Arts 2.0: Examples of Arts Organizations Social Media Strategies

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The above slide show was created based on all the information I gathered from my network below.

 

I'm prepping for a workshop on Social Media and wanted do a round up of recent compelling examples of arts organizations using social media strategies and tools.   I've covered arts organizations and social media here and there over the past three years and last winter co-wrote a cover story article with Rebecca Krause-Hardie for ArtsReach.   So, thought I'd take an opportunity to query my network via Twitter and Facebook and see what's new.   

I was particularly interested in examples using blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and Facebook.

Everyone is a Curator

One of the best projects that illustrates the basic idea of Web2.0 - listening and conversation and stakeholders creating their own experience with your organization - comes from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. They're now running a compelling experiment in crowd-sourced exhibition creation and curation via the photography exhibition Click.

Here's how Nina Simon described it on her insightful post analyzing the tactics used.

1. The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations.

2. On the web, anyone can evaluate the photographs in terms of aesthetic quality and relevance to the exhibition theme. All evaluations are private; all artists are unnamed. It's very easy to sign up and judge... and you can do so now by registering here.

3. The photographs will be installed in a physical exhibition running for six weeks this summer. The art will be displayed in order of the average juried scores. Visitors will be able to see how different subgroups (including art experts) ranked and responded to the art. The exhibition will coincide with programs about art theory, online communities, and crowd theory, providing a forum for public evaluation and discussion about the process.

Nina observes that the following makes this project really special:

• It is 100% community-based
• The internal team is led by a non-curator.
• They kept the interface simple
• They make it easy to evangelize
• They are sensitive to the artists who are being judged.
• They ask judges to self-define their art knowledge.

But as Nina notes, they are doing research from this experiment about the role of independence and influence in a participatory experience.  Note that this is a research/learning approach that is key to success of Web2.0 projects.

More at TechCrunch and Technology in the Arts Blog.

Another theme of web2.o is Transparency - and the best example of that is what the Indianapolis Art Museum has done with its pubic metrics on its web site.

Blogs

Elizabeth Perry, an artist in Pittsburgh and pioneer of "sketch blogging" reported that local arts organizations have been good at integrating social media without having to create or maintain anything new.  "They have begun inviting local bloggers as press to openings and events - usually they get in touch with Mike Woycheck or Cynthia Closkey, two of the co-founders of Pittsburgh Bloggers, who then re-blog the invitation and spread it via Facebook or their own Twitter streams. Lindsay Patross runs the blog, and people get hold of her, too.

Similar strategy to what the San Francisco Symphony did with its blogger outreach event.   ASOL gives a write up and some pointers for holding your own blogger outreach event.

What Should Artists and Arts Organization’s Blog about?  An excellent question posed by Beth Dunn of Small Dots.

Most people are fascinated by the interior life of artists. Many people are turned on by the chance to peek backstage at a theater. Almost everyone I know thinks they can curate an art exhibit. Are they right?

Artists: Write about your favorite kind of paintbrushes. Write about where you go shopping for paintbrushes. Write about how hard it is to find decent studio space. Write about why you ditched that banker job to see if you could make it selling art. Write about your crippling self-doubt and fears of failure. Write the truth. Not the press release.

Arts Organizations: Write about your insides — what goes on inside a theater, a museum, a historical home? Not the tedious soap opera that will get you fired if you share - the cool stuff we’re all dying to know! Where do your staff come from? What brought them here? How much fun did you have striking the set over the weekend? Can I help next time?

Artist Blogs

For individual artists, a blog can also help sell or promote their work.  Here's some artists personal blogs that support their gallery sites where they sell their work -- A Planet Named Janet,  Self VS Self, PaMdora's Box and Jen Lemen

Arts Organizations

Let's look at individual blogs.  Here was have the professional development or career blog like Museum2.0, and Im in Ur Museum Blogz that is written by an individual, not as part of the organization.  The content is focused on the professional area of expertise.   Blog helps deepened expertise.   Many early adopters in nonprofits got started this way - outside of the firewall.

Fresh + new(er) is an institutional blog from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Australia written by staff member Seb Chan.   Interesting that this blog has evolved into one that serves the sector of museum professionals.  (see for example the post about blogging policy).

The Academy of Vocal Arts has a blog written by Daniel Pantano.  According to Maryanne Devine, the staff member to go to for all the AVA gossip. "The writing is in his own voice, personal and authentic, and he's giving the patrons exactly what they crave: who won which competition, who just got engaged, where alums are singing, backstage snapshots. He doesn't get much in the way of comments, but when he misses a few days, he gets lots of complaints.   

Musematic is a group blog of museum technology professionals.  The description: "Rants and raves on the latest trends in the world of museum informatics and technology. An intrepid cast of experts from the Museum Computer Network and AAM's Media & Technology Committee share their insights, observations and tricks of the trade."

The Walker Blog was one of the first arts institution blogs.  The idea was to give an inside view of the inner workings of the Walker.  Different departments or individuals came on gradually.  (I wrote about this blog back in 2005)

The Brooklyn Museum's blog is another one that takes a group approach, also focuses a peak behind the scenes. As does Indianapolis Museum of Art blog.

