Read these essential culture & tech newsletters
Keeping up with art, culture and tech news can end up being a full-time job in itself. Fortunately, there’s an entire industry of newsletters written by people in and around the sector to help you stay up-to-date, and we’ve rounded up some of our favourites.
Subscribe to these writers and you’ll never feel left behind again.
Digital culture
Cultural Digital
We’d be remiss not to start off with our own Chris Unitt’s long-running Cultural Digital, which has been collating the best and quirkiest examples of technology and culture combining since 2015. You’ll find something to pique your interest in every edition, and there’s usually an interactive project to play with.
Digital Snapshot
The Audience Agency’s monthly round-up of digital news, innovation and ideas in arts and culture is always packed with interesting links. Curated by Alec Ward.
Digital Works
Run by digital agency Substrakt, Digital Works is their ongoing programme of content and events about all things digital. The newsletter is a useful barometer of trends and developments in the wider tech and digital scene, and how they apply to arts and culture.
Supercool
Web and digital design agency Supercool’s monthly newsletter includes a host of interesting articles and resources, plus job openings across the sector.
Storythings
Another long-running newsletter, run by content marketing agency Storythings. This one is weekly and includes 10 stories to prompt creative inspiration.
Ash Mann’s Best Things
A weekly dose of interesting, exciting and important things in and around the cultural sector, as spotted and selected by Ash from Substrakt.
Museums
Maxwell Museums
Maxwell Blowfield covers the museums sector in detail on his weekly newsletter. Maxwell Museums is the newsletter to read if you need to be up-to-speed on what’s happening in the museum scene. Also, don’t miss this Cultural Content guest post from Maxwell about the (often overlooked) role newsletters can play in the cultural sector.
Smartify’s Museum Reset
Cultural organisations use Smartify to enhance the visitor experience, and their monthly newsletter focuses on the intersection of technology, design and museums. You can find the subscribe option hidden at the bottom of their website.
M+H Advisor
The events and publishing company Museums + Heritage sends out their weekly Advisor newsletter full of cultural sector insights and news.
Arts
Cultural Content
No newsletter list would be complete without Georgina Brooke’s hugely popular Cultural Content, with its mix of practical how-tos, guest posts and interviews from across the cultural sector. Reading this will make your digital activity better.
Arts Professional news
Signing up to Arts Professional’s newsletters requires jumping through a few hoops, after which you’ll receive news updates about the cultural sector.
AMA CultureHive
You can get the free online resources from the Arts Marketing Association straight to your inbox.
Tech
Platformer
Casey Newton’s Platformer is the big one. While it doesn’t focus specifically on the arts and culture space, if you want to have your ear to the ground for emerging tech trends, this is the one to read.
Stratechery
One of the oldest newsletters on the block and also, famously, the one to define the current subscription ecosystem (as copied by Subtack), Ben Thompson’s newsletter has a business analyst angle but, again, is the one to read if you want to predict how tech is going to affect cultural organisations in the coming months and years.
Ian Betteridge
Ian’s focus is on how technology impacts the media, rather than the cultural sector specifically, but his observations and insights tend to be applicable and useful for anyone working around museums, galleries and performing arts.
Got an arts or tech-focused newsletter we’ve missed? Do drop us a line to let us know.
