The Dock, Carrick on Shannon – photo by Rós Kavanagh
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A team of mentors from Google Ireland is mentoring Michelle Dillon in the Dock, to assist her to evaluate the organisation’s online presence, with a view to (a) building the Dock’s online community, (b) bringing increased visitors to the Dock’s website, and (c) ultimately driving sales.
This process will involve an analysis of the Dock’s website analytics, it’s use of various social media platforms (in particular it’s use of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube), and the development of a plan as to how to use these social media tools to drive traffic to the website.
Michelle’s report will be a useful ‘how to’ document for organisations looking to increase traffic to their website through the use of google analytics and the use of a number of different social media tools.
This mentoring will be complete on the 3rd of May, and Michelle’s report will be posted on this website on 17th of May. Once this is posted, those who are interested in finding out a bit more will be able to ask Michelle about the process on the Arts Ireland LinkedIn group.
Kevin Costner – he built it, and they actually did come
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Whoever said ‘if we build it, they will come‘, wasn’t a web designer.
He was, in fact, the ghost of a baseball player, speaking to a farmer from Iowa. However, ghostly apparitions aside, as anyone who has built a website (started a facebook page/ Twitter account/ Ning community, etc etc) will know, putting something up online is only half the battle, it takes work to get the word out, and to get traffic in.
So while the arts in Ireland is seeing an increasing amount of high quality work occurring online, these endeavours aren’t always getting the attention they deserve. We’re looking to provide a platform to showcase new work in this area, and with any luck to help bring this work to a wider arts public, nationally and internationally.
So, if you’re using the internet to present work in a new way, if you’re launching a dynamic new website, if you’ve a new and imaginative ways of engaging with new audiences online, drop an email to james.kelly(at)artsaudiences.ie. Looking forward to hearing from you!
In case you don’t already know, Take Your Seat is the name of the nationwide, weeklong arts and performance promotion.
We’ve been delighted with the take up on this, and readers should know that the promotion ends on the 14th of November, so at the time of writing, there are only 3 days left to get your hands on some great deals!
To avail of Ticket Discounts, Special Offers and Free Tickets to Surprise Events register with Take Your Seat and go visit your local theatre, arts centre, or music venue.
The Brooklyn Museum used online crowdsourcing to a exciting end, in the conception and delivery of their Click! photography exhibition, in a process which invited the museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process.
It began with an open call—artists were asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement.
After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opened for audience evaluation of all submissions (all works were posted as anonymous). As part of the evaluation, each visitor answered a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise.
Click! culminated in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks were installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process.
The results are, of course, online, where the public can engage with discussions and analysis of the work, and the entire process.
Those of you who were at the Arts Council’s New Media, New Audience? conference last November may remember a speaker from the Royal Shakespeare Company. He spoke of the RSC’s strategy of using the internet to reach out to new audiences, many of which the RSC felt would never actually make it to their venue.
Their site is indeed a fantastic resource for anyone interested in Shakespeare, or theatre in general. You could, for example, watch insightful footage of a rehearsal of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. There is no direct ’sell’ involved with this, i.e. they’re not selling tickets to Romeo and Juliet. In monetary terms it may be hard to see a financial return from this kind of web activity. However, this degree of online endeavour clearly reinforces the RSC’s brand internationally, and it’s claim to be the world’s leading authority on the works of Shakespeare.
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The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is taking things a step further, and are now ‘the first museum on the European Continent to have developed an iPhone application’.
The app, called “Yours, Vincent” is a little work of art in itself. Free to download from iTunes, it incorporates a selection of beautifully produced short films, interviews and images to bring the user through selected accounts from Vincent van Gogh’s letters, and related paintings.
The app was developed to go along with the exhibit “Van Gogh’s Letters: The Artist Speaks” which opened earlier this month, and runs to January 3, 2010 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
For those unable to make it to Amsterdam, all of the letters are also available to view online at www.vangoghletters.org.
With thanks to Declan Doherty for the current banner photograph, of 'Walk the Plank' pyrotechnics company at Cosán Glas, Machaire Raghartaigh, presented by Saothar Ealaíne as part of Earagail Arts Festival 2007
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The Dock, Carrick on Shannon – photo by Rós Kavanagh
