How Alan Gemmell of the British Council mixed work with play

He tells how digital media could facilitate cultural understanding and what makes his job the most fun assignment in the British public service

At a time when everyone is talking about how digital is the next new thing, he has reimagined and expanded how new media can effect cultural transformation. So when I reach the British Council building to have lunch with its director, Alan Gemmell, and learn he’s running slightly late, it seems only appropriate to use the time to create my own digital mix of the sounds that define Delhi on the computers in the reception area. 

Mix the City is the British Council’s unique programme, which allows users to familiarise themselves with a city by listening to its definitive sounds — and digitally create their own downloadable mixes. I find myself so immersed in the sounds of cities like Harare and Hamburg, Mumbai and Moscow that I don’t notice my lunch date is here already. “This is why I love Mix the City!” laughs Gemmell. “It draws people in, and once in a while, surprises them a little.”

As we settle down in his office where he has invited me for a working lunch, Gemmell’s enthusiasm for digital media, especially to educate and facilitate cultural understanding, is infectious. “The digital medium allows us to get straight to the consumer, play with him a little and open up brand new opportunities,” he says. Gemmell is referring to the British Council’s bouquet of digital cultural offerings to mark the UK-India Year of Culture 2017. Other than Mix the City, it has launched Mix the Play, in which users can choose between several versions of scenes from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and put them together digitally. 

The latest offering is Saptan Stories, a collaborative storytelling project with authors and illustrators from India and the UK. “Next up, we are launching Mix the Body — which will allow users to choreograph dances online,” he says. For this, the Council has commissioned some of Britain’s best dancers to perform dance pieces, which users, thanks to some extremely complicated algorithm writing, will be able to manipulate. “It’s all very exciting,” he says. “I feel like I have the most fun job in the British public service.”

Gemmell’s office has ordered — from Caara Cafe, located inside the British Council building — enough food to feed an army. We help ourselves to some excellent superfood salad — a mix of beetroot, pomegranate and seeds that makes me feel virtuous, at least in my food choices. Meanwhile, Gemmell tells me how the original idea for Mix the City took shape during his tenure in British Council Israel, prior to his move to India. “In 2015, we were brainstorming about how to engage with younger people — a lot of them in a very short time,” he says. They were convinced that the best way forward was to go digital, and the idea of Mix the City took shape. 

The initial response was encouraging. “So, because I’m a bit mad, I decided to aim for a million users of Mix the City,” he laughs. At a time when they had barely a handful of users, it did seem ambitious. But Gemmell turned out to be right. Today, the programme has more than one million users across 100 countries. It enables people across the world to experience different cities and cultures through their sounds, and actually make them their own — something that a hundred expensive live concerts wouldn’t be able to do. By curating and creating digital content, says Gemmell, British Council’s own approach is undergoing a sea change. 

“Not only does the digital medium allow us to reach many more users in locations hitherto inaccessible to British Council,” he says, “our content is now much more participatory, user-generated and hopefully, appealing to younger audiences.”

Gemmell spoons a little of the fragrant pesto pasta on his plate as he tells me about his pet project, FiveFilms4Freedom, a global LGBT short film festival that makes five short films freely available online free for 10 days. In partnership with the British Film Institute and supported by the United Nations’ Free & Equal campaign, the festival reached 1.57 million viewers in 179 countries in 2016. It’s a whole new way of promoting cultural understanding, I comment. Gemmell assents: “Our new offerings give the  audience the chance to sample that culture at their own pace and on their usual devices… which makes it much more exciting, doesn’t it?” 

Meanwhile, as British Council libraries across the country are also being digitised, I wonder if this is perhaps the fall of the final bastion — the beginning of the end of the traditional ways of functioning. “We are seeing an increased demand for digital solutions today,” he says. “I have a sense that we need to go even faster into the digital arena.” 

To illustrate his point, Gemmell gives the example of British Council’s online teacher training programme in Andhra Pradesh, which will target 100,000 learners in two years. “Had we focused on classroom teaching, we’d have never been able to dream of such numbers,” he says. 

As we nibble (but barely make a dent) on some crusty paninis, Gemmell tells me what it was like growing up in a small Scottish village. It also gives me an insight into how he has become, arguably, UK’s most effective cultural czar. 

A student of music and law, Gemmell says that an early passion for music transformed his life. “As a child, simply going to Glasgow to attend a music class brought me in touch with so many new people,” he adds. It seems like a far cry from the young man who went on to set up the Scottish Youth Parliament — and a farther cry from the man that GQ magazine included in its 2016 list of UK’s Hundred Most Connected Men. “You shouldn’t believe the magazines,” he says, embarrassed I’ve brought it up. “The fact is that my job has brought me in touch with talented people across the world.”

We discover a common passion for northeast India and when I name some of my favourite regional jazz and blues bands, he whips out his iPhone to take notes. “I’d love to feature the Northeast in a Mix the City edition,” he muses. 

When I say that for most Indians, the Northeast is as exotic and unknown as Israel or the even the UK for that matter, he makes some more notes and says, “Won’t it be wonderful if we could organise a festival to get more people familiarised with the Northeast?” Clearly, Gemmell lives and breathes the task he has been assigned — to bridge diverse cultures and promote mutual understanding.

I regretfully eschew apple tarts for still water and Gemmell orders a coffee. He tells me he’s already planning programmes to commemorate British Council’s 70th anniversary in India in 2018. “To kick off the 2017 India-UK Year of Culture, we managed to project the gigantic digital image of a peacock onto the façade of Buckingham Palace,” he says, showing me images on his phone. While the symbolism of the peacock is traditional, the image is bright and contemporary — come to think of it, not unlike most of Gemmell’s projects.

All too soon, the lunch draws to a close. The minute I’m in the car, I start tinkering with Mix the City again, this time exploring the sounds of The Balkans. It may promote cultural understanding and all that, but it’s also the most fun product to emerge from what used to be a very staid British Council.