But we couldn't do all this on our own - partnerships will play a key role in many of these occasions. And they aren't unique in that - slowly and surely, partnerships have become a way of life for us here - and Delivering Quality First confirmed that it's going to stay that way.

Last summer, I gave an overview of two of our partnerships with more of a "tech" focus which had recently launched: iPlayer Linking, a feature in BBC iPlayer that helps you find programmes from other broadcasters like ITV and Channel 4, and Radioplayer, which provides easy online listening to hundreds of BBC, commercial and community stations in one place.

Nine months later, and I'm pleased to say they're both working a treat. BBC iPlayer users can click seamlessly to ITV hits like Downton Abbey and the X Factor, and Radioplayer has almost seven million listeners a month, and has driven a 21% rise in online hours since 2010. Users can now access the Radioplayer not only from their web browser, but also through a Facebook application, and a downloadable desktop version. With any luck, it won't be long before there are further versions for mobile, tablet and connected TV.

Another really interesting partnership which launched last year is Your Paintings, the result of a collaboration between the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation and museums, galleries and painting owners across the UK. By the end of 2012, the site will host photographs of 200,000 oil paintings in public ownership in the UK. So far, we're over half-way there, at 110,000 and counting. Staggering.

Although the examples above are quite different, they all have 'connectivity' in common. Part of our remit is to encourage people to make the most of new technologies which make this connectivity possible - so we've been working with Martha Lane-Fox's Race Online 2012 and others to do just that. We have run two major campaigns in the past two years: we provided a 'tool kit' to help people make their "First Click", and then encouraged people who use the internet regularly to "Give an Hour" to help get someone online for the first time. 1.3m respondents took some kind of action because of the Give an Hour campaign, and 334,000 people said they had already helped or planned to help someone get on line. Still a way to go, but what a great start.

So if 2011 was the year when our partnerships really started to deliver, what's next for 2012?

Well, trials for YouView (below), the all-in-one digital plug-and-play set-top-box, are already underway. YouView bills itself as "everything you've ever wanted from TV in one easy-to-use box" - Freeview, catch-up TV, High Definition, a Personal Video Recorder and apps galore. It's set to launch later this year.

There's also The Space, a partnership between the BBC and Arts Council England to create an experimental digital arts media service across PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV. It will showcase dozens of new commissions in the shape of short or long form video, audio, slideshows, games or interactive experiences and will be given context by archive collections from ACE, BBC and other partners. It's an exciting experiment enabling arts organisations to use new technologies and discover innovative ways to exhibit content.

And not forgetting the enormity of the Olympics and the London 2012 Festival. Have a look at the BBC Media Centre website to see how the BBC is getting involved.

It's going to be a fantastic year, not only for us here at the BBC, but also for our partners, and most importantly for our audiences. You can follow our progress on partnerships here.

It's now just over two years since the BBC announced a renewed focus on partnerships. This resulted in some healthy scepticism both inside and outside the BBC - would any of it ever happen? Won't the BBC move on to some other novel initiative when the political climate is right? Well, I'm pleased to say that we and our partners have managed to follow our fine words through with some concrete actions - just in the last couple of months we've seen the launch of Radioplayer and iPlayer Linking.

Making partnerships work is a challenge for all organisations - and the size of the BBC and the regulatory constraints we have to work within add to the complexity of working with us. However, the good news is we are learning.

iPlayer Linking is an example of this - it's a product with many of the same benefits as the original 'Open iPlayer' proposal but not as many of the complexities. It is a really simple idea - a new feature in BBC iPlayer that helps you find programmes from other broadcasters and on-demand content providers.

Through partnerships that allow the sharing of metadata, you can now find programmes from ITV, Channel 4, S4C, Five, SeeSaw.com and MSN Video Player, directly from the BBC iPlayer website. Have a look on the left hand side of the screen in iPlayer or read more about how it works.

Another recent launch, Radioplayer, is the culmination of a partnership between the BBC and commercial radio to provide easy online radio listening with very simple search and navigation. With founding partners the BBC, Global Radio, GMG Radio, Absolute Radio and RadioCentre, it lives up to its tagline, 'UK radio in one place'. Read more about it.

We're not just working on technical partnerships or only with other broadcasters. A History of the World was one of the most exciting partnerships of 2010. Its foundation was a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum, but it extended to involve schools, museums and audiences across the UK. You can still listen to and download all the episodes of the radio series.

Something all of these partnerships have in common, as with all the partnerships we're working on, is that they seek to bring benefits to the BBC, our partners and most importantly to our audiences. We'll continue to work away on new and exciting partnerships that support the creative sector and bring more value to licence fee payers.

As we stated in Putting Quality First, partnership is now the default model for the BBC on almost any new large-scale issue - it's becoming a way of life for us.

We will also keep trying to make the BBC a simpler and better partner (one of the aims of the Delivering Quality First project). You can keep up to date on our progress at the BBC's partnerships page.

Adrian Ruth is the BBC Partnerships Programme Director

• The BBC announced a renewed focus on partnerships with the document Public Service Partnerships
• Radioplayer
• iPlayer Linking
• A BBC Trust press release about the original 'Open iPlayer' proposal
• A post on the BBC Internet Blog about how to find programmes in iPlayer from other on-demand services
• A post on the BBC Internet Blog about the launch of the Radioplayer
• A History of the World: The 100 British Museum Objects
• The BBC defined partnerships as the default model on almost any new large-scale issue in the BBC Strategy Review document
• The BBC aims to be a simpler and better partner. You can track progress on the BBC Partnerships page