Social Convention began life as a simple production company, curating artistic and theatrical performances and setting them in an inclusive party experience. Since the pandemic, Social Convention has undertaken a substantial pivot to become a digital platform – developing formats and technologies for live online and social experiences.

Social Convention LABS are digital open studios where artists are given digital space and support in which to experiment, make new work and directly engage audiences outside of venues or the never-ending scroll of social media. This is a new kind of open, networked, R&D and audience development programme for artists’ new creative work.

LIVE is another initiative by Social Convention, where work from LABS is showcased in an ongoing online festival featuring work in development, fully realised performances, interviews with artists, DJ sets and more. This is a new kind of online experience that melts away the screen and delivers close to the impact of IRL events with a social focus.

Through their Resident Entrepreneur project, Social Convention is building the data model that will drive the platform to disintermediate the relationship between culture consumers and culture producers. While the company is aware that artists can publish digital content and events easily, their proposal tackles the issue of connecting the marketing and broadcast platforms.

In addition, their project focuses on creating a digital equivalent to the platforms for audience discovery which is typically driven by festivals and venues in the real world. Social Convention is taking a data-driven approach to creating a matching platform that lowers the creative technical barriers and increases audience reach.  Further development includes PROIS, a three-strand R&D project to significantly enhance the product in three ways:  Engaging a community of lead users (artists and audiences) to apply a data-driven growth model to maximising engagement and value for both audiences and artists, iterating the platform so that it is more interactive, responsive (to location/device/audience) and scalable.