Tate's Mobile Blog is collecting audience input on the new building design at the Tate - via mobile phones to blog - or mob blogging.   

Over the next six months we’ll be inviting all kinds of people, including designers, artists, young people, families, students and Tate staff, to share their ideas. Why not send us your own photos and join the discussion here at The Great Tate Mod Blog?

Finally, Rebecca Krause Hardie has some notes from a blogging workshop given at the Museums and the Web Conference earlier this month

Flickr

The Academy of Vocal Arts uses a flickr account to document organizational events/galas/benefits - good way to get started. Arts Northfield has well organized collections and sets of all organizational activities.

Brooklyn Museum of Art has a very active and successful group  - notice the  lively discussion board.  MOMA has a group for its graffiti project.

This example of using Flickr for exhibitions - both in Flickr and on the web site. The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. online exhibit developed by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and Ideum.

Here's the description of how they used flickr for the exhibition.

In designing and developing The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. website with The Maxwell Museum of Anthropology we’ve found ourselves spending a lot of time in Flickr. The Collection of photographs found on the site are pulled in from Flickr using a Flash-base mashup. The Shooting ScriptColonizing Social Spaces, looked more broadly at the benefits and drawbacks of museums utilzing social networking sites. In this post, I’m going to look exclusively at Flickr and our experience with the American Image site. activity works in similar way: pulling out John Collier Jr’s images as well as those of other Flickr members. An earlier post, Colonizing Social Spaces, looked more broadly at the benefits and drawbacks of museums utilzing social networking sites. In this post, I’m going to look exclusively at Flickr and our experience with the American Image site.

I interviewed Jim Spadaccini and he told me that initially more people had viewed the photos in flickr versus the exhibition web site.   He also mentioned that the commenting on the photos was fascinating and that they even got an email from someone who knew the Gagnon's family that the name was not correct! Read more of Jim Spadaccini's reflections

Finally the Library of Congress community tagging pilot project on flickr. (Launched in Jan. (follow up here)

A pilot project the Library of Congress is undertaking with Flickr, the enormously popular photo-sharing site that has been a Web 2.0 innovator. If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity. In many senses, we are looking to enhance our metadata (one of those Web 2.0 buzzwords that 90 percent of our readers could probably explain better than me).

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.

 

Nina Simon has a good piece on why museums should use flickr.

Facebook

Individual profiles, groups, fan pages and applications.  There are many museum professionals active on Facebook - step one is to create an individual profile and then go find your colleagues. The group Museum Professionals Unite Across Facebook has about 2,000 members and 89 discussion threads, so there's definitely lots of places to talk shop on Facebook with peer professionals.    There are a number of museums with official group and fan pages, like this one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As Nina Simon points out, Brooklyn Museum of Art is the gold standard of Art Museums using social media and its projects on Facebook are no exception. (Be sure to check out Nina's Museum2.0 Blog for lots of great posts.

Brooklyn Museum of Art developed a Facebook application called Art Share.  It lets Facebook users share works art from Museums around the world on their profile.  Artists can upload and share their own work using this application.  Participating institutions include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Brooklyn Museum, Canada Agriculture Museum, Corning Museum of Glass, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Powerhouse Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, V&A, Walker Art Center, Walters Art Museum.

The application launched in November according to this progress report the usage stats as of February were:

• 1000 people using ArtShare on Facebook.
• 174 artists are using ArtShare to share their own works.
• Institutions have uploaded 438 works from their collections and artists have uploaded 754.

Some more on the metrics from the progress report:

On Facebook,  the highest traffic comes from browsing profiles, so exposure to the images may be significantly higher. For instance, if each ArtShare user has 20 friends, a lot more people could be seeing the images from ArtShare being shuffled on that profile. In a nut shell, 1000 people may have installed it, but a lot more may be seeing it and while this is not the kind of traffic we can measure, it is interesting to think about.

I wanted to take a quick look at what the performing arts scene was like on Facebook. 

Doing a quick search on the word "symphony" on Facebook turned up more than 500 individuals.  A few of these are Symphony orchestras using their individual profiles (incorrectly and a violation of the TOS) for an organizational presence.   (There are quite a few individuals with the last or first name symphony.)

There were about 70 Fan Pages that turned up including a number of youth and college symphonies.   A couple of major symphony orchestras, like the Chicago Symphony with 1336 fans and the Boston Symphony. The fan pages are like mini-web pages with the ability to add applications.   The features on their Fan Pages include music player (filled with symphony selections), albums, photos, events, and videos.  There is also a discussion board and the ability to post notes.  The Boston Symphony has been doing ticket giveaway promotions.

While I focused on Facebook for social networking examples, there are examples on MySpace.  Even found an artist social network that is called Dripbook.

Twitter

Twittours has a list of museums using Twitter.  Looks like most are just learning how to use twitter and mostly tweeting about content on their sites.  Using it like a newswire similar to New York Times Arts Section

Brooklyn Museum of Art is using twitter - mostly to point to blog content or web site content.   Tate is also twitter, but hasn't really engaged yet  - probably in the Twitter is the dumbest thing I've ever seen stage?    But as the Field Museum notes on its MySpace page status - still trying to figure it out. 

