Free downloadable poster and flyer templates and logos to promote your Museums at Night 2012 event

It’s been good speaking to so many of you over the last week – don’t forget, if you’d like an author or a sleepover subsidy for your Museums at Night event, you have till 5pm this Friday to register your interest!

Several of you have also asked me for Museums at Night logos and publicity templates: it’s reassuring to know that you’re thinking of advertising your events in good time!

You’ll find these on the Resources for Venues page of this blog, but I’m reproducing them here as well, so please share this post with anyone in your marketing or communications team who might find the following resources useful:

Press release text

If you need a line of text introducing the festival as a whole for your press release boilerplate, feel free to use this:

Museums at Night is the annual after-hours celebration of arts, culture and heritage when hundreds of museums, galleries, libraries, archives and heritage sites open their doors for special evening events. It is coordinated by Culture24, and takes place over the weekend of Friday 18th – Sunday 20th May 2012. www.museumsatnight.org.uk

Logo guidelines

You’re very welcome to download the campaign logos to use on your websites, print and e-newsletters to raise awareness of your participation in the festival.

It’s not compulsory, but if you’re using the logo we’d appreciate a link back to the public-facing home of the campaign, www.museumsatnight.org.uk.

JPEG logos

Museums at Night standard logo JPG
Museums at Night white on black logo JPG

EPS logos

Museums at Night standard logo EPS
Museums at Night white on black logo EPS

PNG logos

Museums at Night standard logo PNG
Museums at Night white on black logo PNG

Poster and flyer template guidelines

It’s completely free to download and customise these poster and flyer templates. My advice for designing print publicity is to keep it simple – a punchy event title, a compelling image and a line or two making your event sound exciting will usually do the trick.

Make sure to include the date, time and place of your event, the price, and contact details for further information / booking if necessary.

Finally, every year I showcase your posters on this blog to inspire other venues in creating their own publicity – so please email me (rosie@culture24.org.uk) images of your completed posters!

Microsoft Word, Open Office (doc)
A3 poster
A4 poster
A5 flyer front

Image files (jpg)
A3 poster
A4 poster
A5 flyer back
A5 flyer front

Adobe Photoshop (psd)
A3 poster
A4 poster
A5 flyer back
A5 flyer front

Guest Post: Michelle Worthington presents Open Cockpits Night at RAF Museum Cosford

Today’s guest post comes from Michelle Worthington, Public Relations Executive at the Royal Air Force Museum in Cosford, Shropshire.

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The Royal Air Force Museum Cosford will be opening up its doors to visitors for a special evening event taking place on Saturday 19th May 2012. During ‘Open Cockpits Evening’, a selection of historic aircraft and cockpits will be available for close viewing for a limited number of visitors, allowing rare inside access to some of the World’s most historic aircraft.

Missile display in the National Cold War Exhibition (c) RAF Museum

This will be the third time the event has been held at the Museum and it’s gathering momentum every time. In 2011 we decided to tie in with Museums at Night and after some consideration about what we could offer our visitors on an evening, it was decided that opening up our cockpits would be the perfect event.

A visitor at the May Open Cockpits Evening (c) RAF Museum

We knew there was a demand for aircraft access amongst the aviation enthusiasts, as we often get asked the question, so we played to our strengths. To ensure the event was manageable we limited the numbers and set an admission charge which also helps cover the costs of running the event.

A father and son discover one of the historic aircraft (c) RAF Museum

Access inside the aircraft is something we are not able to do all the time. Many of the aircraft at the Museum are unique and you will not get the chance to get onto the flight deck or sit in the pilot’s seat of such types anywhere else in the world. Once inside the aircraft you’ll be able to appreciate how the pilots of such types felt before a flight with the mass of instruments in front of them.

Looking at the controls in an aeroplane cockpit (c) RAF Museum

The Open Cockpits Evening will allow for visitors to experience not just the exterior of the aircraft, but also the interior of. By opening them up to a limited number of visitors for this event, we are able to offer them quality time inside the aircraft, with our team of volunteers available to answer any questions.

The excitement of sitting in an aeroplane cockpit (c) RAF Museum

After the success of the first Open Cockpits Evening we held the event later in the year and we found lots of repeat visitors attended, plus over 100 additional visitors. This proved to us that there is a demand for the event, and that we had done a good job first time round as people were coming back!

Open Cockpits Evening is promoted mainly through press releases distributed to the local media and aviation press. Information and photos are also posted on the Museum’s website and Facebook page and Tweets are regularly posted keeping followers updated about what aircraft will be available on the evening. The event is listed in the Museum’s leaflet and events flyer and information is distributed to our e-newsletter followers.

A blue ticket for Open Cockpits Evening in May 2011 (c) RAF Museum

We also found a really effective way to advertise the event was through radio promotions. By providing local stations with tickets to the event, the presenters hyped up the event and ran competitions for their listeners to win the tickets. Some of the stations even asked their listeners to review the event. Linking in with Museums at Night we were also able to gain additional coverage as part of the national campaign.

