Since the COVID-19 period stretched across four challenging months, a clear shift emerged: culture increasingly finds new life through digital communication channels, reshaping how daily life engages with arts and cultural goods. Across disciplines, cultural producers realized that dissemination channels must be activated to let art reach people not only in real time but across multiple moments and formats. This practical pivot aims to serve citizens by offering cultural activities that are accessible when and where audiences need them, turning cultural life into an ongoing, flexible experience rather than a fixed, one-time event.
Time has moved through the press and, thanks to visible technological shifts, there is a growing vision of vast digital platforms for consuming culture, including cinema and allied arts. Some productions that might not have achieved traditional sales channels found new life online, while other artistic forms such as theatre, visual arts, and music often lack the same ready-made digital infrastructures. The shift away from physical attendance does not erase the pleasure of cultural events; instead, it opens the possibility to follow performances online and on demand. Historically, state universities sometimes partnered with a major institution to stream operatic performances, extending access for students when the distribution of live shows was challenging. While these efforts were notable, they could not fully substitute the immediacy and communal experience of watching a performance in a dedicated venue like the national opera house or the provincial theatres.
Today, virtual exhibitions offer another way to explore culture without needing to travel to a museum. Digitization and online archives enable cultural events to reach a broader audience, allowing people to engage with art, history, and creativity in new contexts. Yet there is a sense that these digital experiences, while informative and convenient, often lack the affordances of a direct encounter with works in person. The atmosphere, scale, and serendipity of a physical visit contribute something distinct to the appreciation of art, which digital channels rarely replicate entirely. Still, the ongoing digitization trend expands access, provides new modes of interpretation, and supports ongoing public conversation about culture beyond geography or time constraints.
Throughout, there remains a strong argument for synchronizing digital and face-to-face cultural consumption. The goal is to broaden the ways people can contemplate and engage with cultural activities, whether at a fixed venue, while traveling, or during scheduled sessions. In this light, the CENID project, carried out by the Universities of Alicante and Miguel Hernández and the Diputación de Alicante, features prominently as a platform for digital culture discourse. It supports research into how digital diffusion of culture can inform practices across municipalities participating in the regional digital culture agenda. A team of technicians involved in this initiative has built relationships with professionals across the field, expanding the knowledge base used to guide cultural diffusion strategies and public programming.
Culture Cenid represents a digital agenda that originates from the cultural production of the region. It unveils a broad panorama where municipalities and cultural institutions contribute with the willingness to share, free from physical limitations. The project aspires to reduce barriers to cultural consumption and to strengthen civic engagement by promoting new forms of cultural diffusion. The day closes with a discussion led by a senior figure from a renowned museum who will prompt reflection on how each social network can be tailored to support mainstream cultural production and consumption. The discussion leaves producers and audiences with an open question about the path the cultural world will take as technology and society evolve, inviting continued exploration of how digital channels can complement and enrich real-world experiences.