Ö÷²¥´óÐã

Editor's note: Stephen Morgan, Screen Manager for Ö÷²¥´óÐã Big Screens blogs about an exciting summer of events available to watch across the country.

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Big Screens are proud to be at the heart of national celebrations and will play a key role in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's delivery of the Olympic Games. The screens are part of the official London 2012 Live Sites programme and deliver the experience promised in the London 2012 bid - to engage with as many people as possible. During the Olympics, up to 500,000 people per day are expected to celebrate the Games at Live Sites throughout the country.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã Big Screen Swansea

We look after 22 screens, which are dotted across the UK, in every nation and region. It's a partnership between London 2012, local authorities and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. And it doesn't matter whether you're looking forward to the men's 10,000 metre final or prefer the women's long-jump final, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Big Screens will be the best destination to watch the Games locally.

From Swansea to Swindon, Belfast to Birmingham and Derry to Dover, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Big Screens will offer extensive coverage of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, with comfortable seating and facilities to ensure audiences have a fantastic shared experience. We want people to choose to watch the world's greatest event with us.

It's been terrific to see the amazing pictures of the Olympic Torch Relay. Huge crowds are watching the live coverage and the torch will be visiting every Big Screen site to give people a front-row view.

It's always a pleasure to talk to members of the public at our events and people tell us they really enjoy coming along to soak up the atmosphere. With world-class content from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, our open-air screens provide an amazing experience - it's an atmosphere you just can't get at home. It's not all about sport. With a packed programme of dazzling events, it really does promise to be a summer like no other.

One of my favourites is The Queen's Diamond Jubilee concert. It's likely to be very popular as more than 1.2m applications were made for the concert at Buckingham Palace - with only 10,000 tickets up for grabs. Other highlights include live coverage of Radio 1's Hackney Weekend and Euro 2012 games at selected sites.

Visit our website for the latest events in your area and watch a selection of Big Screen events. and

We look forward to welcoming you to one of our Ö÷²¥´óÐã events, soon.

Editor's note: "The Future of TV" was a panel discussion which took place on the 17th May, 2012 as part of TV Fast Train 2012.

Ö÷²¥´óÐã journalist and former Tomorrow's World host Maggie Philbin.

How will technology influence TV in 1, 3 and 5 years time? How will audiences be sharing, engaging with and reacting to TV content across news, sport and drama? How will broadcasters be measuring success, and what revenue streams will be funding TV in 1,3 and 5 years?

These were just some of the issues raised in "The Future of TV", a panel discussion chaired by Ö÷²¥´óÐã journalist and former Tomorrow's World host Maggie Philbin featuring Google's Peter Barron, Daniel Danker from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, digital consultant Nic Newman and Fremantle Media's Peter Cassidy.

In a wide-ranging session, Barron assured the audience that Google has no plans to get into television production or programming, while Danker revealed new figures showing that only 57% of iPlayer doing is done on a computer - the rest is taken up by mobile devices and tablets.

Read the rest of this post on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Academy website.

Hear the panel discussion chaired by Maggie Philbin.

Hear more from TV #FastTrain:Learn from drama greats, From factual to drama, Never Mind the Panel Shows, Using social media to grow your brand, Women in TV, Meet the controllers, Comedy greats, Features and formats.

TV Fast Train was produced in partnership with and in association with a range of industry partners including , , , , , , , .

Editor's note: Oleg Antonenko, presenter of the Russian Service TV bulletin talks about his first broadcast from New Broadcasting House.

On the eve of our first broadcast from W1, I heard one phrase dozens of times: "You are making history."

And on 1 May 2012 we did just that.

Presenter Oleg Antonenko. Picture Credit: Alistair Beavis, Ö÷²¥´óÐã World Service

In actual fact, this wasn't the first broadcast the Russian Service had made to Russia. The first TV broadcast went out in March from Bush House - home to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Russian Service for more than 75 years.

For me - someone who has spent almost 15 years of my professional life on the radio as a DJ, talk show host, reporter, and a news and current affairs presenter - it was a new chapter and a new challenge too.

