Posted onMay 15, 2014byCulture24|Comments Off on Museums at Night coverage this weekend
Museums at Night 2014 is here!
All the event listings and lots of features about the festival are on our homepage, www.museumsatnight.org.uk.
There’s a phenomenal amount of media coverage of the festival planned: yesterday comedian Arthur Smith reported from the Black Country Living Museum for the One Show, and this evening author Damian Dibben appeared on Blue Peter discussing his Museums at Night event at Guildford Castle.
Idyll by Lawrence Koe, VanGo’d by Maria and Kelly (image shared under a CC BY SA licence)
We’re all over local and regional radio and television – and Connect10 artist Fred Deakin had a great chat with Lauren Laverne on her 6Music show ahead of his Scribble Jam at the Wilson:
However, the big show that we’re most excited about is this:
BBC’s Arts Editor Will Gompertz will present an hour-long programme about Museums at Night from the National Museum of Scotland on Saturday 17 May, 7pm on BBC Two featuring festival venues across the UK, from the National Gallery to the Museum of Witchcraft.
Posted onMay 12, 2014byCulture24|Comments Off on 3 days to go: 9 top event marketing tips
Here are some top tips for all venues trying to promote Museums at Night events: these are all simple mistakes we have seen in the last few days, which you should avoid!
1)Does your own website have a listing for your Museums at Night event?
If any details of your event have changed, have you updated them on your site? It sounds obvious but at the very least you need to list the date, event times and ticket price, along with contact details for potential visitors to make a booking or find out more.
2)Is your Museums at Night event listing registered in Culture24’s database?
Simply use the search widget here to double check that we’ve got your listing: www.museumsatnight.org.uk.
3) Most importantly, if we don’t have your event listing, please register it ASAP, or you’ll miss out on all of our regional marketing; and neither the public nor the media will know that there’s an event taking place in their area. Here’s how to register your Museums at Night event.
4) Is your listing correct?
If details of your event listing have changed, please log in here and update your event record: http://update.culture24.org.uk/dashboard– the changes will be visible the next time we publish the site, which usually happens twice a day.
If you’ve already sent press releases, that’s great – but now’s the time to follow up with a phone call. Your local newspapers and radio stations are looking for content – so could you offer them an interview and photos about the Museums at Night excitement you’re planning?
Will they be sending a reporter or photographer along on the night? Phone them now to find out!
6) Use your social media channels
Reach out to your followers on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, Instagram and any other social media channels you use. Share your excitement as you get ready – we’re already seeing some great behind-the-scenes photos and teasers, like this:
However, in your messages, be sure to include a link to your event listing online, or to the site where people can find out more and book tickets. Rather than just broadcasting, if you want your followers to take action, make it easy for them by giving them a link to click rather than forcing them to Google for more details.
Don’t forget, the Twitter hashtag for Museums at Night 2013 is #MatN2014 – if you use it, we’ll retweet you.
7) Send an email about your event
Send a quick newsflash reminder to your mailing list about your Museums at Night event – this is their last chance to book tickets! Bonus points if you have a good image to include.
However, you’ll want to attract new audiences on the night too – but if you don’t have enough staff to stand outside welcoming potential visitors, how can you grab their attention?
Good signage can make a big difference: if your venue’s on a side street that doesn’t get much passing traffic, use pop-up A-frame signs to catch people’s eye.
Don’t have signs? Simply chalk on the pavements! During Museums at Night over the last couple of years, several venues chalked a trail of arrows to direct passers-by to their front doors, and were delighted to report that this drew in curious new visitors.
9) Keep us updated!
If your tickets are selling slowly or quickly, if you may have to cancel or if your event’s now fully booked, please update us! Call 01273 623336, email rosie@culture24.org.uk or tweet@MuseumsAtNight.
And for bonus points:
If you’re not running an event at your venue, you can still support the festival!
a) Why not share a link with your social media followers to a Museums at Night event in your area they night like to go to? The hashtag is #MatN2014.
b) If you’re free during the evening on Thursday 15, Friday 16 or Saturday 17, why not pop along to a Museums at Night event with your friends or family?
After long anticipation Museums at Night has finally arrived! We are very excited to see some amazing pictures coming through on Twitter from people getting involved in events, exhibitions and performances across the UK.
Fantastic Owls at last nights Museums at Night event #MatN2013 Thank you to all who braved the weather! (c) Oxford Museum
Our own reporters have been racing across the country. Rosie Clarke spent last night in Lancashire, singing along with Susan Forsyth’s Zusammen Choir while Amy Strike spent her Thursday night detecting bats at Hatchlands Park. Ben Miller, Nick Stockman and Sejul Malde visited the Horniman Museum to see rAndom International’s installation, and Ruth Hazard enjoyed an exclusive night behind the scenes at the Faber and Faber Archives.
