1 week extension: Apply for Connect10 artist Spencer Tunick by Friday 29 November

We’re nothing if not flexible at Museums at Night HQ, and in the run-up to the Connect10 competition we’ve had some really interesting conversations with organisations who are interested in applying for photographer Spencer Tunick but need more time to do location scouting and plan their bid.

So, we’ve extended the deadline to apply for Spencer Tunick to be your Connect10 artist until 11am on Friday 29 November.

To apply to host Spencer Tunick, simply fill in this form.

Spencer Tunick

Spencer Tunick stages scenes in which the battle of nature against culture is played out against various backdrops, from civic center to desert sandstorm, man and woman are returned to a preindustrial, pre-everything state of existence.  Tunick has traveled the globe to create these still and video images of multiple nude figures in public settings. Organizing groups from a handful of participants to tens of thousands, all volunteers, is often logistically daunting; the subsequent images transcend ordinary categories and meld sculpture and performance in a new genre.

Installation (c) Spencer Tunick

Given the constant threat of arrest (which has happened several times in his career) Spencer has not undertaken a group installation on the streets of New York in over ten years. In order to make his work without the threat of incarceration, the artist decide to take his work abroad – his most notable installations have been commissioned by Art Basel, Switzerland (1999), Institut Cultura, Barcelona (2003), XXV Biennial de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002), The Saatchi Gallery in London (2003), MOCA Cleveland (2004) and Vienna Kunsthalle (2008).

Spencer Tunick’s Connect10 event idea:

Given the fact that Spencer’s large scale nude installations generally require big budgets and an enormous time investment, this Museums at Night event will involve a more intimate look at his practice. Spencer’s work with ‘scopes’ (individual miniature viewfinders, like the ones he’s is holding in his self-portrait photograph) allows him a more private way of portraying his nude subjects.

The artist holding plastic scopes (c) Spencer Tunick

Just as Andy Warhol used to Polaroid cameras to capture his subjects in intimate small spontaneous portraits, Spencer intends to achieve the same thing. The act of carrying around a private portrait that can only be viewed through a small lens is reminiscent of the way we all use our iPhones to take 21st century Polaroids.

The essence of Spencer’s event will be about the nature of people’s interactions with intimate images and how that has evolved and changed (but stayed intrinsically the same) since the Victorian era ‘What The Butler Saw’ peepshows, through to the heyday of the key-chain viewer in the 50s and 60s to the present day iPhone and Instagram generation.

‘Tunick is a fourth-generation photographer. His great-grandfather owned the first Kodak photo finishing plant in downtown New York. His grandfather was a photographer for the United Nations Council on Foreign Relations, photographing heads of state, like President John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro. And his father photographed guests at hotels in the Catskills in the 1960s and ’70s, selling them back their photos in key-chain viewers.’ (From USA Today)

The key-chain viewer or scope will be the hardware in which the photos taken during this unique event will be delivered. Using real film and the E-6 process to develop the images Spencer wants to explore photographic heritage, the nature of collaboration and the contrast between a fast-moving shoot and the more time-consuming production process.

Using this technique, Spencer is proposing a mass performative portrait shoot, either somewhere in Greater London, or at a coastal venue with access to a beach, within 2 hours drive of London. The exact location will only be made available to participants.

This is not a group work, but a series of quickly taken individual portraits. Spencer is looking for 100-250 volunteers to participate in this unique piece of performance art (an even split of men and women) – the application process will be explored with the winning venue. Once all subjects have been photographed, each image will be inserted into its own individual keychain scope and given to each participant as a gift during a special artist-led event at the venue later that evening.

Location scouting

Because Spencer is based in the US and therefore unable to scout locations himself, this process itself will form the basis of the venues’ proposals. We invite London venues and coastal venues in Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Hampshire and East or West Sussex to suggest a location for this work.

Locations need to be: within 200 metres of the venue, visually interesting, preferably off the beaten track, preferably outside, probably quirky, possibly not and perhaps where there’s little or no regular traffic.

Each venue may submit a maximum of 4 proposed locations – one good quality JPG photograph of the location and a brief description (25 words each max.) required.