Reusing the ticket design in a different colour - scarlet - for Open Cockpits Evening in September 2011 (c) RAF Museum

This year’s event will run in the same format but we are allowing access to some new aircraft, giving the repeat visitors something new to see and a new plug for the media. Promotion for the event will start soon but tickets have already started to sell, with the first sold in December, six months before the event. We are hopeful this year’s event will be as successful as the last, and would encourage other museums to offer an event to their visitors during Museums at Night!

Our Museums at Night Open Cockpits event will run from 6.00pm to 8.30pm on Saturday May 19th.  Numbers will be limited to 300 people, to allow enthusiasts to spend as much time as possible examining these wondrous aircraft close up. Admission is by advance ticket only.  Tickets costs £10.00 per person and are on sale now.  Minimum height restrictions of 1.07 metres will apply.  For further information call 01902 376200 or visit www.rafmuseum.org.

Michelle Worthington is the Public Relations Executive for the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford. You can keep up to date with news and events at the Museum through Facebook and Twitter.

 

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Thank you Michelle! If you’d like to write a guest post or case study for this blog about any aspect of event planning or marketing in arts or heritage venues, please drop me a line at rosie@culture24.org.uk or call me on 01273 623336.

Guest post: Kate Webber from Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum on planning and publicising after-hours events

Today’s guest post comes from Kate Webber, Press and Marketing Officer at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

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The Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford University Museum of Natural History began a late night event as part of Nuit de Musées. My colleague Kate White initiated this annual event to encourage new visitors, and it grew and flourished from 1300 attending the first event in 2005, to 3000 visitors attending a 3-hour event in 2007. As if one event a year wasn’t enough, we now also do a similar event in December as part of the Oxford City Christmas Light Night, so we are well practiced!

Torches light the way through the Pitt Rivers Museum (c) Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

In a Different Light is an eclectic mix of live and recorded music, colourful lighting, the Pitt Rivers by torchlight and a bar – any profits are ploughed back in to the next event. It has also featured traditional world dance, glowing bugs, group art activities, Future Cinema, ethnographic films, projections and music workshops.

A view of the Pitt Rivers interior in a different light (c) Alex Melville, Oxford Giclée

Neither of the Museums have an events officer, so the event is planned and run by committee and relies on volunteers on the night. About 10 staff from admin, education, front of house, marketing and technical departments come together in January to begin the planning. All the staff have been involved in many events, so the knowledge base that has built up is invaluable. We have a very small budget, and planning has to fit around all the usual demands of our jobs.

As the Museum’s Press and Marketing Officer I promote the event, but having formerly been the Front of House Manager and also being a designer I am in a fortunate position of being able to create all steps of the promotion from designing banners to writing press releases and creating signs and programmes for the night.

The flyer Kate designed for the Pitt Rivers' Winterlight evening event in 2011

The enormous popularity of this event is due to the combination of stunning collections and architecture, and our dedication to keeping this event free, relying on word of mouth recommendation.

Kate's flyer design for last year's Museums at Night evening event, reusing the lantern design from her winter flyer with a different colour scheme

We do not do any paid advertising, instead promoting the event through our websites, e-newsletter and viral emails, free online listing, posters (printed in-house), local press, Twitter and a banner outside.

The banner Kate designed to promote In A Different Light last year

We always debrief after every event, to help iron out the hiccoughs and tweak the format. From our experience, if you are starting a new event try to keep it simple! Play to your strengths, showcase your collection and embrace the often hidden skills of your staff.

This event is time heavy, relies on goodwill and indirectly costs us money. However, it is great fun (even when we’re working), has created some very happy visitors and has helped to raise the Museum’s profile considerably.

Kate Webber studied to be a silversmith, and has worked at the Pitt Rivers Museum since 2002, managing the Front of House. She unleashes her creative streak to create books, exhibition promotional print etc, and tweets for the museum as @Pitt_Rivers.

 

 

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Thanks very much, Kate! If you’d like to write a guest post or case study for this blog about any aspect of event planning or marketing in arts or heritage venues, please drop me a line at rosie@culture24.org.uk or call me on 01273 623336.

Museums at Night fun with posters and flyers!

The Museums at Night excitement is mounting and our phones are ringing like crazy – and I’ve had a few enquiries about designing posters and flyers so thought I’d share some good examples from assorted venues.

We do provide poster and flyer templates: ours are very basic so you can customise them with your own text and images. You can download an A3 and A4 poster template, and the front and back of an A5 flyer, from our Museums at Night Resources page in various formats (JPG images, Word documents, Photoshop and Illustrator files).

The blank Museums at Night poster and flyer template

The blank reverse side of a Museums at Night flyer template

If you’ve got your own poster design all lined up, but you’re after a Museums at Night logo, you can download them from the same page too. That link again: get your Museums at Night logo, poster and flyer downloads!

Here are some examples of the posters that participating venues have created and shared with us. Click on the images to see details of their events!

Watford Museum will come alive with music and outdoor animations

Epworth Old Rectory are running candlelit tours of their historic building

The Churchill War Rooms are running a 1940s night

Explosion! the Museum of Naval Firepower in Gosport are running a sleepover subsidised by Sky Arts

The Museum of Bath at Work are hosting a dance performance for Museums at Night

Wishing all the venues who are running events the very best of luck with your marketing and promotion!