How *not* to use Twitter!

There is a really nice piece in SocialMediaToday.com here about how Habitat have used #tags in twitter to promote it new furniture range. They come into much criticism for what is seen by many as just plain spamming and by others as a more serious king of twitter abuse.

Comments added add further to the debate and together off a pretty good critique of Twitter, the opportunities and pitfalls.

Culture24 gets web accolade at Nominet Best Practice Challenge

Spent a rather steamy (it was the hotest day of the year so far) and champagne filled evening at the beautifu Banqueting House in Whitehall last week as Culture24 got the runner-up prize to the British Library win at the Nominet Best Practice Challenge Awards.

A considerable achievement considering we are not out of BETA yet and the British Library are slightly better resourced! The judges said Culture24 “was a simple but much-needed idea that showed clear strategic vision and great attention to detail.”

Will try again next year..

Looking for a Technical Producer at Culture24

Culture24 is looking for an experienced Technical Producer with a passion for arts and culture and a creative enthusiasm for the future of online developments. If you think that is you,or you know someone who might be interested please pass on this link for full information – http://www.culture24.org.uk/about+us/art69957

Take-homes from btween09 digital media forum, Liverpool

Just spent a great two days in Liverpool with a very interesting mix of creative types (entrepreneurs, developers, thinkers, social media start-ups, agencies and broadcasters) as part of the btween09 digital media forum. Well done to Katz Kiely and her team at just-b.

I was one of only a handful of people from the public cultural sector and probably one of the only people who doesn’t have the successful monetising of their offer at the heart of what drives their service. Not that I am saying that the task of justifying the spending of public money is not something that should be quantified and considered as ROI but that the mindset of being driven by a remit to promote learning and engagement for its own sake puts you in a different box to commercial companies.

For me there are a number of key take-homes and formation of early ideas.

1. I was struck by how clever commercial agencies are getting in their manipulation of social media. Ogilvy talked about Brands not just using social media, but being social. But the methods within this new marketing 2.0 seems sometimes counter intuitive in some ways to traditional marketing methods. For example, you don’t talk about yourself within networks, you talk about other people or you support networking and ideas shaping events such as this one in order to make sure you are on the right wave. I guess no one would be surprised to hear that I am deeply cynical about agencies in general and about this kind of clever intrusion into the heart of social networking but, as the revenue streams generated support the sector that I hold dear, I have to bite my tongue. Also, hats off to the people at Ogilvy who are seriously smart (love the brainZ internal problem solving solution, read a post from the people that built it here). I would love to see this kind of intelligence applied to arts, heritage and education!

2. Charles Leadbeater’s analysis of the switch between traditional media and what he calls ‘mutual media’ is excellent. It’s a very clear visual image of the shift between mutual media as the moon orbiting around the huge sun of traditional media (the model of the past), and the future trajectory that he predicts will see the positions switch. He talked around many of the ideas present in his books, such as the breakdown of people activities into three categories – Enjoy, Talk, Do. You can get his essay with a lot of other good stuff in the recently published “After the Crunch” book by CCSkills and British Council here).

3. The three speakers from my session (Will Gompertz, Peter Buckingham and me) were presenting and discussing the issues faced by different aspects of cultural sector as funded by three different government funded agencies – Film Council, MLA and Arts Council – three different organisations but all clearly arriving at the same place at the same point in time with regard to the potential of digital services to transform user engagement. All looking for the holy grail of what this should mean in terms of policy development. But the really cool bit was that Leadbeaters introduction couldn’t have provided a better platform or introduction to the issues we were discussing. It was not planned, it was just all true. True and very reassuring that our observations and thoughts about what is possible and the value of real collaboration put us on the right track, Very comforting when weighing up the price of all the blood, sweat and tears or trying to get people to see the links between all these things.

4. It was really inspiring to see FACT thriving as a venue and as an organisation. Looking really good with projects like FACT TV and Abandon Normal Devices. They were contemporaries to the organisation I used to run before Culture24 called Lighthouse, who roots came out of the independent film and video workshop initiatives in the 80’s and who have both blossomed through the careful and clear advocacy of the role of creative activities and industries in economic development and reform at a local level. The original key player in FACT, Eddie Burg, is now at the Southbank and soon to join the Culture24 board. Very nice and looking forward to working with him.

5. I have learned that five and a half hours on a bus that was sold to you as a techbus, but actually lacked much actual ‘tech’, not really enough beer and a huge traffic jam, can actually be really fun if you are travelling with a group of truly free minds (thanks to Alfie Dennen and Adam Gee for the stories). Charlie Leadbeater called the people who are pushing to find the meaning of the new digital spaces (socially and culturally) “pirates and renegades”. I say ‘yes’ to that.