This shoot will take place during the day before the evening event. Later that evening Spencer would like to host a special event at the winning venue for all the participants although other non-participants could also attend. It’s during this event that the finished artworks will be presented to each participant. The aim of the evening is for each person to walk away with a genuine Spencer Tunick artwork in their hands. But will they want their own image in the viewfinder or that of a nude stranger? Just one question this event can explore. It would also be interesting to find a way of displaying the complete collection of images taken earlier that day so participants get a sense of the project as a whole. The detail of this finale event is also open to proposals.

Spencer is available to venues situated in the Greater London area or on the coast (with access to the beach) within a two-hour drive from London. The shoot would take place on the day of Thursday or Friday and the evening event on Friday or Saturday.

Up to £1,000 of the venue’s £2,000 prize money is earmarked to pay for the scope viewfinders that Spencer will use for the event.

To apply to host Spencer Tunick, simply fill in this form.

FAQs about the Connect10 competition entry form

Several people who couldn’t make it to our recent Museums at Night / Connect10 briefing sessions have asked to see the slides that Nick and I used to introduce Culture24’s work, the Museums at Night festival and the Connect10 competition.

Introduction to Culture24, Museums at Night and the Connect10 competition from Culture24 .

 

When you fill in the Connect10 competition entry form, you’ll be asked to select your chosen artist, and then answer the following questions.

1) Spencer Tunick’s event idea, which is limited to organisations in the Greater London area, involves outdoor photo shoots.
If you have chosen Spencer Tunick, please tell us about a maximum of four locations you are suggesting for this site specific work in a maximum of 25 words for each site. Then send one image per location to rosie@culture24.org.uk and nick@culture24.org.uk marked ST image.

Installation (c) Spencer Tunick

2) Please tell us why you have chosen this particular artist, and what connections you see between their work and your venue, collections or location. (Maximum 100 words) 

3) Please tell us about the event you’d like to run with your selected artist. Make sure you have read the artist’s statement and thought about what you can achieve that relates to the artist’s practice and stays within budget.

The brief outline should address questions such as: What will happen? What format will it take? How will it involve audience participation? Whereabouts in your venue will it take place? Let us know any relevant information. (Maximum 200 words)

4) What sort of audience are you aiming to attract with this event? For example, are you aiming to reach lapsed attenders, families who want a hands-on element to the event, or mature explorers who want an event with an educational element? (Maximum 100 words)

For more information about audience development strategies, read Targeting specific audiences.

5) Each winning venue will have £2,000 to spend on their event and any artists’ materials. This doesn’t include the artist’s fee and travel and accommodation costs, which Culture24 will cover.

Please use this space to provide a basic budget outline: what would you spend your prize money on? Remember to include the proceeds from any ticket sales if you intend to charge an admission fee. (Maximum 100 words)

Ready to enter? Fill in the entry form here to tell us which artist you’d like to win and what you’d do with them, by 5pm on Friday 22 November.

Can a small venue take part in the Connect10 competition?

Connect10 artist Alex Hartley shinning up the columns at the Bank of England – how might he engage with your venue’s architecture? (c) Alex Hartley

A very small museum recently got in touch to ask whether they had any hope of taking part in the Connect10 competition to win an artist for their Museums at Night event. My response was a resounding “Yes!”

Take a look at the list of Connect10 artists available for Museums at Night 2014: we encourage venues of all sizes to think whether there might be a connection between one of the artists and your venue, collections or location. The artists’ ideas are very approximate and are intended to give you some background about the sort of things that inspire them and the way they like to work.

Going outside

Events don’t have to take place inside your building! Susan Forsyth’s Zusammen choir procession around the streets of Rochdale was a great example of community outreach, touring around significant places from the town’s history, pausing by sites of interest and ending up outside the Rochdale Pioneers Museum, before inviting everyone into the historic church across the street for tea and biscuits.

Size is no object when it comes to attracting votes

One of the campaigners Connect10 artist Simon Roberts recorded at the Working Class Movement Library’s Museums at Night event in 2012 (c) Simon Roberts

Connect10 artists have been won by small venues in the past, for example, the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, which incidentally attracted the largest number of votes ever counted in the whole competition!

Internal marketing

However, it’s important that you’re aware that being part of Connect10 takes up a considerable amount of staff time, in reaching out to new audiences for votes during the competition stage, planning the event in collaboration with your artist if you win, maximising the amount of publicity you get and ensuring everything is in place for a successful event on the night. Talk with your team of staff and volunteers to see if they’re enthusiastic about the possibilities, or not.