My colleagues still keep asking me how it feels to present a TV bulletin. "It feels really good," I reply, "and years of live radio experience has really helped too." But what I appreciate more now is that I have to think of more than just my voice.

As someone said to me recently, "clothes and manners do not make the man, but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance".

I would add make-up to that list. Honestly, before I started presenting TV I only had a theoretical knowledge of what stylists and make-up artists do. Now I can talk for hours about the best methods for removing make-up. Not only that, I now have to shave every day of my life.

On a serious note however, this story is really about team work. Our crew - the directors, cameramen, and producers are all learning together as they produce the programme.

Our programme covers international events and reflects on how the international community, including Britain, reacts to significant news from Russia. Each bulletin only lasts ten minutes and although it seems small, I am really pleased to play a part in making history with this first Russian TV broadcast for the World Service.

Michael Hortin, joint News Editor at Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Lincolnshire, blogs about how the local radio station has given over an entire week of programming to outside broadcasts.

If 36 shows on the road across 89 hours in a week, and up to nine reporters out every day providing live reports, doesn't sound that daunting - trust me, it is.

From May 14, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Lincolnshire has been taking all of its shows out of the building and into the great outdoors. In the year of the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee, we hope to reflect life in Lincolnshire; from the food we eat, to how we celebrate faith, to where we work, and what we do to relax. In a sense, you might say it is a modern day audio Domesday Book.

I know some stations have done similar projects over a short period of time but I can't think of any who have taken their entire output (bulletins aside) on the road, to match what we are doing. In fact, in my opinion, what we're doing has only really become possible in the last year or so as technology has developed.

The technology in question is the use of the 3G network. Though that is not new in itself, we have used kit with a collection of 3G network cards to broadcast around 80% of the shows. Having several networks available gives the shows a resilience such that so far far, touch wood, they haven't fallen off air. At the same time our reporters have used a mixture of our own and borrowed iPads to broadcast.

For all the talk of ambitious plans and technology, the real way we (and more importantly) our listeners will judge whether the week is a success is by what comes out of the radio. Despite all our planning and technological wizardry we've found that we've also gone back to basics. Back in fact, to the famous phrase of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's founder Lord Reith "educate, inform and entertain".

Melvyn Prior speaking to patients at Boston's Pilgrim Hospital.

The Rod Whiting Breakfast Show continued to cover the day's events but instead of being in his usual studio, Rod has been at places right across Lincolnshire like the Old Hall in Gainsborough, Grantham Train Station and the National Centre for Craft and Design in Sleaford. At the same time Melvyn Prior's programme has focused on an issue a day as he travels the county including health care while touring Pilgrim Hospital in Boston and policing whilst broadcasting from Grantham Police Station.

As joint News Editor at the radio station, it would be remiss of me not to mention the reporters who, through the week have been clocking up the miles providing live reports from RAF bases across the county; a speed reduction seminar at Cadwell Park and the Lincolnshire Echo on the day it goes to print. We've also had a reporter travelling the length of the Witham from south of Grantham to Boston reflecting on the lives of those that live and work near the river.

What has also been so gratifying has been the response of the people in Lincolnshire. This has been shown most vividly in Market Rasen where a local group, working to rejuvenate the town and become a Mary Portas Pilot, organised a special market to mark the visit of our Drivetime show to the town. It sounded great on air and also seems to have helped their push to improve the town centre.

So, as you can see a unique project - but more than that, a chance to get Lincolnshire voices, sounds and issues on the air. In just seven days and in more than 300 places across the county, we hope to sum up what Lincolnshire is all about in 2012.

One Week in Lincolnshire is on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Lincolnshire from Monday 14th to Sunday 20th May on 94.9FM, 104.7FM, 1368MW and online.

The Rod Whiting's Breakfast Show and Melvyn Prior's Radio Lincolnshire programmes, in addition to the full radio schedule are available via Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer.

We are delighted to say that over five million viewers tuned in to watch the wildlife action on Planet Earth Live on Sunday and we are hoping they will join us for tonight's updates with Richard Hammond in Kenya and Julia Bradbury in Minnesota. While millions tuned in, thousands are following the regular updates from the field on Twitter and on the website bbc.co.uk/planetearthlive following .