Check out the little blue buy who blows bubbles when you tweet!

ippr and NMDC book launch ‘Learning to Live’: Museums, young people and education

I spend much of the Christmas holidays last year writing a chapter for a new book about museums, young people and education. The finished book, entitled ‘Learning to Live ‘ and published by ippr and NMDC jointly, was launched today at an extremely interesting event at the National Portrait Gallery. You can download a pdf here. The first panel was chaired by Jon Snow and speakers included Estelle Morris, Nicholas Serota, Dea Birkett, Virginia Tandy and David Anderson.

The focus of the discussion was on what some museums were already doing, that many needed to do more of, in order to engage and attract young people.

There was much agreement about the intrinsic value of learning and museums and the body of evidence that has been collected over recent years (Virginia’s work in Manchester in particular came out strongly). However the heart of the conversation lay around the widely acknowledge benefits of opening up the physical museum and gallery space to be more welcoming and to offer ways for young people to interact with what is going on. This could be by putting sofa’s in the gallery to allow kids to hang out or by getting rid of the desks in entrance halls and replacing them with meet and greet (to see how the retail world get this approach you just have to go into Jack Wills clothes store, any Saturday afternoon).

As Dea Birkett put it so nicely, “ many museums ask young people not to chat, not to sit down and not to use their mobile phones – three things that many of then find virtually impossible”.

Unsurprisingly my chapter in the book is about unlocking online opportunities which did come into the debate about half way through. When asked by ippr co-director Carey Oppenheim to say a bit more about my ideas I couldn’t help wonder what the digital equivalent was of putting sofa’s in museums for teenagers to sit on?

Maybe it is finding a way to make the museum collections comfortable within the kinds of spaces young people hang out in online? Maybe it is allowing them to pick out and take the stuff they like into their own spaces and reuse it – become the producers as well as the consumers (I first heard this phrase in the late 90’s in relation to a conference I ran at Lighthouse called ‘Catching Up with the Kids’ – see Julian Sefton-Greens book “Young People, Creativity and New Technologies: The Challenge of Digital Arts” … sometimes I do feel that the museums world are still playing catch up to the rest of the arts?)

There then followed a second panel of eight 11 to 15 year olds from London schools talking about their own particular experiences and reactions to the contact they have had with museums and galleries, both in school and with their parents.

They were a pretty articulate group who would dispel any stereotype that young people and museums don’t mix. They were very clear that what they liked was being made to feel welcome, to be able to touch and play with stuff and to have fun. Not really an unrealistic request and one that the sector is perfectly placed to respond to.

The book has a VIP launch at No10 next Monday and I hope that there is the chance to impress these messages onto those within government who could offer read leadership in this area. I shall invest in a new frock and do my best.

Andy Burnham, Boogie Woogie, HMS Belfast and Museums at Night

I had never been on board a destroyer until last week when we hosted the launch of the first Culture24 Museums at Night campaign on board HMS Belfast. What a great venue that is. Nestled right up next to Tower Bridge, across the water from the Tower of London, flags flapping in the breeze, shiny brass everywhere and an awe-inspiring array of gun desks.

We picked HMS Belfast to launch the event to our crowd of museum, arts and government VIP’s because they are one of the 150 venues that are taking part this year. Their specific offering is called ‘Battleship Boogie‘ and is an evening of live jive dancing. As part of our launch event we staged a sneek preview of the daning for our guests with live DJing from Jeff Duck from Two Tone Boogie (he also does a seriously mean jive in his wheelchair).

Thanks to the excellent photographic skills of Charlotte Macpherson we also managed to get some fabulous publicity shot to give to press.

In fact it all come together to be really good event, with a few words from our chairman John Newbigin and the lovely Andy Burnham, ever the genuine enthusiast and museum lover. Thanks to both of them for their kind words of support. You can see excerpts of the speeches on YouTube.

It is not to late to check out what is happening near your this weekend and go along. If you do, don’t forget to take your own pictures and upload them to our Flickr group.

Finally, need to mention the smooth and mellow live jazz care of Jim Howard and the perfect summer sunset care of mother nature. The ideal backdrop for a Culture24 team photo.

Coordinating a National Marketing Campaign for Museums at Night – the role of Culture2

It has been 13 weeks since Culture24 were given a total of £23k from MLA and NMDC to coordinate the national Museums at Night Campaign. This is the first time we have done a national campaign of this kind and it is really exciting to be able to lead and coordinate it and try out our ideas about how these kind of things can work.

Trying to promote multiple events across the whole UK is not an easy thing to pull off on such a small budget. We have tried to create a simple but memorable branding and make sure venues understand the value of the campaign and the benifits of trying something different.

Our approach has been, as with everything, to simply make best use of what we already have. This means obviously using our own websites as promotional vehicles but also our network of contacts in the sector and press to build momentum and participation. This work has been a big focus of our effort and with just under a month to go and I am really staggered by the enthusiasm of museums and galleries to take part.