Posted onApril 18, 2013byCulture24|Comments Off on Guest post: Antonia Grant describes Handel House Museum’s first Museums at Night event
Here at C24 Towers we’re delighted with this year’s BBC History Magazine Guide to Museums at Night: copies of the brochure should now have arrived at all participating venues. We’re dressing up smartly to head off to the Museums at Night launch at the Cutty Sark this evening, and will report back tomorrow!
Our latest guest post is by Antonia Grant from London’s Handel House Museum, who introduces their first ever Museums at Night event.
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Handel House Museum is located just a stone’s throw from Bond Street, tucked away on Brook Street. It offers the more intrepid tourist a historic haven to relax and have an intimate glimpse into the life and home of one of the world’s greatest composers, George Frideric Handel.
The museum, part of London Small Historic Houses,is built over two floors reflecting both the private and public persona of Handel, while intriguingly, over 300 years later another iconic composer and musician moved in next door, the legendary Jimi Hendrix. You couldn’t get a more musically fantastic cocktail!
A harpsichord on display at Handel House Museum (c) Matthew Hollow
Overcoming challenges – Hallelujah!
I was very excited at the prospect of Handel House taking part in this year’s Museums at Night for the first time. I’d run a similar event last year at Edinburgh University’s Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, which proved extremely popular, attracting a diverse audience. At Handel House, again, one of the main challenges was the space and accessibility.
Our idea is to have a series of activities taking place throughout the evening, centered on this year’s theme ‘Handel by Candle!’ We’ll be running candlelit tours and harpsichord recitals for small, intimate groups as well as offering free admission for visitors from 6:30 – 10pm.
Visitors viewing the bedroom at Handel House (c) Niusia Winczewski
A unique selling point
As part of the museum’s public events programme, a Baroque music concert takes place in the historic Rehearsal and Performance room. This is the very room Handel would have used to rehearse his next operas or oratorios to an invited audience and we keep this tradition alive every week.
By offering a concert during Museums at Night we hope to share this special space with a new audience. There will be an opportunity for our younger visitors to interact with the House on the evening too, with fun family trails and activity sheets and Georgian costumes to dress up in.
Publicity tips – from Baroque to Rock star!
As the evening will be open to families and adults, we’ll use a number of ways to reach out to both these groups. We will issue a press release to local and targeted newspapers and magazines, as well as adding the event on various family-friendly and event listings sites. Not forgetting social media: Facebook and Twitter are great ways to reach our audience and link with similar organisations and people.
We’ll build interest by revealing different elements of the evening – but not too much to spoil the surprise! And so as not to forget our already loyal audience, we will let them know about the event by including it in our season brochure and monthly e-newsletter.
Young visitors dressing up at Handel House Museum (c) Niusia Winczewski
As it will be the first time we’ve participated in the Museums at Night festival, we can’t wait to find out how it goes!
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Antonia Grant has worked at Handel House Museum for over a year as the Learning and Events Officer. She obtained a BA Degree in History and Classical Civilisation from University College Dublin followed by a MSc in History, Theory and Display from Edinburgh University.
Antonia is interested in making the arts as accessible as possible to a wide audience, and creating innovative and exciting learning programmes and events.
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Thanks, Antonia!
If you’re reading this and you have an interesting story to tell or case study to share about planning or marketing after-hours events at your arts or heritage venue, I’d love to publish your guest posts as well. Please email rosie@culture24.org.uk.
Posted onFebruary 25, 2013byCulture24|Comments Off on Tips on using Twitter: making the most of your tweets
Museums at Night intern Amy Strike has been using Twitter to market various events: here she shares her experiences and recommendations.
Flyer promoting the Fairytale Fair
A week of Tweeting
This week, I find myself working on a number of projects. Museums at Night is coming on apace, and the votes are flooding in for the Connect 10 competition. Outside of my work with Museums at Night, I am currently preparing to launch some of my own artwork at The Fairytale Fair. I’m also getting ready to exhibit my work at the 13 Women exhibition, and helping to organise the marketing of the event: it’s a busy week!
Naturally, this means tweeting. One of the things I have discovered from running my own business is that this particular form of social media marketing can be incredibly valuable in reaching target audiences and keeping your business and upcoming events in the forefront of people’s minds.
It’s also a great way of attracting an audience. For example, the 13 Women exhibition involves 26 artists, and most of the marketing for the exhibition is designed to convey the feel of the exhibition through one overall theme.