Getting stakeholders on board

It could also be helpful to talk with other local arts or heritage venues, your Museum Development Officer, or your local communications team if you’re a council-run venue, to get any key stakeholders on board.

Joint bids

If you think your organisation would be taking on too much by applying for a Connect10 artist on your own, you might like to consider working together with another local organisation on a joint bid.

Connect10 artists and winning venues shared their experiences here – these presentations may be helpful to have a look at as they share the challenges and successes encountered by people involved in the competition in previous years.

We’ve put together this page with all the Connect10 links and helpful resources in one place.

Nick and I are always happy to have a chat on the phone with you, if that would be useful – we’re here to help! The direct line is 01273 623336.

Finally, if you’re keen to go ahead and apply to win a top Connect10 artist and a £2000 bursary for your Museums at Night event, here’s the 2 page entry form you’ll need to fill in by 5pm on Friday 22 November.

Calling Welsh venues: free Museums at Night briefings in Cardiff and Wrexham

Museums at Night project manager Nick Stockman gets a tour of Birmingham venue, Winterbourne House & Gardens

Following the success of our free briefing sessions in London, Birmingham and Bradford, where Nick and I discussed taking part in the Museums at Night festival and entering the Connect10 competition with lots of museums, we’re delighted to announce that we’re coming to Wales!

Working together with the Audience Development Team at All Wales Libraries, Archives & Museums (Llyfrgelloedd, Archifau ac Amgueddfeydd – Cymru Gyfan), we’ll be delivering two further briefing sessions in North and South Wales later this month.

These free morning sessions are open to staff at all Welsh museums, galleries, libraries, archives, historic buildings, heritage and sacred sites and cultural institutions.

Interested in taking part in Culture24’s Museums at Night festival and/or entering the Connect10 competition next year? Then come along to one of our free, friendly and focused sessions:

Wednesday 23rd October, Wrexham Museum & Archives, 10am-1.30pm

Thursday 24th October, The Cardiff Story, 10am-1.30pm

Museums at Night is the annual after-hours festival showcasing the arts and heritage sector, which each year offers a great audience development opportunity. Connect10 is the competition that gives ten venues the chance to win an artist-led event and £2,000 as part of the festival.

Find out about the benefits and challenges involved in hosting an after-hours event, the advantages in working together with other venues and what it takes to be a Connect10 winner.

Learn how to organise a group of venues to take part in the festival, and what it’s like to host a top artist from the people who have done it before!

There will be plenty of opportunities to meet and chat with colleagues from your region, and refreshments and a complimentary lunch will be included on both days.

To claim your free place on one of these workshops, simply sign up below.

Wrexham briefing, Wednesday 23 October – https://museumsatnightwrexham.eventbrite.co.uk/

Cardiff briefing, Thursday 24 October – https://museumsatnightcardiff.eventbrite.co.uk/

We look forward to meeting you!

Sesiynau gwybodaeth Amgueddfeydd yn y Nos – agored i staff holl amgueddfeydd, orielau, llyfrgelloedd, archifau, adeiladau hanesyddol, safleoedd treftadaeth a sanctaidd a sefydliadau diwylliannol yng Nghymru!

Oes gennych chi ddiddordeb mewn cymryd rhan yng ngŵyl Amgueddfeydd yn y Nos, Culture24 ac/neu roi cynnig ar gystadleuaeth Connect10 y flwyddyn nesaf? Dewch draw i un o ddwy sesiwn gyfeillgar a phenodol yng Ngogledd a De Cymru ym mis Hydref 2013.

Gŵyl flynyddol y tu allan i’r oriau arferol, yw Amgueddfeydd yn y Nos. Mae’n arddangos yr adran gelf a threftadaeth sy’n cynnig cyfle gwych i ddatblygu cynulleidfa bob blwyddyn. Connect10 yw’r gystadleuaeth sy’n rhoi cyfle i ddeg lleoliad ennill digwyddiad dan arweiniad artist a £2,000 fel rhan o’r ŵyl.

Dewch i ddarganfod mwy am y manteision a’r sialensiau sy’n rhan o gynnal digwyddiad y tu allan i oriau gwaith, manteision cydweithio gyda lleoliadau eraill a beth mae’n ei olygu i fod yn enillydd Connect10!

