August to death say from a which I assume is the architectural association, but I may be wrong. The question is, how did digital technologies impact and contribute to nations recovery effort from the pandemic. What role did cultural infrastructure play in making cities more resilient, particularly of developing nations. And I opened that up the whole panel. It was critical during last year there was a rush to put a lot of stuff online from every cultural institution in the world. And I think the effect was quite overwhelming. It was also completely uncurated. And so it was quite hard to find the excellent in amongst the rest. So we decided that we would be quite careful. We were also acutely aware we were, we worked before the pandemic with with over 100,000 artists and performers. And most of those were freelance. So we were acutely aware that there, there was a real issue for freelancers so we did as much as we could to bring orchestras back because if they got to play they got paid. We could stream it so we were we were curating our. So we were very very traditionally putting the orchestra on the stage, putting cameras on it and then streaming it or recording it and broadcasting it later. And we didn't have a platform to do that we had never had a streaming platform on the South Bank Center site so we were sharing that with with existing digital channels, or through ticketing organizations like dice. So the result of the pandemic frankly is that we're developing our own channel. And of course we are, most people are because we have absolutely realized that we need that. But more importantly, we are now sort of in a in a much more accelerated way, digitizing all our archives so that we can put that on to our channel. And we have also reached, we've also realized that we may need to reach those global audiences that were previously coming to us in different ways. So the digital infrastructure has been key and actually in South Bank Center terms we've invested quite a lot of money in it to continue on that digital journey. From Ramon Maradis, director of Placemaking Europe and a student on the executive MSC in cities at LSE our co-hosts. A question to you, how would you invest a billion dollars standard cost of a mega project, true without the need for building big stuff to improve cultural rights production and access in a given place. In other words, if there weren't that that sort of underlying imperative to invest in physical infrastructure, what would constitute a, you know, a billion dollar strategy for a city. I would love to have a billion dollars what can I say. I will I'll imagine my way into Mexico City once again, because I was working so closely with these types of subjects for six years. One of the greatest potentials that I found first of all as you well said Adrian like Mexico City has it's one of the cities with most museums in the world. But at the same time, the physical infrastructure has never necessarily been followed by super juicy budgets. So I have the feeling that being able to equip the museums that we already have and that already exist across the city to be able to become expansive and experimental in terms of the way that they function both for Mexico City as a whole and their specific communities I think would be incredibly interesting. But since one of our questions was always how to travel the scales of the city. I was always very intrigued when we were working specific very directly with specific communities across Mexico City about the need for typologies that are much more idiosyncratic than these figure things can be that very much serve specific ways of being of different communities. And one of the things that I did when I was chief creative officer for Mexico City we crowd towards the Mexico City Constitution, and amongst many other things we created an urban imaginary survey where we asked 31,000 people across 1400 neighborhoods, several things including the future of Mexico City and whatnot. I'm surprised, many of these people actually responded that culture was one of the biggest attributes that they found in Mexico City could afford them like one of the things that they appreciated the most, sometimes even before education. But often we actually cut cultural budgets first, and working with the participatory budgets of Mexico City we also did a big survey of what was happening on the ground. There were absolutely fantastic places that again we're like hybrid beings between cultural institutions but had a very specific social aspect to them, such as Chabuzbanda that were a series of former gang members that created a cultural community that were giving infrastructure to bring in people out of gangs and to give them a way of making money within their communities, or absolutely fantastic community centers that were mixed between senior citizen homes and day care centers and just like a plethora yes. So the other part of the budget would also be for thinking about the micro scale like how do we expand upon the typologies of civic spaces that now exist because in a way you know libraries are fantastic museums are fantastic public spaces fantastic. But why have we not expanded upon the repertoire of the ways that a city can speak and know the type of social energies that can be gathered in these civic spaces. So I do a combination between the more centralized and the bigger institutions and giving them space to experiment and expand upon what they're doing. As well as the acupuncture smaller community based idiosyncratic specific places that empower the local inhabitants to actually take over these spaces as we've seen with as I mentioned participatory budgets with quite astounding results. Lisa in Berlin asks a not dissimilar question, which is, how can society or politics or political processes support cultural community projects, compared to supporting traditional cultural institutions in other words I think, you know, the Humboldt forum just opened at a capital cost I think 700 million euro, which is about the billion that was a little a little less than the billion that was mentioned for a mega project earlier. And it is, it is the case that larger institutions for all sorts of reasons preempt significant, but it may merit it may be political cloud it may be all sorts of reasons preempt significant sums both of capital and revenue. Do you see, do you see in this period of change, where community engagement becomes is of increasing importance and where there is an increasing emphasis on social issues of social and racial equity. Do you see a re a process of reallocation being needed. And do you see it happening. Well the Humboldt form was exactly the reason for my my silence. I thought I would not be in the right position to pick up on that one billion euro question. I'm not. I'm not so convinced that this massive investment is really bringing things forward. We have it, and we will work it out. But but coming back to the to the question, you know, if I had to spend one billion euro, I would spend a third for artists at risk, where we see actually happening in Afghanistan should concern us. And I think there is a need for cultural infrastructure for those who have to go to exile. And that will bring will bring innovation also to our society. Second is a innovation fund. So I think money should be spent to foster to enhance and to enable in the field of innovation. And that leads to that question raised. This is this is the way you can enhance community building in the in the existing organizations, and it's partly done in Germany, or it's in a wonderful way done by the cultural foundation run by the media focus. Next question from from the audience is from Serge Rameen. Hi, I'm a trustee of a local art center. My question has to do with the larger cities attract the bulk of investment in arts infrastructure, a similar point. And within these larger cities the wealthier boroughs 10 years from now, what is more likely the Peckham or Newcastle branch of the National Gallery or the National Gallery in Hokkaido, Japan. Elaine, I'd love you to answer this because there's a there's an interesting issue here with leveling up in the UK, and the priority afforded to London traditionally versus other parts of Britain particularly northern England. So, so, and I think that one of the, one of the issues underlying this question is in addressing one inequity which is the inequity between London funding and other parts of of England and those of the United Kingdom. Is there a risk of another inequity being exacerbated, which is an inequity between the city center and the other and other boroughs. