From Now On are creative and cultural consultants We develop practical ways for people to engage with ideas
We encourage people to think about their changing world and how they can help shape it. We do this with professionals and organisations, students and educators, and anyone connected with the creative and cultural sectors, including their customers, visitors, and users. Our work leads to strategies and plans for exhibitions and publications, public and educational programmes, permanent and temporary ways to touch and inspire people.
What we do
Research and strategy
Sometimes our research sparks a new project; sometimes our projects suggest new directions for research. But research is always the first step when clients ask for help with their strategic direction. They come to us because we have a flair for teasing out the fundamentals – and finding a purpose and direction rooted in their particular context and the needs of their audiences.
Get in touch if your project or organisation could do with some fresh thinking based on meaningful research.
Curating and creative programmes
If we're known for one thing, it's our ability to help people understand big ideas. We’ve done it within leading cultural institutes and commercial brands, at trade shows and palaces. Whether the audience is the general public or a board of trustees it's the same skill - to get people to view their world afresh, change their behaviours and, often, plot a new course.
If you'd like to talk about a programme or exhibition that's powerful enough to set change in motion, give us a call.
Facilitating change
When you're planning a different future, you need clarity: where are you now and where would you like to be? And once you've chosen your direction, you'll want to take everyone with you. We revel in that sort of challenge – shaping and prototyping the ideas that support your vision and helping you make them a reality. With us at your side, your team will be as enthusiastic for change as you are.
Change can be inspirational. Let's talk about a future that everyone will embrace.
From Now On works from London and Copenhagen
Our small team is supported by expert partners and collaborators.
Daniel Charny
Daniel leads on Creative Direction. He is an internationally recognised curator, consultant and educator with an enquiring mind and an entrepreneurial streak. His wayward curiosity and relentless pursuit of ideas account for his unlikely level of output, including founding curator of the Aram Gallery, creative director of the international multi-site Maker Library Network and his professorial role at Kingston University.
Dee Halligan
Dee leads on Strategy. She is an experienced and skilled creative strategist and consultant, with a reputation for making sense of and finding direction within the most complex of challenges. Her unusual combination of a rational sensibility with complete commitment to creative excellence have equipped her well in past work with Tate, Science Museum and the National Trust.
Research
We have an active programme of research independent of client work; we track developments across audiences, creative and cultural sectors, innovation and education. This informs, and sometimes drives, our client work.
People and skills
We’re interested in people doing things, individually and collectively, which engage both their minds and their hands i.e. their imagination and their skills. Making and fixing things are of particular interest, with a view to understanding what happens next: from understanding and appreciation to agency to professional skills.
Relevant projects:
Fixperts, Future of Fixing, Tingbjerg Library project, Power of Making
Cultural engagement through making
We're at the forefront of putting making activities in traditionally non-making spaces (museums, shopping malls, caravans). Additionally we're busy creating ways for makerspaces to articulate their identity and progress their purpose whether cultural, civic, professional or educational. This landscape is enabled by the technology of whats been called the 4th industrial revolution; our research work navigates its impacts and changing boundaries .
Relevant projects:
Maker Library Network, Future of Fixing, Central Research Laboratories
Future trends
Our activity is a tiny part of a much bigger ecosystem of change; we’re interested in changing models of innovation, production and ownership, social and demographic change and inequality of access, and scarcity of resources and environmental issues. In tracking these broad issues we inform and guide our client work and ensure we're grounded in as much as we can be in the emerging realities of our world.
Relevant projects:
Future of Fixing; Tingbjerg Library project; research networks involving Kingston University, Royal College of Art and KADK Copenhagen among others
Work
News
DAMn magazine article: Getting a Fix - The rise of the makerspaces
We got news (letter), London Design Festival and other excitements
Go forth and multiply: our open source exhibition opens in two (yes two!) locations
Innovation through craft: report launches
New research! Cultural roles of makerspaces (and roles of making in cultural spaces)
Playing with formats: we're getting experimental in a library
It's happening! From Now On opens a project office in Copenhagen
From Now On facilitate global get together for Maker Library Network
Design Museum announce opening plans
One, Two, Many or One Too Many? From prototyping to production in Kyoto
Tavistock Institute appointed to evaluate Fixperts
Calendar
Maker spaces will save us? Daniel in conversation with David Li
British Council
V&A Design Culture Salon
V&A Museum
Future Makespaces research trip to China
Royal College of Art
East London Printmakers launch Maker Library
British Council
Central Research Laboratory launch
Central Research Laboratory
Fab City Amsterdam
Fab City
FNO round table: the cultural roles of makerspaces
From Now On
Into the Arts - Widening Participation in Arts Education Conference
University of Brighton
Hype & Seek: Making and the mainstream; talk as part of London Design Biennale
London Design Biennale
Super Talks! The Open Debate - as part of London Design Fair
London Design Fair
Abierto Mexicano design festival - Beyond the Hype the impact of the maker movement on designers, users and manufacturing.
British Council and Abierto Mexicano de Diseño
Make:Shift 2016 - Making Meanings: The Cultural Role(s) of Makerspaces
Crafts Council
Make City programme 2016 RCA talk at Imperial College London - Beyond the hype: the impact of the maker movement
Royal College of Art and open to Imperial College audience
HDK Gothenburg University - Open Lecture Series: Showing Making
HDK University of Gothenberg
Cultural/Creative Leadership Lab Day for the National Trust
National Trust
Collaborate or Die, Charny guest critic with Adrian Shaunessy at RCA Visual Comms
Royal College of Art Visual Communications
Design Museum The Future Award Judging - AXA PPP Health Tech & You Awards
Design Museum and AXAPPP
V&A Research Institute - advisory panel meetings
V&A museum
Facilitator for Western Balkans Museums workshops
British Council Creative Economy
Talk at M-ITI Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Portugal
M-ITI
Keynote speaker at local heritage conference, Poland
Starosta Radzynski
Chair and panel input at the The National Festival of Making
Creative Lancashire
Facilitator for Creative Economy innovation workshops in Chile
British Council
Keynote at Perspectives of Integrated Design
Holon Institute of Technology
Speaker at Maker Faire Barcelona
Maker Faire Barcelona
Speaking at Making Matters on access to a hands-on approach to learning
Comino Foundation and RSA
Talk at Jerwood Makers Open
Jerwood Visual Arts
DesignIs talk at Generator, a new space for design, in Sofia
Studio Komplekt
Selected Clients & Partners
‘The Power of Making’, drew 320,000 visitors – an astonishing number. The Power of Making sent us a very clear signal and set us a very clear task.
Director, Victoria & Albert Museum
We’re reigniting an amazing heritage brand. That’s an awesome starting point from which to build a new, innovative community of designers and engineers.
Programme Director CRL, U+I Property Developers
What do you get if you cross a community centre, a laboratory, a gallery, science centre and a museum? The exciting hybrid model of the Institute of Imagination is certainly one of a kind.
CEO, Institute of Imagination, London
From Now On have been instrumental in helping the museum define its vision for the future as it embarked on its project to relocate to High Street Kensington. I would highly recommend them for any institution embarking in an in-depth review of their vision, objectives and future plans.
Deputy Director, Design Museum