Cewch ddysgu sut i drefnu bod grŵp o leoliadau yn cymryd rhan yn yr ŵyl a sut brofiad yw croesawu artist amlwg gan y rhai sydd wedi gwneud hynny o’r blaen! Bydd digon o gyfle hefyd i gyfarfod a sgwrsio gyda chydweithwyr o’ch ardal chi.

Darperir lluniaeth a chinio bwffe am ddim.

Wrecsam: https://museumsatnightwrexham.eventbrite.co.uk/

Caerdydd: https://museumsatnightcardiff.eventbrite.co.uk/

Connect10 competition: what could the ten artists do for you?

Meet the ten artists who are taking part in the 2013 Connect10 competition, find out about their creative journeys and what they’d like to create. Could you see any of these ideas working in your museum, gallery, library or heritage site?

(c) Jake and Dinos Chapman

The Turner Prize-nominated Chapman Brothers studied at the Royal College of Art, and worked as assistants to British artists Gilbert and George. Their iconoclastic sculptures, paintings, prints and large-scale installations draw on confrontational imagery to question standards of politics, political correctness and obscenity in witty and frequently shocking ways: in the past they have reworked Goya etchings and watercolours by Hitler.

The Chapman Brothers’ Connect10 idea:
Off the top of our heads we’re thinking of staging either: a live human Autopsy-Turvy involving radioactive isotopes and a fun game of ‘Hunt the Spleen’; ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’ at a zoo; a game of Night Vision Paintball in a cathedral; a Wall of Death Motorcycle Gauntlet in a museum; or something involving industrial storage heaters at a waxwork museum. But if any participating institutions have a better idea we’re completely up for a discussion.

Insecticide (c) Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw (c) Axel Hoedt

Mat Collishaw

Central to Mat Collishaw’s work are the themes of illusion and desire, which he uses to draw us into an arena where everyday conventions are broken down and questioned. The photographer and video innovator is known for his hard-hitting images of beauty and cruelty, and has created adult zoetropes, photographed himself trying to catch fairies, and used phosphorescent paint to convey the brief lives of Victorian street children.

Mat Collishaw’s Connect10 idea:
I’d like visitors to help me prepare and make some of my work, in order to get a deeper understanding of my practice and the motives behind what I make and how I make it. These technical practices might include the flattening of the butterflies for my insecticide works or helping me create some of my spinning zoetropes and will be accompanied by informal discussion and guidance from me and my studio assistants.

Work No. 88: A sheet of paper crumpled into a ball (1996) (c) Martin Creed, image courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Martin Creed (c) Jason Schmidt

Martin Creed

2001 Turner Prize winner Martin Creed has exhibited his solo shows, performances and installations around the world. His recent works involve various art forms including music, dance, writing, sculpture and painting: pieces ranging from compositions for symphony orchestra and music for elevators to architectural commissions, public monuments and dance and performances which combine classical ballet with talk, music, film and animation.

Box Paint Class, Wide Open School, Hayward Gallery, London (2012) (c) Cullinan Richards

(c) Cullinan Richards

Cullinan + Richards 

Cullinan Richards is a London-based artistic collaboration between Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards. Since 1997 they have been producing work ranging from painting to performance to film, fusing personal histories with fiction so as to confront shared social and cultural issues. In 2006, they established Savage School Window Gallery, a gallery exhibiting works from a window in their studio on Vyner Street, London. Together they were on the panel of selectors for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2012.

Cullinan + Richards’ Connect10 idea:
We’d love to create a film set for a fictional Tarantino re-make of Russ Meyer’s cult film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! in which the visitors are the extras. Viewers will be immersed in something which looks like a film set, smells like a film set and feels like a film set – this detailed reconstruction will even feature a catering truck serving sweet tea and bad sandwiches served by gallery staff playing the part of the film crew. There will be auditions taking place in various roped off sections of the space, one of which will be a boxing ring where extras will be sparring with casting agents & directors. There will also be a backdrop of projections taking place throughout the space. There could be indoors and outdoors elements to this experience, depending on the venue.

Susan Forsyth’s Zusammen Choir at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art, 2008 (c) Susan Forsyth

(c) Susan Forsyth

Susan Forsyth

Shortlisted for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2009, Susan Forsyth tweaks the canon, using sculpture, text, participatory performance and short films to re-play the historically significant and the everyday ephemeral.  The skill and craft of sculpture-making is important in her work: she gilds; fabricates industrial sheets; casts in plaster, bronze and iron; organises scratch choirs and ping-pong games.