Our guys are filming 24 hours a day, seven days a week so that we can bring audiences all the action and the news highlights in our three times weekly programmes. We have five separate outside broadcasts transmitting from often quite inhospitable locations, so there is a bit of a large margin for error in this hugely ambitious project. As the action develops in the field, Richard and Julia are on hand to present the latest news and analysis of these real life events going on around the world.

Wildlife filming is a long, drawn out and arduous process. Programmes like Frozen Planet are years in the making but we are doing this in a matter of weeks. Animals don't act on cue and rarely behave as we would like them to, which is why we present the action as pre-edited news packages. The camera guys put in the groundwork so that we can bring our discerning natural history audiences the most fantastic and up to date stories - real-stories of real action and not endless footage of a location where there's a risk that nothing happens.

Ten years of experience on series like Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Big Cat Live have taught us that sharing the thought that animal stories are playing out and we don't know what is going to happen next makes for compelling viewing and a wonderfully real and connected experience. We have also learned that simply delivering pure, raw, live images only does not deliver enough of the much more exciting and informative drama that our audiences expect and deserve.

Julia Bradbury co-hosts Planet Earth Live on Ö÷²¥´óÐã One.

It is worth noting that reality shows and news programmes have reached the same conclusion - it's the content and the ongoing story that matters, not the method of how we then package and present it to our audience. Richard and Julia present live in the field so that we can deliver up to date reports of real, ongoing events. Planet Earth Live is doing just this, and on a scale that we have never dreamed of before. We have camera teams and experts working around the clock, around the globe, capturing the action as it happens and filing reports to send back to base. The shows are then transmitted from Kenya and the USA and from our control hub at Ö÷²¥´óÐã Bristol onto Ö÷²¥´óÐã ONE and simulcast or as-live transmitted to 140 countries worldwide. Its quite a technical feat, and is the most ambitious wildlife broadcast event of its kind ever undertaken.

The stars of the show include lions, elephants, black bears, grey whales, giant river otters, toque macaques, meerkats and polar bears filmed in various locations in Africa, America, Asia, South America and the Arctic. Already they are developing their own following thanks to the real-time twitter updates from the teams in the field and their appearances on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Planet Earth Live website. Gavin Thurston's little macaque Gremlin is causing a stir while Moja, the solo bear cub, is fighting for survival with his brave mum has us all rooting for him.

Our presenters are live in every show, discussing the latest action and news with our expert cameramen in the field. The reason we chose Richard and Julia is that they are consummate professionals well used to working with this live action environment. They are surrounded by experts - who we carefully chose for their experience in the field and with that particular species. And so, as Richard so succinctly put it in an interview with the - when people ask why the bloke from Top Gear is doing a programme on nature "I can address that head on . I'm there to ask the questions and be amazed. Julia and I are not going to be afraid to ask those questions that perhaps some experts wouldn't because they assume greater knowledge."

In terms of the live nature of the series, we are reporting as a news programme would on recent events. We have never promised live footage of animals. The audience is sharing the action with the presenters and filmmakers with nature writing the script and our teams presenting the most interesting and informative parts of the animals' stories. The presenters are indeed hosting the show live and our web site is receiving updates from all over the world. If any animals are spotted during these live presenter moments and are relevant and interesting we will show them but this has never been our core purpose.

I hope you enjoy watching the series and follow us on the web. We are certainly having the time of our lives making it and we are grateful to Mother Nature for already writing us some amazing scripts.

Tim Scoones is Executive Producer, Planet Earth Live

2012 is set to be the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's greatest year of broadcasting. In Ö÷²¥´óÐã Distribution, we are currently making preparations for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee followed closely by the London 2012 Olympic Games, not to mention the Euros, Wimbledon, the European Championship Athletics, The Scottish Open ... and many other great events.

Most of these events will be brought to you by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã using our existing services, but for the Olympics we have some special changes planned, as readers of Roger Mosey's blog will know. In preparation, I wanted to give you some more detail of the changes we will be making to our TV and radio services to bring you the best possible Olympics experience.

