Last month Berlin hosted the 60th Berlinale, one of Europe’s top international festivals. Thousands of film artists and media people descended on the city to pitch their scripts, sell their pictures and finance their next movie (as well as catch some of the 400 films being shown on screens around town).

But behind the glitzy premieres and DKNY shades, deep anxieties are gnawing at the movie business – and most other art forms as well. At stake is the financing of professional creativity and the survival of musicians, writers, photographers and film-makers. And it’s because of the digital revolution.

Back in 1976 the influential Scottish television and music producer Donald MacLean (no relation) wrote, ‘new media can enrich us ... but if we exploit new technology without regard for the creative consequences they’ll impoverish us -- we shall wake up one morning to find we have only amateur music and movies.’

That impoverished morning is about to dawn. Thanks to the ease with which ‘content’ can be copied from the internet, and shared with friends, the world’s creative economy is being undermined. Nowadays twenty music tracks are downloaded illegally for every one that is bought on line. It’s a similar story for films and books. Pirate versions of the latest releases are available for download, along with last week’s New York Times bestsellers. Journalists who once resold their articles to overseas periodicals now see their words instantly replicated around the globe without permission or a penny of further payment.

As MacLean points out, if no one pays a copyright fee then an author or musician cannot afford to create another work with the inevitable consequence -- the demise of professional creativity. ‘We are not preparing ourselves for a world in which the only music and movies would be created by amateurs,’ he wrote.

So how can professional musicians, authors and filmmakers continue to work? And in the brave new world of amateur creators who will edit, distil, focus, even give their life to creative self-expression? Who will judge artistic quality? The market? YouTube stats? Web-savvy marketers? Governments – especially in Germany, Britain and the Nordic countries -- are trying to protect artists’ rights but for all their good intentions the trend seems to be unstoppable.

In the last few days fresh evidence of the crisis has even reached my Inbox. A German freelance journalist wrote out of the blue proposing that we collaborate on a new internet venture. Then a British photographer living in Vietnam dropped me a line asking if I’d like to work with him on magazine features about South-east Asia. Finally a Hollywood film and television writer-director – who I haven’t seen for over twenty years – made contact with me.

This sudden interest in collaborative projects is unusual. Around the globe professional artists are putting out feelers, seeing what the possibilities are in the new digital age.

In the world of books especially authors are trying to keep in step with the times by collaborating with web gurus, game designers or – as in the case of the travel writer William Dalrymple – musicians, to create something new and bring their readers an experience that can’t be copied onto a memory stick. Like others, Dalrymple recognised that the old formulas have diminishing popular appeal – and profit margins. He hit upon the idea of turning his new book into a concert tour, giving readings on stage alongside a smoky-voiced Tamil diva, five fakir monks and other musicians who are the subject of his book. My latest book 'Missing Lives' is also a hybrid, a collaboration with international photojournalist Nick Danziger and London designer Mark Thomson which –- because of its unique presentation -- cannot be digitally copied.

At the threshold of an age of new platforms, cloud computing, Google books and electronic ink, no one can tell what the future will bring. But in writer’s garrets in Osnabruck, basement music studios in Croydon, newspaper offices in Miami and Berlinale parties, creatives and critics alike are trying to prepare for the dawn.

yours ever

Rory

p.s. For those of you have asked about travel writing classes, this year Dea Birkett and I are running WriteAway weekend workshops in Cairo, Marrakech, Krakow and Jerusalem as well as one-day workshops in London, Paris and Dublin. 

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