Young people’s charity looking to link up with venues for Museums at Night

This could be an interesting opportunity for your museum or gallery to work together with a young people’s charity this Museums at Night…

Positive Futures is a Home Office funded programme that operates in 123 areas across England and Wales. It aims to reduce youth offending rates through the provision of positive activities. Their website is here: http://www.catch-22.org.uk/.

Sally Clements has been seconded from ACE to develop more arts based activities within the programme, and is keen to identify a range of new spaces that young people can experience. She’d like to investigate potential links with the Museums at Night initiative: for more information please email sally.clements@catch-22.org.uk.

Museums at Night 2009 Flickr competition winners!

Late Night at the National Portrait Gallery by Julie Kertesz

During Museums at Night 2009, which took place over the weekend of May 15-17, we ran a photography competition for the first time. We asked people who were attending Museums at Night events to take photos of their experiences, then to upload them into a Flickr group. The whole pool of photos is here – we were really pleased that so many people were willing to take part in this.  Culture24 sent out journalists to report on as many events as possible, but we couldn’t cover everything, and these photos from people all over the UK were really interesting in showing how ingenious all the venues had been – and how much fun all the visitors seemed to be having! You can see the 6 winning photos in this Flickr gallery.

Here’s our article about the competition, and here’s an interview with the overall winner, Julie Kertesz. She’s a fascinating lady who has lived in Hungary, Romania and France before coming to the UK, blogs in French and English, and began using Flickr at the age of 70! She has now shared over 34,000 beautiful photos of her travels and the interesting people she’s met along the way, which you can look at here. I was asked to look through her photos and pick 4 favourite shots to illustrate the interview – and all I can say is that it was immensely difficult to narrow it down to 15 amazing images.

We really hope that everyone who took photos at Museums at Night 2009 will come back and do the same in 2010 – and we hope many more people will join in with the challenge as well. Julie is inspired by visiting new places, the changing seasons, and people reading – what inspires you to take photos?

Welcome to the Museums at Night blog!

Culture24 staff on HMS Belfast at launch of Museums at Night 2009

So, here at Culture24 we’re co-ordinating the campaign for Museums at Night 2010. I’m Rosie Clarke, and I’m the marketing co-ordinator – I’ll be updating this blog together with the lovely Ruth Cobb, our project manager.

The 2009 event back in May was wonderfully successful – museums, galleries, libraries, archives and heritage sites across the UK put on 157 events and attracted over 34,000 visitors. We know that the 2010 event (taking place over the weekend of May 14th-16th) will be even bigger and better, and we’re planning it now!

This blog will hopefully be a place where we can connect with anyone who’s interested, sharing how the project gathers momentum, and what we’re excited about from day to day. 

Ever wondered how a national campaign comes together? We’ll give you a glimpse inside, and come May when we’re all enjoying a weekend of amazing discoveries, we’ll be able to look back at this blog and see what was effective, and what we can learn from for Museums at Night 2011!

Do you have any suggestions for us, or questions about Museums at Night? Do leave us a comment!