Reflections on London’s museums, galleries and theatre

Photo by sharkbait on Flickr.com

I love London. And, after the recent unsettling events, I would like to take a moment to focus on the city’s finer side: its cultural institutions and its arts. In times like these, I think, London deserves a pat on the back for being an encouraging and inspirational example.

London manages to show how culture can be relevant to (local) communities, socially engaged and at the same time straightforward about its monetary value. It does so in its landmark institutions like Tate and the National Theatre, and in its local initiatives that can be found virtually around every corner. And, by doing so, it provides a sneak preview of what the future of cultural institutions all over the world should be; institutions that connect and engage, within society, without going bankrupt.

One of my favourite places in London is the Camden Arts Centre. Just off the dirty Finchley Road its green garden and quiet café with free Wifi are a resort to parents with children, expat students and the like. The building is welcoming, the coffee is good, the shop well stocked. High quality exhibitions are combined with educational activities, regular evening events and family activities. Yet, that doesn’t make it any different from the many other arts centres all around London. What makes it great is that it is my arts centre. It’s local. Only ten minutes away on foot. And, it really is local. It feels like the local café or shop where I am known and welcome. (It is often the local café and shop.)

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Integrated media strategies for museums

Photo by Kristian Vinkenes on Flickr.com

One of the recurring themes at the recent MuseumNext conference in Edinburgh was what I call the “holistic” or “integrated media strategy”. Social media or technology is not an isolated department within the whole of the strategy of an institution, but a core function such as communication, education or finance.

This means it’s no longer about having a great Facebook strategy within your team. It’s about having an overall strategy for all media (new and traditional), connected with the activities you do and the expositions you host. A strategy that is interconnected and continuously attracts new visitors, retains the old ones and engages them with what you do.

The museum as a media producer

If you think of media as communication channels (and is there any other way to think about them?), museums are media producers. We’re very much like the BBC, HBO and even Walt Disney, apart from that we’re not into it for the money, but for “the arts”. For-profit museums understand this point very well, presumably.

In my opinion, there’s three levels at which a museum does things: 1) new and traditional media, 2) activities and events with the audience and 3) the physical expositions that you put up in a building. Most of our campaigns are focused at getting people to visit us (3). Not everybody, however, will always be able to visit us. For instance, because the buildings not big enough. New and traditional media (1) as well as activities (2) allow us to reach more people. I use the model below to remind me of this.

This model is all about people moving from one level to another (up and down). It’s in these movements the advantage of an integrated media strategy becomes clearest. Read the rest of this entry »

Small-scale marketing (for yourself, your art, activities and expositions)

Photo by Trey Ratcliff on Flicr.com (CC BY-NC-SA)

Last Friday already (time flies) Isabelle Conner and I hosted a series of round table sessions to help young artists with their marketing, personal branding and the successful use of distribution channels. Isabelle is a genius. The questions she asked the young artists are well worth thinking about once every while. It’s like, marketing 101, suitable to put anything ‘small’ in the market, such as yourself, a project or exposition or even a small museum.

1. Introduce yourself, please

Who are you? What do you stand for? What makes you unique? Whatever you are and do, there’re a lot of others doing the same. Take the average conference, what makes people come to you, apart from that they know you? What have they heard about you beforehand?

You should be able to tell others in one sentence who you are, or what the activity is you’re working on. This doesn’t mean it should be brief: be specific. There’re a million photographers in the world, so when you say you are one, you might as well let people know why you stand out between the others.

Be surprising, dare to stand out. One of the artists present made art using her voice to create sounds. So I asked her if she could make a special sound and she made the sound of breasts. I will never forget that and just told you about it. That’s marketing.

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