Susan Forsyth’s Connect10 idea:
I like the idea of creating a large scale candle-lit Zusammen Choir Procession, performed entirely by Museums at Night visitors, the more the better, accompanied by a core of professional musicians. Zusammen means ‘together’ in German, so appropriately the songs being sung will be written by Susan in collaboration with the winning venue to tell the story of its unique cultural history through a collaborative public performance. There will be no rehearsals and critically, no singing skill is required. The procession can involve any route through a village, town or city but will end at the winning venue for a gloriously out-of-tune finale.

Audience (2008) at Art Basel (c) rAndom International

(c) rAndom International

rAndom International

rAndom create artworks and installations that explore behaviour and interaction, often using light and movement. Founded in 2005 by Stuart Wood, Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch, the studio utilises raw fragments of artificial intelligence to encourage relationships between the converging worlds of animate and inanimate. The studio is based in a converted warehouse in Chelsea, London and today includes a growing team of  diverse talent.

rAndom International’s Connect10 idea:
Given that The Rain Room which we installed at The Barbican took 4 years to develop and execute we’re thinking of something marginally smaller in scale but which affects viewers in a similarly immediate way. For Museums at Night, we’d love to stage a one-off performative intervention that engages the wider public with unforeseen aspects of their own expectations in a highly experimental fashion. We’d like to focus this experience around the elements of nature, in particular water and more specifically the sea and the seaside, and actively invite proposals/ideas. The most exciting aspect of Museums at Night for us is seeing what ideas the venues themselves come up with so we don’t want to provide too much information, rather general ideas!

(c) Gavin Turk

Gavin Turk 

Gavin Turk studied at the Royal College of Art and rose to prominence as one of the infamous Young British Artists.  His sculptures and installations critique the construction of artistic myths of authorship, creativity and genius, often using his own image and signature to address issues surrounding authorship, authenticity and identity. Since 2008, Turk and his partner Deborah Curtis have run a project-based group of artists called The House of Fairy Tales, designed to further educational community projects to support and advocate art.

Gavin Turk’s Connect10 idea:
I’m thinking of creating a giant Magic Flying Carpet experience for visitors, accompanied by an evening of fantastical story-telling and yarn spinning, charting a mystical journey through time and history. This journey could reflect the history and context of any venue/location so could be entirely site specific. Alternatively I like the idea of making a large scale light and sound installation – the more immersive the visitor experience the better – mobilising viewers to participate in a live performance of some kind using hundreds of neon glow sticks.

Holiday Destination (c) Julia Vogl – an artwork that is also a visualisation of data collected from the local community, with colour-coded bottles showing where people intend to spend their holidays

(c) Julia Vogl

Julia Vogl

Winner of the Aesthetical Art Prize and the Catlin Art Prize, the American and British artist has shown as part of the Saatchi and Channel 4 New Sensations exhibition, and was commissioned to make work for The People’s Supermarket. Vogl’s work is committed to reflecting the community site it is placed in, with a record of scaling buildings including the 40 front windows of Mudd Library in Ohio; HOME, a self-initiated Cultural Olympiad project for Peckham Community in London; and most recently HOLIDAY DESTINATION, for Silver Spring Maryland Shopping mall plaza.

Julia Vogl’s Connect10 idea:
I could create a huge interactive multi-coloured map of a community using 10,000+ vessels (glass, ceramic, plastic, metal, balloon) that can contain water. The vessels could be gathered/donated by the public in the months leading up to the event, at which point I will invite visitors to colour the water with local pigments, natural colour resources or food colouring. Ideally this map could be seen from alternate perspectives in the space. The colour-coding and demographic content will be based on a subject of key interest/relevance to the venue, site and/or location. For this particular idea to work we’ll require a large forum to lay out the work (not necessarily horizontally) and the venue must be able to help me collect thousands of recycled or locally sourced vessels. The details of how we make this interactive installation site-specific are completely up for discussion.

False Ceiling (1995) (c) Richard Wentworth

Richard Wentworth (c) Cutler & Gross

Richard Wentworth

Richard Wentworth has played a leading role in New British Sculpture since the end of the 70s. His work has altered the traditional definition of sculpture as well as photography, subversively transforming and manipulating industrial and/or found objects into works of art. In his photography, as in the ongoing series Making Do and Getting By, Wentworth documents the everyday, paying attention to objects, occasional and involuntary geometries as well as uncanny situations that often go unnoticed.

