Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

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

From beaches across the world to cultural learning organisations.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is currently undertaking the World Beach Project (www.vam.ac.uk/worldbeach) in collaboration with artist Sue Lawty. This is a global art project open to anybody in the world and the idea is for people to build on the experiences from holiday of making patterns on beaches and shorelines with numerous different objects. This site is a good example of how cultural organisations can use the elements of web 2.0 to bring in and engage their users through participation in both activities and via mash-ups. 

The idea has been borne from Sue Lawty’s blog on the V&A website. A particularly good post on this blog concerns a family from the UK who relocated to New Zealand for a few years and undertook a family version of some of her beach artwork. This is detailed in the blog post New Zealand Stones.

Bruce Bay - Stones on driftwood

Ensuring that this type of website is integrated into your working practices is important when thinking about sustainability. Ways in which this can be made possible have been investigated by Eva Moraga. She has undertaken the discussion of how cultural organisations need to define new organisational models in order to respond to the constant transformation entailed by new media and Web 2.0.

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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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Check out this graph from an article on eMarketer about ‘The rising roar of word-of-mouth’. More and more, people are influenced by friends, family and also strangers over other promotional channels when they make decisions about what to buy and where to go. Click on the image to see a larger version of the graph. It means we can’t underestimate the value of promoting our services and activities using testimonials, reviews and commentary from our audiences.

Rules can be handy. Here’s a quick read from the BBC - their fifteen web principles. I like the fact that they remind us that it’s not just all about me and my website, but about taking and giving, linking and feeding, across the web.

Finally, a link to Alan Brown’s article on Fuel4Arts outlining his framework for the value of the arts. It’s a great piece of work - I won’t attempt to summarise it here - read the article instead, or cast your eye over the short summary on Creative New Zealand’s website (where you can also listen to a webcast with Alan). At a seminar in Wellington last month, Alan directed his arguments to both marketers and arts managers, arguing that his framework provides a common language for explaining the benefits and values of our programmes to our audiences and to our sponsors. He strikes a great balance between reminding us that the number one reason people attend arts events is to relax and have fun (and that we should design our programmes to be more relevant to these people’s needs and this social context) with his obvious belief in the value of the art itself:

Being completely absorbed in an arts activity is at the root of everything and without it, you can’t reap the other benefits.

I’m at Eventing the Future 2007 in Auckland – the conference run by the New Zealand Association of Event Professionals. Some interesting sessions on day one. Learnings include:

• there’s no recipe to making money from events management
• quality content can be repurposed across a range of marketing channels to get valuable media exposure – content is king
• strategic planning is essential to ensuring the successful growth and development of your event
• research into ticket buying shows that word of mouth is (still) the top way that people find out about events.

Making money

Ably facilitated by Peter Cox from SPARC, a panel discussion of representatives from events management companies kindly shared their business acumen. We heard that:

• The secret to successful business partnerships is working with like-minded people.
• It’s hard to grow a business – to take that step of employing staff to deliver events so you can focus on the business development side.
• Money can be made from events that are low cost to run but that have a high perceived value (so you can charge a good rate).
• Big events are not necessarily the most profitable – small events can become more ‘stable’ (in terms of sponsorship and supplier relationships, for example) a lot easier.
• Recurring events allow you to get efficient systems in place, but it’s not just a matter of the same event, different dates – a recurring event needs ‘new fizz’ every time.
• Developing strong brands is very important – sponsors will want to be associated with the story behind the event.

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

Online Culture in the United Kingdom currently appears to have three main drivers (the online cultural trident as I like to say). These drivers are the main force behind the cultural projects currently being undertaken. With the trident behind us we move ever forward (picture as you see fit).

The first driver is technological change. The advancement of new technology is just only being understood within the sector along with the plethora of possibilities it brings with it.

The second driver involves the UK Government policy aim of increasing democratic participation in culture. The online medium is a perfect way of involving those ’hard-to-reach’ audiences. 

The third driver involves the ways that people engage with culture and how it is changing and evolving. This is very much associated with the second driver. How has the way that people engage with culture changed in the last few decades? The advent of free admission to the national museums has obviously helped change people’s relationships with museums.

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