However, by using Twitter, I’ve been able to give each of the artists some individual promotion, so that in the lead-up to the event the people following our news feed have multiple opportunities to read fresh tweets about new and exciting artists. Meanwhile, the artists themselves are retweeting these messages, reaching a much wider audience.
13 Women exhibition flyer
When in doubt, tweet the weather
Having used Twitter for some time as a marketing tool, I enjoy the way that it can be used to give an impression of an event or project, and to keep up a steady flow of information.
The best kind of tweets, I have discovered, are those that ask something of the reader. People may not answer a question, but they do tend to remember them. Especially when they are topical:
This particular tweet got a few responses: there’s nothing like the weather to get people talking.
Latex or pet portraits?
It also helps to target tweets to a particular audience. In my case, an artist emerging from the fetish industry and using latex as a medium would need a different style of promotion to a pet portrait artist.
It’s also important to include the Twitter names, or @handles, of people and organisations you’re talking about, along with links to further information about whatever you’re promoting. And if you have pictures to share, these are great too!
Finally, a catchy tweet speaks a thousand words. Which is not to say that it is all right to wheel out some dreadful pun from the Dark Ages – if people are groaning I take that as a bad sign – but with only 140 characters to play with it’s useful to leave readers with something that rolls off the tongue.
Connect with us!
From the @MuseumsAtNight Twitter account, we’ll be tweeting about your events every working day from now until the festival kicks off in May, and retweeting your tweets about your event plans, so keep them coming!
Happy tweeting, and remember, the Museums at Night 2013 hashtag to use is #MatN2013.
Posted onFebruary 15, 2013byCulture24|Comments Off on Marketing update: making the most of Museums at Night
Visitors at Calke Abbey, Derbyshire (c) National Trust Images / Paul Harris
Early publicity: a good example
Kelham Island Museum have been talking about their entry in the Connect10 competition on Twitter, where they attracted the attention of a local journalist. They quickly followed up this contact with a press release and a set of images, which has already lead to an article about their plans in the Postcode Gazette – congratulations!
This is a great example of how Museums at Night marketing works: we’ll be promoting the festival as a whole through targeted PR activity aimed at national and regional media, but there’s no substitute for doing your own local marketing as well, using all the channels available to you to get the word out!
3) Tell your local audiences and media what you’re planning – I’ll be reissuing an updated version of our Museums at Night PR Toolkit very soon to help you with this.
Spreading the word through Twitter
In addition to retweeting your tweets about your event plans, @MuseumsAtNight will be tweeting a different Museums at Night event highlight every working day from now until the festival kicks off in May.
The Museums at Night 2013 hashtag to use is #MatN2013.
Idea development – call us!
This week I spoke at a meeting of members of the Historic Houses Association about the benefits of taking part in Museums at Night, and particularly how the festival marketing campaign can help with audience development.
One of the key points I took away was that the kind of idea generation and marketing coaching I’ve been offering informally over the phone is very much appreciated, and probably something I should be talking about more!
So, if you’re considering running a Museums at Night event – if you’ve had a look at the Big List of inspiring event ideas, and our tips on audience development, and you’d like to talk through your plans, give me a call on 01273 623336. Let’s have a 15 minute brainstorming chat about making the most of your skills and resources, pitching the event to appeal to your target audience, and how you’re going to market it. Everyone who I’ve had these focused phonecalls with has found them useful – so please don’t feel shy about giving me a call.
And finally, a lot of our work around Museums at Night is about connecting museums, staff and volunteers through different networks; building capacity and sharing skills and learning from across the arts and heritage sector. With this in mind, it’s interesting to read the latest update from the Happy Museum Project.
I was recently invited to talk about social media platforms to Sussex museum staff and volunteers at the Arts Council England / Museum Development Service training day “Doing Digital: Using Social Media in Museums“.
I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare an image-heavy presentation with lots of screenshots, so livened up these rather text-heavy slides and made the presentation more social (and Christmassy) by cracking open a Chocolate Orange and sharing segments with every audience member who called out a question, idea or case study.
Chocolate orange segments are a great inducement to sharing and interaction! Image shared under a Creative Commons licence by Flickr user VerseVend
As always, the most interesting challenges were raised in the Q & A session afterwards!
Take a look at my slides for a whistle-stop tour through different social media channels and a few examples of how museums and galleries are using them:
This event also brought home to me the importance of local networks and learning from each others’ experiences: it’s immensely valuable to be able to compare notes about what’s working well and what you’re finding challenging with similar organisations in the same position.