• Ö÷²¥´óÐã Three's hours will be extended on all platforms
• 24 Olympics sports channels will be launched on Sky, Freesat and Virgin Media, available in both HD and SD
• A high definition Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button video service will be launched on Freeview
• Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button video service 302 on Freeview will return
• 5 live Olympics Extra will launch on DAB
• The Space will bring the Cultural Olympiad to Freeview

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Three Extended Hours

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Three will be one of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's flagship channels for the London 2012 Olympic Games and so for the first time we're going to be making the channel available during the morning and afternoon. On satellite we will be doing this using some recently vacated capacity on our existing Astra 1N Transponder 45. On Freeview, whilst Parliament is in recess, we will use Ö÷²¥´óÐã Parliament's capacity. This means that for Freeview viewers, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Parliament will be off-air during the Olympics, which was also the case during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Ö÷²¥´óÐã Parliament will continue on satellite and cable platforms with its usual summer schedule.

All satellite, cable and terrestrial viewers should be able to enjoy the extra sports coverage on the extended Ö÷²¥´óÐã Three without needing to do anything to their TV or set-top-box.

24 Live Streams of Olympics Coverage

As Roger announced on his blog we are going to add 24 SD and 24 HD channels to Sky, Freesat and Virgin Media to allow you to watch sports from every venue from first thing in the morning until last thing at night. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã channels will be part of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's Red Button service but will also appear in the EPG along with full schedule information to allow you to record any events you might otherwise miss. You won't need to do anything to receive these Ö÷²¥´óÐã channels and they will be free, but you will need an HD box to view the HD ones. The streams will be launched just before the Olympics in time to carry the very first events on 25 July 2012. I know some of you want to know exactly which satellite transponders will be carrying these services and we will publish that information nearer the time alongside our existing satellite frequency information on the Reception Advice FAQ site.

Some Freeview HD receivers will also be able to access the 24 live streams over an internet connection using the new Ö÷²¥´óÐã Sports App for connected TVs.

High Definition Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button on Freeview HD

Freeview HD may be only just over 2 years old, but already 5 million TVs and digiboxes have been sold in the UK. Thanks to a lot of hard work and the ingenuity of Ö÷²¥´óÐã Research & Development and our technology suppliers, there is now capacity on Freeview HD for a fifth HD channel, alongside Ö÷²¥´óÐã One HD, Ö÷²¥´óÐã HD, ITV1 HD (STV HD for viewers in Scotland) and Channel 4 HD (Clirlun for viewers in Wales). We are currently working hard on finding a permanent use for this 5th slot. In the meantime, to make the most of this valuable asset during the Olympics, the fifth slot will be used to give viewers an HD Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button stream on Freeview channel 304. The channel will show the same content as is available on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button video service 301 but it will be native HD. As with 301, the channel will be scheduled and listed in the EPG to enable you to book recordings but the primary method of access will be via a simple Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button application which we will enable on our HD channels.

Thanks to the clever way that most Freeview HD receivers work, viewers won't have to re-tune because the service should appear automatically in the EPG. But if you find that you don't have anything at channel 304 by the middle of July then you should re-tune your receiver.

The Return of Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button 302 on Freeview

No doubt many of you will remember that on Freeview we used to have a second Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button video stream which appeared in the EPG on channel 302. Well, it is making a brief return to Freeview for the Olympics. Because Ö÷²¥´óÐã Three is becoming a 24hr service on Freeview using Ö÷²¥´óÐã Parliament's capacity, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Three doesn't need to share capacity with CÖ÷²¥´óÐã during the Olympics. This means that we can use CÖ÷²¥´óÐã's off-hours (from 7pm) to broadcast Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button 302. The 302 channel was made available in the EPG from 26 April nationwide. You can check if you have it or not simply by trying to tune to channel number 302. If you see our message you are good to go, otherwise you will need to re-tune your digital TV or box to pick it up. I've included a link to some helpful advice on how to do this below.

Note for CÖ÷²¥´óÐã viewers in Northern Ireland and North-East England: By the summer there will be just two parts of the UK still to go through digital switchover: Northern Ireland and North East England. For viewers in these areas we are making an additional change to move CÖ÷²¥´óÐã to a different channel number - but just for the period of the Olympic Games. This is to do with the way that Ö÷²¥´óÐã Three and CÖ÷²¥´óÐã usually share capacity. So just for viewers in these two areas, CÖ÷²¥´óÐã will temporarily move from channel 70 to channel 73 on Freeview.

