What will arts and culture look like in a post-pandemic world?

And they have enormous economic impact, with the creative and cultural industries contributing $250 billion and nearly 30 million jobs worldwide.

As executive artistic director of The Arts Centre at NYU Abu Dhabi, it was devastating to watch artist colleagues across the world (along with so many others whose livelihoods depend on live events) see more than a year’s revenue evaporate within a two-week period in March, when social isolation measures were imposed globally.

The industry adapted quickly, with initiatives such as online performances, virtual museum tours, and interactive artist sessions. And some of those attempts worked very well in creating a feeling of “liveness” and community. To give just one example from our own programming, we presented from our archives Toshi Reagon’s concert version of her opera Octavia E Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which was the first performance of our opening season five years ago.

This time around, we reached out to other performing arts centers around the world to host a joint screening with a live, real-time artists’ Q&A session. This gave the audience, who watched from about 15 different time zones, the important sense of being part of a global community.

Planning ahead

Now, with a vaccine starting to roll out in certain countries, the industry is reimagining the post-pandemic future. Arts organizations are grappling with the question of how to compensate artists for their work and their time, and whether audiences should have free access to watch online performances.

We’ve seen what happens when audiences are re-trained to no longer pay for recorded music due to on-demand streaming, and how the artists too often bear the brunt of the trickle-down effect. We don’t want to replicate that problem with live events. But there are many benefits of open access that have emerged during the pandemic that I wouldn’t want to see lost.

I am a believer that you do not devalue the arts by making performances easily accessible to everyone. The value is inherent in the art itself. But that doesn’t mean that artists should have to devalue their own talent or labour.

How can you reinforce a habit for audiences (who can afford it) to pay for tickets for virtual performances, and to support the organisations that are supporting the artists? How can you ensure that the quality of what you deliver warrants the value of the ticket? And how can you turn the unique characteristics of online or otherwise long-distance performance events into an asset, rather than an obstacle?

Tech to the rescue

Over the past few months, we have seen advances in the way that artists use the internet to achieve these goals. In the US, Bard College’s early production of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest, which blended live performance and technology, was performed live by actors from 14 locations using a modified version of Zoom. It was a critical success and a cutting-edge technological feat. The field watched as the industry all discovered how an existing platform could be hacked for more creative purposes. We watched as artists, venues, and audiences all discovered the advantages of being able to collapse time and space, and bring people together who might otherwise never be in the same audience.

Advances have also been made in the gaming space – a sector where participants are already used to navigating a co-authored online, real-time experience. Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox have all held virtual music concerts attended by tens of millions of gamers.

There are new platforms, such as Degy World and Nowhere, in which users navigate in a three-dimensional world with either animated or video avatars, allowing audiences to watch a show, explore the event space and then socialize afterwards, which again provides a sense of liveness, spontaneity, and community.

Even pre-Covid, the environmental footprint of the international touring model, and the mobility issues around visa policy, or the simple expense of travel costs, were hot topics of conversation in the performing arts. How can the innovative solutions being explored in response to the pandemic be harnessed on a long-term basis, even after the vaccine is commonplace, as a way to overcome those barriers, especially as high-speed connectivity continues to expand?

The road ahead

Even with all these developments, many in the industry probably won’t survive if the status quo remains. A lot of work needs doing to re-establish public perception of physical spaces. Pricing will probably change. If a venue’s capacity is cut by a third do ticket prices go up, or do they present more shows? When the economy is troubled, will governments step in with the needed relief to shore up a vital sector?

As such, we will likely have a very painful few months or even years ahead, and yet I remain ultimately optimistic. The arts are not a luxury; they are an essential human need. During the height of the summer when people around the world were in lockdown, engagement with art was something that helped them to cope.

Ultimately, self-expression is such a strong desire that new people will come in and start again. Artists are, by definition, creative people and they will find creative solutions. They will find ways to create art that requires fewer resources. Perhaps the venues will look different, or there will be more outdoor and multimedia work that doesn’t require a physical audience.

I am reminded of a documentary I saw about fires in the Amazon that burned ancient trees to the ground. Although the losses were tragic, a new wave of growth from underneath the trees were finally able to receive enough light to grow. So even amid the chaos afflicting our industry, I ask myself: what is the new growth that has been percolating underneath, and in what ways will it grow and thrive that we can’t yet imagine?

Bill Bragin is executive artistic director at the Arts Centre at NYU Abu Dhabi