This document looks at how new technology and social media can be used in the development, production and marketing of the arts. How can digital media help innovation in artistic content and audience or visitor engagement?
We see how online strategies are changing and how the use of Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, etc. enable us to engage with communities and considers how digital media might help us to innovate with regard to both artistic content and audience or visitor engagement.
Collaboration needs a well-defined task
The conversations are happening; it’s just a matter of finding and facilitating them.
When I was at NESTA we worked with Virgin Atlantic to help them develop social media around their passengers. At first they had a rather cold attitude to them, referring to them as ‘pax’ – freight basically. We helped them to realise that this was a captive audience all having a very specific shared social experience. Everyone is going to the same place together so we did a bunch of clever things with them. Conversations become collaboration by giving people defined things to do – dropping a task in for people to socialise around.
Agile networks can do amazing things. Twitter can facilitate ‘tweet ups’ in which people meet face to face. For example, someone called Amanda Rose turned one of these Tweet Ups into a ‘Twestival’ by asking attenders to contribute £5 on each occasion which was then given to a charity campaign for clean water in Africa. They raised $500,000 dollars in a few weeks across the USA.