Richard Saville-Smith: We'll need to work together to drive our electric dreams

BIRTH Announcement: Creative Scotland was born last night at midnight. It is customary to bring a present to the birth of new babies, but since I am poor and you are rich, I bring, instead, a vision.

Consider what could happen if Creative Scotland spent a little less on arts productions and a little more on developing audiences? Imagine if Creative Scotland stopped funding projects which dabbled in new technologies and strategically invested in the digital infrastructure to transform Scotland for Arts companies and audiences alike.

The technologies already exist to provide a global window on to everything that's happening in Scotland - everything - every event which is scheduled to occur, in any part of Scotland, however remote, however cosmopolitan. And such a digital network can be entirely decentralised, with each performance having its own space over which they retain creative control. In their space, a company sets out dates, times, locations, synopsis, cast, links to their website - more. Every Thursday, Ticketmaster e-mails me tickets going on sale next day. Where is the equivalent for the arts? And why not a ticketing portal for all events with centralised security but managed in each company's page.

This already sounds better than the existing fragmented set-up. Yes, there's The List, What's on Scotland, VisitScotland, etc, but these depend on centralised control, have inflexible search options and are not comprehensive.

In a digital arts network, from the audience perspective, each person would also have their space with a personalised calendar of their upcoming events (integrated to Outlook/Facebook/Twitter). Additional resources - music, video, podcasts, pictures, etc, can be released in the countdown to the performance: an education programme pitched at a personalised level. People can invite friends, arrange to meet for dinner before a performance - at open tables - to put the "social" back into life, write reviews and, above all, know what's going on where and when the tickets go on sale.

Audiences are not passive. Of course, the Scottish Arts Council will say it's always attended to audiences, but its 2009-10 business plan suggests otherwise. An integrated digital network provides the empowerment audiences lack.

Why does it matter? Recently we went to a fantastic NTS production of Peter Pan at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre. It wasn't a capacity crowd. It was a Saturday night. Currently, the five National Arts Companies, plus the SAC, receive the best part of 90 million of public-sector spending in a time when everything is under review. If Creative Scotland took bold, radical steps to build audiences - audiences that paid - the resultant increase in revenue would mitigate the coming cuts.

The new Creative Scotland can do better than the old SAC by taking the opportunities the new digital technologies offer - cheap, reliable, universal, decentralised, egalitarian and democratic.

Supposing the infrastructure sketched above cost 2 million to build, maintain and market, would that be worth it? I believe so, because investing in the audience is the most effective way of securing the future of the arts. And, besides, once it's up and running, they can sell the whole shebang to the French!

For today, I'm happy to wet the baby's head in the hope it'll grow to empower both artists and audiences alike.

•Richard Saville-Smith is a PR consultant and digital strategist working for the creative application of social media. [email protected]