Richard Wentworth’s Connect10 idea:
I’d like to explore how things are assembled, not just physically, with objects and collections, but socially, with people. As an exercise of mass observation, I’ve always wanted to kidnap an entire tube, train, bus, or tram at a random moment to find out who’s on it, where they’re going and why. Alternatively, feeding my deep interest in the history of social protest I’d like to somehow stage a silent riot which would require the participation of several hundred visitors in a large public space. Whatever the outcome of this collaboration, it will relate specifically to the compass of what the museum or gallery does.

Making the Connection at the Tabernacle (c) Julian Wild – a touring communal sculpture project in which members of the public can add to a large scale sculpture constructed from plastic plumbers pipe

(c) Julian Wild

Julian Wild 

Julian Wild has exhibited in a range of spaces including the Victoria & Albert Museum, and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2005. The linear structures that he makes either explore the boundaries of a pre-determined shape or the space that they exist in. His sculptures are often based on the history of the site and reference functional processes and systems. Wild is interested in construction and manufacturing ranging from the functional (e.g. stainless steel handrails) to decorative processes such as japanning. Lately he has created a series of sculptures that are three-dimensional doodles.

Julian Wild’s Connect10 idea:
My favourite idea so far is to create a unique glow-in-the-dark version of ‘Making the Connection’, using white plastic tubing and luminous paint. Members of the public will actually be responsible for assembling this piece of sculpture and at the end of the night the lights in whichever museum or space we’re in will be turned off to reveal a glowing masterpiece. The possibilities regarding the shape and scale of this event depend entirely on the spaces in a venue and if a venue has interesting suggestions as to how this can be applied, I’m very keen to discuss ideas.

Download this information as a 4 page PDF to share

The Connect10 competition is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

The Connect10 competition returns: win an artist and funding towards your Museums at Night event

We’re delighted to announce that the Connect10 competition is back for Museums at Night 2013: your museum or gallery could win one of ten top contemporary artists and a financial subsidy for your Museums at Night event!

In 2013 there will be a share of £35,000 available to pay for venues to work with artists to devise outstanding events.

Any cultural or heritage venue in the country can submit an event idea, forty will be shortlisted to go through to the public vote, and all shortlisted venues that don’t win an artist will be supported, through small grants, to go ahead with a Museums at Night event.

The ten artists taking part are:

• Jake and Dinos Chapman, irreverent Turner Prize nominees whose provocative sculptures were part of the infamous Young British Artist exhibitions Brilliant! and Sensation. They recently caused controversy by drawing on watercolours believed to have been painted by Hitler.
• Martin Creed, artist and musician who won the 2001 Turner Prize for Work No. 227: the lights going on and off.
• Mat Collishaw, photographer and video innovator known for his hard-hitting images of beauty and cruelty, who has created adult zoetropes, photographed himself trying to catch fairies, and used phosphorescent paint to convey the brief lives of Victorian street children.
• Cullinan Richards, the sculpture and filmmaking partnership of Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards, who work with fiction, personal histories and live performance.
• Susan Forsyth, London-based sculptor who creates large geometric works such as Wiff-Waff, an enormous gilded ping-pong table inviting visitors to play and make up their own rules.
• Random International, digital artists and sculptors whose current astounding installation Rain Room at the Barbican invites visitors to walk through a ‘wet room’ yet not get wet!
• Gavin Turk, who created the travelling art circus House of Fairy Tales which has delighted families in unusual places ranging from literary festivals to Camp Bestival.
• Julia Vogl, creator of social sculpture, architectural interventions and colourful public engagement projects.
• Richard Wentworth, British sculpture and installation artist, curator and (back in the day) Damien Hirst’s teacher.
• Julian Wild, sculptor and creator of the Making the Connection communal sculpture construction project.

Join the fun! Susan Forsyth’s Zusammen Choir at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art, 2008 (c) Susan Forsyth

The money:

Winning venues receive a bursary of £2000 to support their event, enabling ambitious and creative event programming. The venues who come in second place will receive a £200 bursary towards their alternative Museums at Night events, while those who come third and fourth will receive £100 each, helping everyone to be part of the festival.