There are over 120 events already planned and more coming in each day. Crucially, lots of them have risen to the challenge implicit in the night that it is all about trying to reach out to new audiences in new ways and are planning some really great one-off events – Tours by candlelight, battleship boogies, after-dark fire-spinning and lots, lots more.

Our online coverage started a few weeks ago and we hope to ensure that there is at least one story written about every single event as well as regional roundups and event highlighting. The stories all go onto our own sites but are also shared out with related and relevant partner sites to make sure the right audiences see them. For example, matching top food events with popular food site and networks – making every bit of editorial work as hard as it can for us.

We have also started up a Flickr group and are inviting people who attend an event to submit their best photographs to the Flickr archive. From this archive, the best pictures will be chosen by some top sector curators and publishers and featured in an online exhibition. Difficult to know what the take up will be but it is not really about quantity of engagement, it is about quality. We will be starting to promote it on the Flickr forums soon and distributing leaflets to all the participating venues … and we will see.

All the PR and press liaison is being done by our regular freelance whizz Ruth Cobb from Mosaic marketing, who as well as liaising with local and national press, is staging a fab launch event on HMS Belfast with a distinct 1940’s theme. Just off to buy my hat ….

Museums at Night 2009, organised by Culture24, takes place on May 15, 16 and 17 and is part of the European-wide Nuits des Musees celebrations.
Find out more here.

Edinburgh City Libraries – ‘Tales of one city’. How to sort your web2.0 stuff and run a simple joined up social media campaign

Nice story from Phil Bradley’s weblog describing how Edinburgh City Libraries have got thier web2.0 stuff well together under one simple branding ‘Tales of one City’.

Consists of:
Blog , Flickr pictures, Twitter feed, delicious tags, wiki, YouTube channel .

Hidden Message Found in Lincoln Pocket Watch

On Tuesday 10th March, in a small conference room on the first floor of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, officials decided to find out if the story was true about the secret message supposedly inside Lincoln’s pocket watch.

This is a really great story worth a read here

You can see all the pictures on the Museums Flickr site here.

Altermodern at Tate Britain; badges, global culture and all of us

Above my desk is a poster that says “all artists are cowards”, it is an exhibition poster for an artist called Bob and Roberta Smith and every time I look at it I smile.

Bob and Roberta Smith are one of the many new rising talents who have been chosen by Nicholas Bourriaud to be part of the Altermodern exhibition at Tate Britain. The conceit of the show is based on his naming what he sees as the next movement in contemporary art that replaces post-modernism. A post-post-modernism, that encompasses the global, networked, intercultural existence many of us now live in and some of us are immersed in.

The show is funny, clever, curious and encapsulates something about the 21st century that has a real resonance. The wall paintings in Franz Ackermann’s installation are like looking at a networked digital space from the inside. They seem to map some strangely familiar visualisation of online spaces and the cyber journeying that takes us between digital information and its interactions.

This idea of the (alter)modern journey comes also into Walead Beshty installation of Fedex boxes. These large glass cubes that bear the marks of their travels between the artist and a variety of destinations, are like the scars of environmental damage or the dangers of too much travelling on the human soul. The corners are cracked, the glass is broken and they seem sad, lost and rather beautiful.

Loris Greaud installation (wires attached to boxes that resonate and vibrate the physical architecture of the room in time to flashing blue lights) seems to take you deep inside his head. But unlike the Ackermann paintings that seem to portray an internal digital space in a very public domain, this work takes you into the very intimate personal space of the artist’s own thoughts and brain waves.

Bob and Roberta Smith is adding a new piece of work to the show each week. It’s creation starts with a conversation with the curator at 11am on a Monday morning which is then developed to becomes a new work to be placed somewhere in the gallery. Each new piece stays insitu for a week before being moved to a public storage area – a kind of art lost property area – where each piece can be moved aside. Each of the works possesses the same humour and cut-the-crap satire that I have come to know and love from my office poster. One expresses the regret “ I wish I would have voted for Barack Obama’ another simply states next to its found object sculpture consisting of a trumpet and megaphone ‘I was up all night making this’.

There is a lot more worth seeing – the quietly breathtaking moonscapes by Darren Almond, Simon Starling’s replica desks that encapsulate the loss of detail and signal that comes over distances. You need at least two hours to do the show justice, of which at least 20 minutes is needed to watch Lindsay Seers ‘quasi-documentary’ about her own life as an artist and the impact that not speaking until she was eight had on her artistic development. In particular her time spend as both a human camera and projector. I left her projection space totally unsure if any of it was true but full of big questions about the nature of communication and seeing both inside and outside of us.

You can also for an extra 65p buy a badge and be your very own Bob and Roberta Smith. I did and am.