The word ‘tech’ and the tech industry, is a vastly expansive and broadly defined space and market. Even as a concept that is evolving in real time, tech continues to baffle us, frustrate us, scare us, and equally connect and disconnect us from ourselves and each other. All-in-all, it makes our lives a whole lot easier as we continually build a uniquely woven relationship with tech, that is centered around a whole lot of codependency - tech needs us as much as we need it in order to exist!
Beyond our deeply complicated relationship with tech, lies undying potentials, opportunities, new ideas, beginnings and innovations that have well fed our consumerisms for decades. The need and demand for immediate content and even new digital experiences has seen a massive increase, especially during the Covid19 pandemic. However, economic forecasts, the global impact and repercussions of the pandemic have also resulted in lay-offs across many different industries. Cutting costs has become a priority across all sectors due to industry and economic uncertainties.
Artists and creatives continue to face their usual industry challenges, which have been further exacerbated by the recent global events. The lingering uncertainty of the industry’s state continues, with the strikes and their striking reasons including AI and payment negotiations. The fear of the unknown continues to prevail in addition to the challenging road that already lies ahead for any artist and creative.
It is during these challenging times that we must remember and continue to remind ourselves that Art Never Dies.
Art is the continual re-creation and rebirthing of an individual's voice. Art is sacred and always will be, as it connects us to our individual self and a wider collective.
A business or an industry is a means for us to share our product or service in a way that will bring recognition and a financial return. When various global factors out of our individual control impact our ability to see these returns, we are faced with ongoing uncertainty that only discourages us from pursuing our creative endeavors. When cutting costs and profit-making become an immediate priority, we lose sight of our bigger picture and goals. As a result, diversity and inclusion are often put on the back burner blocking us from new ideas, opportunities and growth.
I do acknowledge mentioning earlier that all industries, tech included, were facing challenges due to economic uncertainties. However, if we remind ourselves that at the core of any industry's existence is the need to share a product or service, we can transcend any limitations imposed by innovating new ways to reach and connect with our community.
So why the tech industry for artists and creatives? How does it serve as a new platform for diversity and inclusion? Here are some reasons why:
1. How we consume connection - content, information and ideas, is evolving:
We as humans have a growing need and desire for connection. When we have a look at the deeper roots of ‘connection’ and what it means to stay ‘connected’ with our inner and wider community, it stems from one’s core desire to have surety of their true self by being seen, heard and understood.
Our consumption of connection often manifests itself in our need for content, information and ideas so we can feel validated and a sense of belonging. It is also a need for awareness and knowledge, which is often tied into one’s yearning for self surety. Artists and creatives play a particularly crucial role in conveying ideas and information and essentially creating content that enables audiences to feel connected and part of something greater.
This need of being seen, heard and understood and our continual desire for staying connected is being capitalized by the tech industry. Readily available to feed our need for connection is social media, an array of online platforms and applications, alongside tangible gadgets that we use to access them.
The consumption of connection and how we connect continues to evolve due to technological innovation, which gives artists and creatives the opportunity to find new pathways and avenues to share and sell their art and advocate for diversity and inclusion.
2. Tech as an industry needs Artists and Diversity and Inclusion as a driving force.
At the basis of tech and innovation is creativity and a visionary mindset. The age-old example of Apple serves as a great example of creativity and innovation, revolutionizing how tech products and effective marketing strategies can continually engage and connect with their customer community.
Art and creativity is encompassed by the need to share an idea, vision or story, presenting itself in various visual, tangible and auditory forms. The realization of art’s innate power to connect with people and communities serves as an incredible advantage.
Diversity and inclusion is also essential in order for our ideas to have the relevancy that connects us to a wider community. Relevancy is how we build connections between our wider communities and the product or service we provide. The tech industry relies on new ideas and relevancy in order to sell a product or service.
Tech and Art alongside the driving forces of Diversity and Inclusion, share similar goals when it comes to connecting with a community through ideas, interests and experiences. Together they exceed the limitations that are placed within their own respective industries and in society as a whole.
3. Limitless Possibilities
Over the decades, tech continually removes the constraints and lifts the veil between perceived limitations and new possibilities. Art and creativity service as new ideas that are the catalyst for expansion. Working hand-in-hand allows for new potential for both the art and tech spaces. Diversity and Inclusion within these spaces enables an applied understanding of individuals that are part of our community, which is essential for creating new and groundbreaking possibilities.
Artists are given new ways to connect and engage with audiences, and stretch the creative capabilities of their craft, within the tech space. Tech can only survive and thrive when it truly understands and connects with its customers and users on a deeper level. With Artists and Creatives serving one of the greatest purposes of creating connection and conveying understanding and awareness, tech inherits a new power that continually enables them to innovate new products and services that are of true value to the wider community. Diversity and inclusion plays a crucial role in ensuring that a community is truly seen and understood.
4. New Market Potential
Our need for tech grows increasingly, as we continue to become more reliant on it, to not only solve our problems but to create new possibilities that will make our lives easier and even perhaps more fulfilling. The ability for tech to help connect us to a wider audience expands market potential. In combination with an artist’s innate gift to connect and engage with a community, the two industries can work closer together to invoke a new untapped potential for creation that will see greater reward for both the arts and tech spaces and essentially the wider community.
Diversity and Inclusion is the crucial driving force for which any possibilities can be made into a reality, as it is the foundation to ensuring that no one and no idea is ever just simply dismissed as lacking potential.
Tech and Art have the ability to serve each other hand in hand. Tech holds great potential as an untapped market for artists to find new ways to express themselves and have greater access and outreach to a wider audience. Art as the basis for tech creation and innovation, serves an incredible power in engaging and connecting to a wider community. Diversity and inclusion is an essential platform for this union, by ensuring the relevancy and originality that is crucial to engaging with a community on a deeper and more understanding level.
New ways to monetize also present itself when the two industries work together. Also utilizing creativity in approaches to monetization can serve as the driving force for both industries to receive financial rewards. We have all had terms and concepts such as NFTs, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Web 3, The Metaverse, VR and AR thrown at us at some point and at varying degrees. These emerging and evolving tech platforms and tools need to have greater relevance to a wider community, if they wish to increase financial returns. Deepening a sense of connection to demonstrate the benefits and rewards on offer through these tech platforms, will play an essential role in their success of how they are received and utilized long term.
We as humans thrive on exciting experiences as well as new ways to make life easier, fulfilling and even more fruitful. Creative approaches to tech enable greater opportunities and rewards for both artists and the tech spaces, playing an essential role in meeting the needs and desires of the wider community. Even greater than the sum of their parts, together they create new possibilities individually and also collectively in enabling their value. New monetization pathways also create more jobs and opportunities, as well as a greater platform for diversity and inclusion in practice and mindset, which will serve as the core basis for understanding the community on a deeper and more connected level.
I conclude on a personal note - my discovery of tech and its possibilities came at a time when I found myself as part of the ‘chicken coup’, alongside the other Film/TV and Media composers in the industry who were all understandably competing for their big Oscar-winning break. Starting Sound-how as a platform for women and minorities by creating new opportunities in music and sound within the Film/TV and Media industry, had started to feel less impactful for the people I had hoped to help, including myself - a woman of color.
Drawing back to the basis of why I had chosen to set up my company Sound-how and also be a Film/TV and Media composer, has served me in finding an even greater purpose in creating new ideas and pathways for myself and others. Seeing beyond the limitations that are set before us, and moving past them to discover and create the new and infinite possibilities that we are all capable of, is when the magic takes place!