How to take part:

If you’re interested in entering the Connect10 competition, which always leads to a lot of publicity and which can be a terrific audience development vehicle, your next steps are:

1) Download our simple at-a-glance Connect10 essentials guide and the detailed Connect10 information pack for venues to read through and discuss with your team. You can also download the terms and conditions for participating venues to make sure you understand what’s expected if you take part.

2) The 10 participating artists have shared statements explaining their approach to Connect10, their inspiration and how they work. Take a look and decide which artist you’re interested in bringing to your venue, and what sort of event you’d like to stage with them.

3) Once you have buy-in from everyone in your organisation, it’s time to enter your event idea. There’s a simple form for you to submit your event ideas online here: this will close at 5pm on Thursday 31 January 2013.

When filling in the form, as well as your contact details and artist selection, we’ll be asking you to outline more about your event idea.

We recommend you write out your responses to this before you go to the submission form, as you can’t save your progress and return to it: if you don’t complete the form within one browser session you will need to start a new one.

Questions will include:

• Your reason for choosing this particular artist, and the connections you see between their work and your venue, collections or location (maximum 100 words)
• Details of the event: what will happen, the format it will take, how it will involve audience participation, whereabouts in your venue it will take place, and any other information you want to tell us (maximum 200 words)
• The type of audience you’re aiming to attract with this event (maximum 100 words)
• A very basic budget outline explaining what you will spend the £2000 prize money on (maximum 100 words) – don’t forget that the artist’s fee, travel and accommodation costs will already be covered, but you’ll need to budget for the artists’ materials.

The event submission form is here: https://culture24.wufoo.eu/forms/connect10-event-submission-form-2013/

If you’d like to discuss your plans with Nick or Rosie first, we’re only a phonecall away on 01273 623279 and 01273 623336.

Thanks – and the very best of luck!

The Connect10 competition is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Win a book-lovers’ trip to Bristol and discover the Penguin Archive!

Announcing an exciting new Museums at Night competition!

We’ve teamed up with the Penguin English Library and Guardian Extra to offer an exciting competition: you and a guest could win a private tour of the Penguin Archive in Bristol, plus an overnight stay in Number Thirty Eight, the boutique hotel in Clifton with panoramic views of the city.

On the tour, competition winners will be greeted by a Penguin archivist who will give them a behind-the-scenes look into the world of Penguin publishing. They will also meet the editorial team and acclaimed cover designer Coralie Bickford-Smith, who will talk to them about bringing the Penguin English Library series to life.

Enter the Penguin Archive competition here: you’ll need to register as a Guardian Extra member first, but this is free to do.

The competition closes on Sunday 13 May, so you only have 2 days to enter!

This is your chance to discover literary history at the Penguin Archive in Bristol!

Subtle tip-off for competition fans

A word to the wise: if you like the challenge of entering Museums at Night competitions, you may like to sign up for our Museums at Night public email newsletter. The next one will come out on Monday – and you won’t want to miss it!

Competition: Win an exclusive tour of the Faber Archive for Museums at Night 2012!

Enter our exclusive Museums at Night 2012 competition for the chance to win an expert guided tour inside the incredible literary archive of Faber & Faber!

Lovers of literary history can discover stories from 80 years of publishing in our exclusive competition. Photo courtesy of Faber.

Archivist Robert Brown will take five lucky winners on a journey through 80 years of treasures held in the publishing giant’s London office at Bloomsbury House, which is not normally open to the public.

Faber & Faber’s unique publishing archive ranges from its famous early twentieth century poetry collection – including manuscripts of TS Eliot and WH Auden – to books on farming, gardening, art and architecture.

The night will end with a special reading from prize-winning poet Lavinia Greenlaw, author of The Casual Perfect and recent recipient of the Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry.

Lavinia Greenlaw, who will be reading from her poetry at the Faber Archive event (c) Faber & Faber

The event will take place between 6.30pm and 8.00 pm on Friday May 18 at the Faber Archive in London.

Enter the Faber Archive competition here.

The competition closes at 5pm on Wednesday May 9 2012.

Terms and conditions:

• This competition is not open to employees of Culture24 or Faber & Faber, or their families.

• Entrants must be over 16 years of age and resident in the UK.

• All entrants must include contact details or their entry will be discarded. All contact details will be deleted after the competition.

• Winners will be informed on Thursday May 10 2012. If Culture24 staff are not able to make contact with winners by 5pm on Thursday May 10 to confirm their attendance, that entry will be discarded and a reserve drawn instead.

