Archive for the ‘New in the sector’ Category

‘The eagerly awaited premieres of four New Zealand works at the New Zealand International Arts Festival will give Festival audiences the opportunity to see the finest of our actors, directors, designers, musicians and writers in action…’

Read the newest NZLive.com featured article.

by Terry Makewell, National Museums Online Learning Project (Victoria & Albert Museum)

You would find it hard to locate a museum in the world which doesn’t say that it is interested in engaging with its audience in new ways. A logical way of doing this is through the digital environment. This is especially apt as one of the foundations of Web 2.0 is user generated content.

There are many examples of museums inviting the audience into their digital environment, but there are also examples of museums getting the audience more involved in exhibitions themselves. This is not a new idea and has been implemented by many different museums across the world.

‘Inspired by…’ (an exhibition close to the heart of our project) is the Victoria & Albert’s annual art competition for people on part-time courses. The aim is for participants to create a work of art or craft inspired by the collections. These objects then make up the basis of the exhibition. It is solely for newly created work and doesn’t use anything from the collection itself in the displays. This video shows one of the people who exhibited this year talking about their work. There are many museums which run similar exhibitions where people have created work inspired by that particular museum’s collection.

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I’ve just been reading about NaumaiPlace.com, a new website which links marae with their whanau worldwide. Launched in May, the website aims to connect marae with the 85 percent of Maori who live away from their local rohe, due to employment, education and other whanau interests.

Ten Te Arawa marae are involved in the pilot. On the website, each marae can provide their own history, video footage, noticeboards, photo galleries, taonga detail, rangitahi section and online store. (Nice to see they are using existing tools such as YouTube and Slide to host rich media, which also gets word out about the project through these networks.) NaumaiPlace.com may be extended to other marae in future.

With between 70 and 80 percent of Maori able to access the internet through work, tertiary institutions, cyber cafes or at home, I hope this is an idea whose time has come. Online communities take time to build, but the potential benefits will be the strengthening of both iwi Maori and local marae.

Here’s a video of the launch, featuring those involved and some shots of the site itself (on the website, the marae pages are only viewable if you register). If you have difficulties viewing this video in your browser, go to YouTube to view it.

Nicely done - the Christchurch Art Gallery has put its audio tours on the gallery’s website. You can listen to the guides on an iPod at the gallery for $5 or download and listen to them at home for free.

The narration is by actor Sam Neill and the audio tours feature some of the Gallery’s - and New Zealand’s - most significant works of art. The website includes an image of the painting under discussion, as well as a transcript if you can’t get the technology working. 

Worth having a listen even if you can’t get to the gallery. I heard somewhere the other day that the number of visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s virtual experience is greater by a third than the number of physical visitors. Virtual visits can be be relevant and measurable cultural experiences, as much as physical ones (and hopefully they sometimes initiate physical visits, too).

Creative New Zealand, Auckland City Council and ASB Community Trust have just released their research into the attitudes and participation of Asian Aucklanders with the arts. It’s interesting reading - you can get a copy of the report from Creative New Zealand.

The Asian population is growing faster than any other ethnic group in New Zealand, with a 49% increase between 2001 and 2006. The research shows that arts and culture are important to Asian Aucklanders: the arts are seen as a part of everyday life, and food, socialising and the arts are often entwined for these communities.

This beautifully presented report lists some of the barriers to participation for Asian Aucklanders, and also practical suggestions for how arts organisations can align their practises with the nature of this audience. I’m sure this is also true for the cultural sector more broadly.

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