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a taxing question when when money is tight. I mean, I would argue that in terms of the government's labeling of leveling up. Of course, the places that I refer to you need that level of investment. You won't be surprised to hear me say because I run the largest arts sector in Europe and it happens to be located in central London. But my view is that should not be to the detriment of a very vibrant, very culturally rich and diverse capital city, which means it's investment retained in order to deliver what it delivers. I think, of course, we and the mayor's office has helped with this there have been the London boroughs of culture so there has been some incredible investment in the outlying boroughs of our capital city. It's very tough and the there is, you know, in the end, one of the big challenges that we have is the plethora of choice. And, you know, we have to reconcile that that consumers of art and culture have a huge amount of choice. And although there is emphasis on the local I think in a city like London where the centre still draws and and where the level of investment is higher that is always going to be quite tricky to pull off. That's a very sort of Britain oriented. I'm not going to go into the name but more generally other questions of questions of regional equity and geographical equity, Gabriella do you see a do you see a leveling in your work, do you see the pressures toward the preemptive pressures. I'm going to combine that with another related question, because it's directly rated from power, Rosal costa coordinator of a concoct and strategic co co director of Valencia will design capital candidacy. And his question is what's the relationship between culture and health and well being. It's a space to explore after the pandemic for traditional cultural institutions, or is it one more height. And I think that as over the last 20 years as we've seen different arguments be developed about the rationale for public investment in culture that we were talking about at the beginning. There's a great deal of writing and some of it quite robust currently is on the impact of culture on health and well, well being, and the implications of that. I may be highly distributive in that far from it being an argument for say tourism where you need critical mass in a particular city centre area. It's much more about immunity value to a wider community. And I'm wondering whether for all, all three of you whether you see a whether you see the argument about the contribution of culture to health and well being as being one that a is likely to have increasing traction and be whether that's got resource implications for how public public and philanthropic funding is dispersed in the culture sector. That's a great question and perhaps one of the things that I believe is important to keep in mind is that sometimes I believe we suddenly come across certain ideas of what culture is or what culture does that become monolithic in nature doesn't make them less true but let's say the turn of her towards creative economies and asking culture to produce in the same way that any other human endeavor would I think is incredibly interesting because yes, let's actually think about what design and film and the cultural industries actually add to our GDP and whatnot and all sorts of different types of value, but at the same time what does it actually mean to keep exploring very different ways that cultural functions within our society so I've been very intrigued in seeing for example, everything from cultural community centers that are deal with loneliness from a very different perspective like you can actually send both the budget as well as the externalities over to the health department of what loneliness is costing cities and societies. I think there's a recent book by Lorena Hertz that puts the budget for the UK into the billions of dollars in her book of the lonely century. But what would happen if we started thinking about that capacity and that affordance of culture in terms of how it creates community cohesions what everything from as I was mentioning community kitchens to these cultural centers and a more much more acupuncture level what they can actually do for a society. But I think that you know in a certain sense we cannot necessarily decide that culture is and does a certain thing, but rather we need to keep the amplitude of all of these ways of that both aesthetics and culture can actually add things to layers to society if you will so so I would be all for a continuous exploration of all of this everything from you know that there's been incredibly interesting results, dealing with PTSD with veterans as you've probably heard that are involved with putting on plays of Greek theater which is, you know, just like incredibly interesting from arts programs with people who have learning disabilities etc etc so I do think that there's a lot more to explore. And again that we should not necessarily cinch art to just like one way of being in the world because art for art sake is also a beautiful thing and so how do we just add to the growing repertoire of what culture and arts does within societies. I completely echo that I think it's, it's part of what art and culture do. And we, we do a lot of work at South Bank with with dementia sufferers and of course music is the last thing to go with dementia, I mean, dementia, dementia patients retain their, their cognitive recognition, recognition of music way way after, after others have other senses of form. So, I would just like to echo also Andreas points about artists in exile and to say that this Saturday at the Royal Festival will we have the Chinooka orchestra playing a commission by a young Afghani female composer, who is only 17. And so we are we are doing our best to support those artists who I agree are are much in parallel. I want to thank, thank the audience for both attentive active listening and some fantastic questions. I want to thank the three panelists for a really engaged and I think important discussion. I want to also just alert you to the, I think the final and the sixth debate or discussion in the series, which will be in early December, and is on the future of shopping and patterns of consumption. And I'm sure some of the same discussion around long term behavioral trends will feed into that too. So, thank you to everybody. And please stay with us for the final debate in December.