Viewers in Northern Ireland and North East England will need to re-tune between now and the Olympics to carry on watching CÖ÷²¥´óÐã, but the benefit of that re-tune is that you will gain access to our additional Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button service 302 (see above). During the Olympics, CÖ÷²¥´óÐã's usual channel number, 70, will show a message to remind viewers to go to channel 73. If you live in one of these areas you should be able to see channel 73 once you've done a re-tune. The good news is that the temporary channel number means that you will not need to do a second re-tune when the Olympics finish in August in order to get CÖ÷²¥´óÐã back at channel 70. Given that switchover this autumn will require you to re-tune your Freeview TV or box twice, we thought that viewers would appreciate our removing the need to re-tune an extra time.

This change doesn't impact Freeview viewers across the rest of the country, who can continue to watch CÖ÷²¥´óÐã at channel 70. Nor does it affect satellite or cable viewers where CÖ÷²¥´óÐã will stay on its current channel number.

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 5 live Olympics Extra on DAB

In order to offer additional listening choice as well as viewing choice during the Olympics, we will be launching a special Olympics radio channel: 5 live Olympics Extra. If the service hasn't appeared automatically on your DAB digital radio by 23 July, then try retuning.

The Space

Finally, in support of what promises to be an amazing summer of culture we will be carrying 'The Space' which is an experimental service developed by The Arts Council England in partnership with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. The service launched on 1 May at as a browser based service accessible on connected TVs, tablets, mobiles and computers. It will give arts and culture organisations the opportunity to experiment and engage with new and existing audiences in a completely new digital environment. The Space uses your broadband connection to deliver free content, such as plays from Shakespeare's Globe, live dance from Sadler's Wells, a virtual recreation of John Peel's home studio and rare archive content from the BFI.

Viewers who have certain Freeview HD TVs or boxes and are able to plug them into their broadband connection can access The Space on channel 117. If the channel doesn't appear automatically for you it's best to do a re-tune. When you tune to channel 117 The Space will tell you if you have a compatible digital TV or box and will help you connect it to your broadband if you haven't done so already. The Space keeps a list of devices which are known to work with the service on its and as the project progresses it expects to add to this.

You can read more about the Launch of The Space on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Internet blog and on the About the Ö÷²¥´óÐã blog.

Viewer Support

We have thought very carefully about the way we have organised our channel changes to minimise the interventions that our audiences will need to make.

Viewers on satellite and cable should not need to take any action because the changes to Ö÷²¥´óÐã Three and the extra Ö÷²¥´óÐã Olympics channels should appear for you automatically. Ö÷²¥´óÐã Parliament and CÖ÷²¥´óÐã will not be affected.

Viewers on Freeview who don't currently have channel 302 in their EPG will need to re-tune to watch all our services during the Olympics. CÖ÷²¥´óÐã viewers in Northern Ireland and North East England will need to re-tune to pick up CÖ÷²¥´óÐã in its temporary home of channel 73. If you need help with re-tuning, an excellent place to go for advice is which provides detailed instructions for many different makes and models of Freeview receiver.

As with changes we've made in the past we'll also be putting information up on our Reception Advice website and on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button p9991 on Freeview. Nearer the time we will be reminding Freeview viewers to re-tune using pop-up messages onscreen as well as a reminder on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Red Button bridge.

I trust that this information helps you understand the changes we are making in preparation for the London 2012 Olympic Games along with anything you need to do in order to enjoy all our new and extended services. I hope you can see that we've thought really hard about how to get the most out of our capacity and how to make it as easy as possible for you to enjoy the full range of this amazing summer in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's greatest year of broadcasting.

Alix Pryde is the Director of Ö÷²¥´óÐã Distribution

Earlier this year we announced the latest development in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's long-standing Public Value Partnership with Arts Council England: a joint project to make the best of the artistic and cultural activity taking place this summer available to everyone, on as many screens as possible.

The result of that effort is The Space - and it goes live today at .

