I’ve decided to publish a draft version of the TPSE Network Visioning  report on the wiki, and to ask you to tell me whether I’m missing something, before writing up the final report and publishing it on the 30th June.

This is a condensation of all the information, opinion and inference gathered through meetings, private conversations, online chats, the visioning event on the 18th May, and online discussions about what the TPSE online tool should become.

To put it succinctly, it looks like TPSE wants a flexible, always up-to-date database of visual arts in the region, that can be delivered in various media and formats, and power differently targeted audience development campaigns, and can also link to national and global visual arts debates, and evolve into a local resource for critical discourse about artistic practice, with bells on.

Am I right?

One of the hottest discussions around the table on the 18th May was the regional vs. cultural identity debate, summed up very neatly by Stephen Foster from the John Hansard Gallery in the video clip above.

The consensus that emerged to guide the development of tpse.org was that it should start with a distinct regional/cultural identity, as a way to get people informed and enthusiastic about their locality, but people should be able to use it to find out about world-wide visual arts activity based on themes, genres and ideas as well.

As Simon points out in his email to the group, it is possible to have a ‘back end’ database of regional, national and international visual arts information, that we could provide a ’snapshot’ of, specifically showcasing work in the South East.

But beyond that, ‘can you show me visual arts activity within a 10 mile radius?’ is more a geographical than cultural question. Perhaps there are also ways of using tpse.org to promote the more creative and imaginative aspects of regional identity that Stephen talked about on the 18th.

On a practical level, most people agreed that something simple and regionally focused – like an online map of the visual arts in the region – would be a great starting point, which could develop nationally and globally through being ‘open at the edges’, and allowing people to find information by topic (eg. ‘performance art’) rather than imposing geographical or bureaucratic boundaries.

Ideas for this online event calendar and visual arts map included:

• Creating a site that allows people to get updates (via email/sms/RSS etc…) of “visual art within a 10 mile radius of me”.
• Allowing both geographical and topic-based updates for example: “performance art near me”
• Creating editorial or a ‘curated’ mail-out (like e-flux) from the site.

And there were some great ideas about how to do this:

• Bringing together existing initiatives, online tools and networks rather than building new things,
• Gathering or ‘aggregating’ information from existing websites, rather than forcing everyone to update the site manually
• Developing a consistent brand identity for all network members to use to grow the network,

There were also great ideas about trying to share market research and audience attendance data to help TPSE members improve what they do, and get a shared sense of what audiences want and respond to in the region.

But there are still lots of questions that need fleshing out!

• We need to know who we are talking to. Who are our ‘priority’ audiences? Who gets served first?
• What is already out there? Sites? Organisations? Initiatives? Individuals with lots of fresh visual arts data?
• How do we already collect audience data, and are their privacy issues in sharing it?
• What are the barriers to participation for organisations/individuals?
• Are we going to rebrand TPSE? If so – how?
• What are the funding/financial resources available to support this kind of network long term? What is it’s business model?

Once some of these questions are discussed on the TPSE google group, we can start sketching out some potential technologies and processes, but until then, let the discussion begin!