Arts and Social Media
November 24th, 2008 by Julia TaylorAt the last GMC meeting we rolled out an incredibly detailed roadmap of the state of key cultural assets in the region including performing arts groups, parks, museums–even sports venues. Everything that makes Mke buzz. You can check the full report out at http://www.gmconline.org . The Business Journal wrote a very comprehensive story. The Journal Sentinel ran a great editorial and one that was not too happy with our comments. And then we have video clips on the website too. Check out Jill Morin’s great presentation and the panel’s responses. Chris Abele provided an incredibly introspective look at the arts in today’s spiraling economy. Thanks to the Cultural Alliance for creating the report with the research by the Donor’s Forum, the Public Policy Forum and UW-M CUIR.
We will have a Creative Summit in early February to come up with a plan for the future to preserve and grow a sustainable and healthy creative community, which provides more than just performances and exhibits. This creative community is the power for our corporate community and changes the cycle of brain drain to regional brain circulation of talent and creativity.
I personally think the ability to connect social media to our local arts community is key but it takes a different mindset. The secret is authenticity and connecting the brand and work of the arts community to online just in time interaction. Sounds easy but it isn’t. It can’t be the same messages and if this really works, it will start to evolve cultural offerings as well.
How do you do it? Well, there are now books even on the subject (which worries me a bit). Here’s one interesting social media note—a twitter guide for non-profits on how to use twitter to raise funds—the first I’ve seen so far
http://www.corporatedollar.org/twitter-jump-start-the-complete-guide-for-small-non-profits/
The NYT had a great magazine section this Sunday on technology and how we watch things. (screens, in other words) http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html . So for those like me who are not very film literate there is an amazing film mashup site that basically pulls up all film genealogy from one original film —just type in key words like “Dirty Harry” and voila! It’s http://www.dipity.com/mashups/timetube or timetube. The article is Becoming Screen Literate, if you get a chance to read the magazine, it is amazing especially the social media marketing piece by Lars Bastholm on how to sell and redesign overalls to an entirely new market using ShotCodes in the Facebook Overalls section Think how this could be applied to the cultural community in different ways of looking at arts similar to a different way of seeing the utilitarian farm uniform. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23roundtable-t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=magazine
I love this kind of thinking about our world. I think I like the actual concept and creative process more than watching the end product but that’s my problem. For those who do like watching the end product and have video enabled phones (like an iPhone) there is another new fun product that enables you to film projection to a new level with a device that fits in the pocket or purse—the Pico Projector. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin I know what I want for Christmas! Ok, this my little techie/ arts/ social media blast for the day. Just wanted to share with these thoughts in these troubled times.
Julia
4 responses so far ↓
1 Juli Kaufmann // Nov 24, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Hey Julia-
I am working with the Great Lakes Urban Exchange (GLUE) http://gluespace.org/ to organize their annual conference in Milwaukee. Target dates early March. I wonder if there is overlap with your Creative Summit that we might aim to capitalize on, coordinate, collaborate, something? We are very early in our planning, but since our timing and potential audiences could dovetail, we might want to stay in touch. We share an interest in many of the same issues. Cheers - Juli
2 Rex Winsome // Nov 28, 2008 at 10:56 am
I’ve watched half of these videos and they’ve only confirmed my negative opinions of this organization and the people invovled. The differences are fundamental. I disagree with their perspective that art is “for the soul” or “an escape from daily life… an emotional experience that everyone can share”. If that’s what art is for these people then they’ve already carried it halfway to the marginalization they complain about.
As far as the rest of this post goes, these are all good ideas. I keep running up against all kinds of articles and essays about this kind of thing, how big non-profit arts organizations can save themselves. Only a few of these ideas go far enough. I suspect that if these organizations actually made these changes, authentically, it would require them to tear down their current donor base and infrastructure and rebuild it. A transistion i doubt they can survive.
I think as a whole, our arts and culture will better flourish if we let these dinosaurs go and refocus attention on new groups that have already got the authenticity and relevance to new and younger audiences, required to make alternative business models succeed.
3 Christine Harris // Nov 30, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I appreciate the ongoing conversation about social media and the arts. It seems to me that the enduring value of social media is to build community. Interestingly, it builds a community of initially non-physical connections; allowing us to ‘get inside’ each other and events without a face to face presence. In fact, I wonder if for some people that the non-face to face feels like a more authentic connection…hmm. Nonetheless, the instant, frequent and transparent connections are new, strong interfaces. These interfaces can be person to person, or connections through being witness to a larger community conversation, or personal expression such as the ’shot codes’ for overalls. In any case, the opportunity to enable an ‘inside’ look at who we are individually and collectively with this technology mirrors one of the roles art has played in our society. Art offers us the opportunity to get inside the creative process of someone else while social media offers us the opportunity to become part and parcel of the creative process - to become our own artists. The magic will be in creating an artistic community - constructing, deconstructing, recycling and creating the world around us - together.
4 Jennifer // Dec 5, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Great discussion… at Latino Arts, we have also been exploring various social media networks to expand our audiences.
Tonight we are hosting an exhibit opening for a young artist, Ramiro Rodriguez - http://www.latinoartsinc.org/display/router.asp?docid=517
Because of his broad fan base among a younger audience, Latino Arts and him have utilized many different online tools to get the word out, and we are excited to see how that impacts our response.
Looking forward to learning more about these mediums and the most effective way to utilize them to share the wonderful talents of the many hispanic artists that visit Latino Arts in Milwaukee.
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