Artists have always taken imaginative leaps with technologies.
From telling stories that seed future breakthroughs to diversifying AI datasets, artists reimagine what technologies can be, and who they can be for. This publication creates an international evidence base for this argument. 56 leaders in art and technology have offered 40 statements, spanning 20 countries and 5 continents. As a collection, they articulate artists, the cultural sector and creative industries as catalysing progressive innovation with cultural diversity, human values, and community at its core.
Responses include research leads from Adobe, Lelapa AI and Google, who detail the contribution artists make to the human-centric development of high-growth technologies. UK institutions like Serpentine and FACT, and LAS Art Foundation in Germany show cultural organisations are essential spaces for progressive artist-led R&D. Directors of TUMO Centre for Creative Technologies in Armenia, and Diriyah Art Futures in Saudi Arabia highlight education across art and technology as a source of skills for the future. Leaders of African Digital Heritage in Kenya and the Centre for Historical Memory in Colombia demonstrate how community ownership of technologies for heritage preservation increases network resilience. Artists such as Xu Bing in China and Libby Heaney in the UK present art as a site for public demystification of complex technologies, from space satellites to quantum computing.
The perspectives presented in this publication serve as a resource for policy making and programme development spanning art and technology. Global in scope, they offer case studies that highlight why innovation needs artists, on both a national and international scale.
Read Why technology needs artists: 40 international perspectives
Artist Danielle Braithwaite-Shirely responded to the invitation to contribute a statement to this publication with a comic strip.
Explore I Can’t Lose My Humanity by Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley
Key insights
1. Artists catalyse technological advancement across sectors.
Innovation thrives on creativity – the ability to generate new ideas and methods. Within the arts, culture, and creative industries, innovation often manifests as new aesthetics and creative applications of technologies.
However, the impact of artist-led innovation extends far beyond this, by contributing to a cross-disciplinary ecosystem that incorporates industry and academic settings. This results in the development of new knowledge and capabilities, testing of technical limitations, creation of new legal and economic infrastructure, or redeveloping technologies to reflect key social needs.
2. Artists deliver both social and economic value
Through the development of new tools and techniques, collaboration with product developers, or contribution to interdisciplinary cultures of innovation, artists, cultural organisations, and creative industries directly contribute to high-growth technologies.
For example, industry researchers are engaging with artists to increase cultural specificity in AI. Game developers, through working with cultural organisations, have developed more inclusive games. New insights into emergent quantum technologies have been surfaced through artist-led experimentation. This generates both economic and social value by increasing technological efficiencies whilst prioritising social and cultural representation.
3. Artists integrate cultural diversity in technologies, leading to more resilient networks
Resilient technologies are adaptable to instability, inclusive of diverse contexts, and responsive to community needs. Artist-led innovation fosters such resilient ecosystems. Art and technology education programmes, residencies, and festivals engage communities in both technical and ethical considerations. Through breaking down opaque concepts and cultivating interdisciplinary skillsets they build the public agility required to adapt to a changing digital landscape.
4. Artists propose hopeful social and technological futures
By taking imaginative leaps, artists, cultural organisations, and creative professionals propose alternative approaches to technologies, grounded in sustainability, community, and human values. This influences shared ideas of what good and attainable futures might look like, while proposing creative solutions to planetary challenges. Such pathways are essential to realigning technologies with ecological and social wellbeing.
Citation
Andrews, H., & Hawcroft, A. (eds.) (2025). Why technology needs artists: 40 international perspectives. British Council. https://doi.org/10.57884/Z34F-0732
Why technology needs artists: 40 international perspectives @ 2025 by the British Council is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