• Winners will be drawn at random, decisions are final and correspondence will not be entered into.

• Culture24 and Faber & Faber regret that travel expenses to and from the archive will not be covered.

• Culture24 and Faber & Faber do not take responsibility for any lost or late entries.

• This competition is free to enter, no purchase is necessary.

• The prize must be taken as stated, cannot be deferred, and there is no cash alternative.

Further tips on raising awareness from museums and galleries

This is the fifth in our series of posts highlighting how venues vying to win an artist in our Connect10 competition are raising awareness about the public vote among their local communities. If you’re involved in audience development or marketing, the ideas we’re sharing may be useful!

The three venues competing for installation artist and sculptor Susan Stockwell are Wolverhampton Art Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery.

Where will you send Susan for Museums at Night? Cast your vote here.

Elaine Lees, Communications Officer at Creativity Works reports on Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery‘s Connect10 publicity:

To drum up support we’ve taken a digital approach, mainly posting news stories on websites and using social networking and email to spread the word. Old friends and new are showing their support, and local newspapers and BBC Radio Lancashire have also encouraged people to vote.

News of our Susan Stockwell bid has appeared across the websites of Creativity Works, Artsmap, Blackburn Life, the local council Chief Executive’s blog, the council intranet, the Perspectives of Pennine Lancashire Visual Arts network and more!

Now we just need to enlist the help of the hundreds of thousands of Blackburn Rovers supporters…

Lucy Theobald, Marketing and Press Coordinator at the Fitzwilliam Museum, reports:

We’ve sent out a press release about our bid for Susan Stockwell, together with the bid of one of our partner museums: the Polar Museum are also in the running to win novelist Jon McGregor. Combining the two bids makes more of a story for local media: here’s an article that appeared in Cambridge News.

There’s a news story going out in our local paper, and we’ve also been pushing the story online through our social media channels, Twitter and Facebook.

Wolverhampton Art Gallery report:

We’ve also sent out press releases to the local media, and are raising awareness online through our own website, Twitter and Facebook.

We’ve also added a line about the competition into our email signatures, along with a link to the voting page!

Vote in Susan Stockwell’s Connect10 poll here on Culture24 – where will you send her?

The competition is open until Monday March 5th, and the winning venue will be announced on Tuesday March 6th.

More top publicity tips from arts and heritage venues attracting competition votes

This is the fourth post in our series for arts marketers highlighting what venues competing to win a top artist for Museums at Night are doing to reach out to their audiences. So far, it seems that press releases to local media combined with the use of social media and email newsletters are the most popular tactics.

The three venues competing for top taxidermist Polly Morgan are Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust in Bristol; Yorkshire Museum and Gardens, York and Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum.

Where will you send Polly for Museums at Night? Cast your vote here.

Kim Fisher, Visitor Services Assistant at the Victoria Gallery & Museum reports:

We’ve been using Twitter and Facebook heavily, and contacted our email list. We’ve also printed leaflets to put around the gallery for visitors to see.

Our Education Officer Kirsty has told her contacts at the universities, and teachers who may be interested.

Finally, all our admin staff have added a link to the vote into our email signatures!

Lee Clark, Media Co-ordinator at York Museums Trust reports:

We’ve contacted all our staff as well as our mailing list, and are also spreading the word through Twitter, Facebook and our blog.

We’re also concocting an idea for a photocall to capture the press’s attention – watch this space!

Felicia Smith, Public Engagement Manager at Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust reports:

We’ve sent out press releases and have lined up a joint interview with ss Great Britain (who are hoping to win jellymongers Bompas & Parr in Connect10) on Bristol Community Radio on Saturday. The aim is to get Bristol people voting for two amazing artists to be brought to the city, not just one!

We’ve shared our press release with our planned event partners M Shed / Bristol Museums & Gallery and WildOwl, and Bristol Natural History Forum who are our partners for the Bioblitz event happening the weekend after Museums at Night. If we win the Connect10 competition, we hope to use Arnos Vale’s wildlife to link these two free events together.

We’ve set up a webpage for competition news, and are using Twitter and Facebook: we’re really grateful that other local organisations are supporting us on their pages too.

Vote in Polly Morgan’s Connect10 poll here on Culture24 – where will you send her?

The competition is open until Monday March 5th, and the winning venue will be announced on Tuesday March 6th.