Heard on Twitter a mobile poetry project on Twitter is in the works.  (Poets.Org is already mobile)

Still more arts organizations on twitter found at TwitTours - this post about  Alliance for Historic Hillsborough - tweeting about bites of information about its programs.

Beth Dunn has a great post on artists and twitter.  It points over the Cycling Artist's post about the benefit and value of Twitter for artists.

YouTube

Anaheim Ballet has a YouTube Channel with over 130,000 channel views.   Perhaps due to their MySpace presence? Another good example is Youth Speaks.

Thanks everyone for the leads .. any other comments or suggestions - leave them in the comments.  Now, off to finish the workshop curriculum ...

Comments

[Chrys Wu]

Hi Beth,

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra uses a MySpace profile and a gallery of photos and mp3 files, though there is no commenting feature.

[Shelley]

IMA on YouTube rocks and they are a real leader there. Thanks for the nice Brooklyn Museum mentions.

[Beth Kanter]

@shelley thanks for stopping by - awesome work you're doing. What is your advice to arts organizations just starting out with social media?

[Janet Hawtin]

Hi Beth
Great stash of links and ideas.
Work with the things which their participants might use already and
think about what is unique or powerful locally and that helps the participation and fabric of the project feel authentic. =)

[Beth Dunn]

Beth,

I've got a bunch of stuff to flesh out your individual artists section:

I've been using blogs in the classes I teach and facilitate at the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod -- classes and workshops that teach artists how to use blogs and twitter and social networks to do their thing.

You can check them out at:

www.newmarkets08.wordpress.com
Blog for the New Markets for Artists class, an intensive, juried weekend workshop for artists that helps them develop a personal marketing and promotion action plan, which is followed up in a series of follow-up meetings over the next six months to track their progress and provide support. (http://snurl.com/20oq9)

www.whatsyourstorycapecod.wordpress.com
Blog for the class "What's Your Story: Personal Branding, PR, and New Media for Artists" (http://snurl.com/200v4)

And in the links section of each of these blogs are all the new individual artist blogs that have been started as a result of these classes.

We've also seen a lot of these artists sign up on Twitter (and really start using it), and we're working on getting together a Cape Cod artist community Twitter feed.

[Rachel Happe]

What a great resource you have put together.

Coming from the business perspective what I see as a core skill in artistic professionals is the ability to tell stories. That is done in a wide variety of mediums but it is what humans cleave to. I am becoming more and more convinced the information shared through a story that inspires an emotional response in the listener/viewer is the only way to effectively share information because it is what makes it memorable.

So my advice: Start with an individual, pick the most comfortable tool (MySpace, blog, Twitter, etc.) and tell stories.

That may not be specific enough but you have shared a huge number of examples that people can look to for guidance regarding how others have done just that.

Great post!

[Janet]

Thanks for the mention. Google Alerts brought me to your site.

Looks like you have some good information. I will have to take some time to go through it all. Networking through MySpace, Facebook etc is a big part of the blogosphere that I have yet to figure out and utilize.

[Paul Fletcher]

Beth,

You missed so much stuff being done by the Corning Museum of Glass, particularly on youtube
http://youtube.com/user/corningmuseumofglass

and although we are a tourism agency (that just happens to be based in one of the top 25 small art towns in the US) we also do innovative tings with the arts.

for example we mesh photographs of the area with original music from local artists to provide youtube videos which are linked to their myspace sites and our blogs, facebook, flickr and websites.

Paul

[Brenda Thompson]

Very useful, thorough post! I work with the Paramount Theatre in Austin and helped their executive director start his blog, Off-Stage with Ken Stein. It's proven immensely popular, in large part because Ken is a funny and conversational writer and attracts participants from all over the U.S. because of the caliber of performers at the Paramount. He's also used the blog to raise money, auctioning off front-row seats with perks to sold-out shows like David Sedaris, Lori Griffin, Garrisson Keillor, etc. Check it out at http://kenstein64.wordpress.com/

[Jim Spadaccini]

Beth,
Thanks for the mention of the American Image: Photographs of John Collier Jr. site. A great with lot's of information. The Twitter links are particularly helpful.

I hope all is well with you.

Jim

[Len Edgerly]

Beth, I'm just catching up with your amazingly great collection of arts-related info. I can't think of anything you overlooked that I know about, and I will refer back to this gold mine of yours often. Bravo!

[Richard]

Hi, Beth --

I write for the IMA's blog.

I'm glad to see your organization of all these tools. I've been thinking a lot about this and have been making an effort to bring all of this together while blogging for the IMA, all the while keeping it centered on art (and of course trying to keep the language accessible to all).

Check it out:
http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/04/30/what-i-did-last-summer-lots-of-pictures-plus-a-request-for-information-and-a-number-of-side-notes/

I like all the tools you mention except Twitter (too detailed and fussy).

It's all kind of crazy, and then I post it to my Facebook.

Ah well, thanks.

Richard

[Beth Kanter]

Richard:

Thanks so much for the pointer.

BTW, are you a dog owner too?
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/04/more-cute-dog-t.html