My top recommendations for getting started with social media
If you’re not sure what terms like Twitter or RSS mean, I highly recommend watching the super-simple CommonCraft videos for step by step introductions to all kind of online services like Twitter and blogging: http://www.commoncraft.com/videolist
Set up free Google Alerts, and you’ll get a weekly email linking to any mentions of your museum that have been published online: this won’t send you all the press coverage you receive, but it can help track what bloggers and people using social media are saying about your organisation.
You’re not alone!
If you have any questions about how other arts and heritage venues are tackling projects, and would like the support of a great community of professionals, I recommend joining two mailing lists that both send out a daily digest of questions and answers:
Posted onDecember 5, 2012byCulture24|Comments Off on Guest post: Signe Troost on social media at Amsterdam’s N8 Museumnacht
Our former Museums at Night intern Signe Troost is part of the blogging team at Amsterdam’s Museumnacht, N8. In our latest guest post, she shares her experiences as part of the social media team during their big night: if your town or city is running a cluster of events for Museums at Night 2013, these ideas could be useful!
NEMO, the Amsterdam Science Centre, held an event focusing on sustainability and recycling which culminated in a silent disco.
As a N8 blogger, I was asked to join the Social Media team: the whole idea was set up by our community manager, Sezayi.
The Social Media team’s mission
25 museums had Live Stream screens up during the night, showing all the #museumnacht tweets and the tweets with their own hash tag. The Social Media team made sure the stream kept on going with tweets, re-tweets and pictures.
Dressing up to the nines for Bettie Page night at the Amsterdam Tattoo Museum (c) De Fotomeisjes
All the venues were covered, because each member of the Social Media team was asked which venues he/she was planning to visit. I visited about 10 venues, which is a lot, because a very nice guy with a scooter was kind enough to drive me around the city that night!
What should you tweet?
The members of the Social Media team were asked to live-tweet from every venue we visited. Information about any queues, descriptions of the atmosphere and reviews of the events were really useful, because they helped potential visitors decide where to go next.
Don’t miss this! Historic dancing in costume at the Geelvinck-Hinlopen Huis (c) Maarten Jüngen
N8 is a platform for all museums in Amsterdam, and each museum puts money, time and effort into creating its Museum Night events. As a blogger and part of the Social Media team I had to keep this in mind.
Tweets with a negative tone of voice are no use to anyone, because they can put people off the idea of going to a particular venue, and threaten the success of ongoing events there.
The solution: if a museum seems empty, or the activity doesn’t turn out to be as much fun as it sounded, you can tweet something like ‘Plenty of space here, come down to the X museum and get this party started!’
A couple share a quiet moment at the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art (c) Roderick Nijenhuis
Useful apps
Two very useful apps for the Social Media team were Moby and Tweetdeck: our manager made sure we could all log in to these using the official N8 account.
Tweetdeck was great for posting messages to Twitter, while allowing us to keep track of what other people were writing about N8 so we could respond to them if necessary.
Visitors add their comments to an interactive artwork at the Allard Pierson Museum (c) Maarten Nauw
Moby came in handy to shoot pictures and share them immediately – and we asked visitors to share their pictures of the night with Moby, too. All the tweets and pictures are gathered together on the N8 website – take a look, because it looks really cool!
Atmospheric descriptions
I’d never used Moby before that night and I have to admit, I didn’t really have time to figure it out. So I mostly tweeted descriptively, trying to convey the ambience of the museums I went to. This led to some interesting discussions about the empty buildings in the Amsterdam Architecture Centre, and the magical atmosphere in the Portuguese Synagogue which was lit up by a thousand candles.
Violinists play for a hushed crowd as part of a candlelit concert at the Portuguese Synagogue (c) Coockie Manella
It was great to contribute to the endless stream of tweets and share everything that I saw, did and felt with other N8-goers.
Uniting Amsterdam’s museums
The fact that half of the participating venues had Live Streams up and running is amazing, because it means that our museums are not only embracing the possibilities of social media, but visibly experienced its benefits.
Social media provides a new way of connecting heritage venues and collections with their audiences, and, as N8 proved, it also established a bond between all the museums in Amsterdam.
Signe Troost is a Cultural Heritage graduate and blogs for Museum Night Amsterdam. She is currently doing an internship at the Art Committee of the Dutch Ministry of Finance, but hopes to be a museum director by the time she is fifty.
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Thanks, Signe!
If you’re reading this and you’ve got something to say about any aspect of audience development, after-hours event planning or marketing for arts and heritage venues, I’d love to publish your guest posts too. Drop me an email at rosie@culture24.org.uk.
Posted onFebruary 23, 2012byCulture24|Comments Off on 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.
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!
Posted onFebruary 22, 2012byCulture24|Comments Off on 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.
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.
Museums at Night Blog 