The Space is a creative adventure involving dozens of organisations and dedicated to ensuring that nobody misses out on the excitement surrounding the vast range of artistic activity taking place in the summer of the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics and Paralympics.

For the next six months it will give audiences access to original digital arts programming, behind-the-scenes insights and new perspectives, as well as allowing us to make material from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, Arts Council England, the British Film Institute and other partners more widely available.

Making it happen has been a creative adventure too, with ACE and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã working together in new ways to identify and commission screen-based art and build the technical platform needed to make it accessible on laptops, tablets, smartphones, connected televisions and even - through a partnership with the , Freeview, satellite and cable television.

Over the summer, The Space team will be airing a whole host of work from established names sitting alongside work from new and up-and coming companies and artists including; David Shrigley's new opera, a Scissor Sisters concert and the ground-breaking, international productions of Shakespeare's plays being staged by The Globe Theatre.

We've scheduled some well-known faces to help us curate and critique what we're showing, we're ready for live broadcasts from events like the York Mystery Plays, and we have lined up some rare gems from the archives of Arts Council England, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and the BFI. We've also collaborated with the Arts council of Wales, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Creative Scotland to bring the whole of the UK into one unified space - The Space.

Technology

The Space is not a Ö÷²¥´óÐã service - ACE has taken the lead in commissioning digital art and media and in working with partners to provide the material that will be made available. For the Ö÷²¥´óÐã it's a six month experiment in delivering digital art to audiences. We have provided the technical and infrastructure support to deliver the work to as many platforms as possible, and our technical team has demonstrated yet again the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's world-class talents in this area.

In a very short few weeks they have specified, developed and commissioned a cloud-based content delivery network that supports sound, video, images and multimedia offerings, provides live streaming to a global audience and is viewable on all major platforms.

Normally we build systems which are designed to last for many decades, systems that are designed to scale massively and which form components of a highly engineered broadcast infrastructure. We build dedicated teams around them and train them appropriately, and we work to integrate these technologies into existing systems to keep the Ö÷²¥´óÐã on air.

The Space needed a different approach. It will only be running in its current state for six months, and we have had less than six months to build it, so instead of starting from scratch we have taken components from broadcast systems, open source software and cloud services and found new ways to make them work together. Of course there are many, many people without whom this would not have been possible but, from my point of view, the hero of the enterprise is Jake Berger who has been tirelessly responsible for building the teams, procuring the 'kit', managing the processes and ensuring that each of the critical moving parts have come together with a proficiency that was truly humbling to experience.

We're very pleased with the result, and we hope that you will find it an engaging, exciting and enthralling place in which to engage with the arts.

We plan to make the results of our work available to the technical community later in the year, so that others can build on what we've achieved.

An Experiment in Digital Art

The Space is an experiment in delivering art of all types to as many screens as possible and one of the reasons it is only running for six months in this form is so that we can tear it down and figure out how to do it better in future.

More and more people have multiple screens around them, and even when they are watching blockbuster TV programmes like 'The Voice' they will have a laptop, tablet or smartphone to hand. Broadcasters need to know how to operate in that environment, and The Space is one of the ways in which Ö÷²¥´óÐã Vision and Ö÷²¥´óÐã R&D are finding out how to deliver real value to audiences as we go forward.

The Space is also another step to creating the wider 'Digital Public Space' that we've been talking about and , an online space where institutions and communities alike can make publicly owned or collaboratively created material available for public use and where digital assets can be found or created, augmented and curated.

We've been working on the idea of the Digital Public Space for a while in partnership with a number of other public organisations. Together we are exploring what this could and won't mean, what it might comprise, who it would affect and how it might be achieved. Together we have developed and tested a wide range of hypotheses, prototypes and pilots, most of which remain unheard or unseen by the public.

The Space is our first experiment to be placed in plain view and is an attempt to answer a variety of searching questions about the impact of digital technologies on arts and culture, but it's also going to be fun and engaging!

So whether you're popping in for a quick blast of opera, theatre, pop or experimental art, or planning to spend the summer glued to a screen so you don't miss a moment of our programming, welcome to The Space - we think you'll like it.

Tony Ageh is Controller, Archive Development