Ruth Mackenzie takes on the future. The Holland Festival gets a more exciting boss than you thought.

The Holland Festival got in the person of the British Ruth Mackenzie a completely unknown new director. At least, to us. The flamboyant, artistically exceptional opera director Pierre Audi is making way for a woman who has presented herself mainly as a manager of festivals and cultural institutions, but whose ideas are anyone's guess. When she was presented, none of the journalists present recognised her. A few found her on the old side for someone who should bring renewal.

Well. She's bound to do just that. We can already give you a hint: with what Mackenzie is doing now, she may well make the future of the Holland Festival a lot more digital than it is now.

How do we know? From the digital newspaper. In fact, before she officially starts working full-time at the Holland Festival, Mackenzie has been doing a bit of interim work in the UK. For example, she is now working as artistic director of The Space, which is very exciting. The Space is a initiative by the BBC and The Arts Council, which aims to be much more than an online gallery where artists from all over the world can show their thingy. Indeed, while that is part of the party, The Space goes much further than that. It is also a commissioning platform that actively seeks out what will be hot and happening in art now, and especially in 20 years' time.

And so Mackenzie does have ideas about that. For instance, she declares that the game players and game makers of today are the art audiences and artists of tomorrow: "The average person looks at their mobile 100 times a day, so just imagine if art were a part of that diet. What if, instead of playing Candy Crush, you did art?"

So with any luck, The Space will be the platform on which we will discover that. But better still, Mackenzie will bring her modern views to Amsterdam. It's about time for a digital revolt there. One advantage is that digital art can often be made and distributed a lot more efficiently than an average mega-opera.

"There's access to the means of creating art that simply wasn't there 20 years ago," declares Mackenzie. "You can talk about finding new audiences, but I think we're going to find new artists too."

#Zin.