Do something different screencast: event marketing on a shoestring

I recorded this screencast for the Arts Marketing Association’s Culturehive website, which aims to collate and share best practice in cultural marketing.

The 40 minute video shares some of my top tips for planning and marketing events, and includes examples from lots of Museums at Night events.

It covers idea generation; ways of involving staff and volunteers; how to add value while keeping costs low; pricing; hyper-local marketing on a shoestring; working in partnership; what makes a successful event; and how to convert visitors into fans.

Thanks to the lovely team at the AMA, I’m able to share it with you all – but only until Museums at Night! Take a look now, as the videos will disappear at the end of May!

Interview with Laura Crossley, Museums at Night cluster coordinator supreme

I recently spoke about Museums at Night marketing through partnerships at the thoroughly interesting Culture Matters conference in Norwich. It was great to meet so many other culture and heritage professionals, compare ideas, and learn about exciting new projects, and I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to explore the stories behind the Norwich 12 iconic heritage buildings with their stunning architecture and history.

I spoke about Museums at Night partnerships as part of the Culture Matters conference marketing strand. Image courtesy Norwich HEART & Jemma Mickleburgh

One of the most exciting outcomes is that I’ve been invited to visit Norwich’s sister city, Ghent in Belgium, for their Night of Museums. I’ll be very interested to see how their festival works – and of course I’ll share any good ideas!

While we were at Culture Matters, I took the opportunity to record a chat in the Green Room with Laura Crossley, who has coordinated clusters of Museums at Night activity for three years running. Last year she brought together the Victorian Nights themed cluster, running activities across multiple organisations across three North Norfolk towns.

In this video interview, Laura discusses how to build good working relationships with a range of partners, her recommendations for joint marketing, some of the challenges she’s noticed and how to overcome them.

If you work in a museum, gallery or heritage site and are considering partnering with other local organisations to offer a joint programme of Museums at Night activity, it’s worth watching Laura’s tips: she has a lots of good suggestions for sources of support, event marketing and audience development which could really make a difference to your community.

Watch Polly Morgan’s Connect10 taxidermy demonstration at Victoria Gallery & Museum

The Connect10 competition, where museums and galleries could win a top contemporary artist for their Museums at Night event, was a great success in 2012. Venues tried lots of new event ideas, and attracted both new audiences and lapsed attenders.

One of the most unusual events was a live demonstration of taxidermy by Polly Morgan, held at Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum.

Receiver (c) Polly Morgan

The museum decided to give a group of student filmmakers the opportunity to record the taxidermy demonstration: their 4 minute highlights reel includes the artist talking about her inspiration and close-ups showing the incredibly detailed work.

Videos can be a great way of recording and sharing what happens at one-off events. Are there ways that your venue could capture the atmosphere at your events – perhaps by filming what’s happening, recording short interviews with the curators or artists involved, or asking simple vox pop questions to your visitors?

It’s worth considering this in advance, and finding out whether you can call on anyone local with the skills and equipment to help you out.

Museums at Night 2012 is here!

Museums at Night is here at last – and the last 24 hours have been a whirlwind of activity for the Culture24 team behind the scenes!

Our partnership with the Huffington Post saw them republish posts from this blog showcasing various museum voices: Emma Black from Surgeons’ Hall Museum, Lindsey Braidley from Bath Museums, Teresa Fox-Wells from Borough Museum & Art Gallery, Katherine Biggs from Kew Bridge Steam Museum, blogger Ben Wallace and myself.

Bompas & Parr and their team arrived at Brunel’s SS Great Britain, and have shared photos  of their Herculean task flooding the ship with lurid lime green jelly.

Bompas & Parr’s team spreading their green jelly installation around the base of ss Great Britain (c) ss Great Britain

We also have a wonderful video of the jelly being installed and glimmering eerily in the darkness – if you’re in Bristol and you haven’t witnessed this incredible sight, head down there to discover this unique spectacle tonight!

Friday morning kicked off with our lovely festival ambassador Lauren Laverne enthusing about Museums at Night on the Radio 5 Live breakfast show. The station has a large and enthusiastic audience, and within minutes of Lauren’s talk  hundreds of people were tweeting about the festival and coming to the Museums at Night website to look for events!

Lauren also interviewed the indie band Django Django (who played at National Museum of Scotland’s sold-out Museums at Night event) on her BBC 6 Music show, and again sent a new audience to find out more about the festival!

Culture24 CEO Jane Finnis spoke on Gaby Roslin’s show on BBC Radio London early in the morning, and also appeared on the Review Show with Kirsty Wark in the evening, discussing Museums at Night. You can watch the Review Show here for the next 7 days: Jane’s segment begins around 38:30 minutes in.

Museums at Night Campaigns Manager Nick Stockman was interviewed by a Polish radio station, and headed up to Liverpool to speak at the launch of Light Night – here’s his review of Polly Morgan’s taxidermy performance at the Victoria Gallery & Museum.

I was interviewed by Splash FM yesterday, and BBC Radio Sussex at the shocking hour of 6:40 this morning, wrote about Museums at Night for the DCMS blog, and last night visited Mind the Map at London Transport Museum.

Arts writer Mark Sheerin visited the Alfred Wallis exhibition at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, while Culture24 reporter Ben Miller tweeted his photographs from Museums at Night events at 4 Oxford museums.

The rest of Team Culture24 are out at Museums at Night events tonight and tomorrow too – so why not join them? Find events in your area at www.museumsatnight.org.uk.

Video: Dance inspired by machinery at the Museum of Bath at Work

This is a fantastic example of an event devised specifically for Museums at Night, allowing visitors to discover a collection in a very different light. Sally Lewis from the Museum of Bath at Work wrote this blog post explaining how her son, a dance student, had been inspired by the moving machinery on display and would be creating a performance loosely based on it.

Now the dancers have shared a video of their performance – and we think it’s a brilliant example of what can be achieved when passionate, creative people engage with arts and heritage venues and collections.

If anyone else has experience of inviting actors, dancers, artists or musicians into their venue to create new site-specific work, we’d love to hear about it and showcase your experiences here on the blog.

What I look for in guest posts:

1) 200-350 words, in a chatty, friendly, style

2) A couple of photos of visitors exploring your venue, ideally at night, with the photographer’s credit. We always like to put up photos of people having fun at cultural / heritage venues!

3) A couple of lines about yourself, I’m happy to link to your website / Twitter account / LinkedIn profile etc.

4) A thumbnail-sized photo of you

If you’re interested, please drop me a line at rosie@culture24.org.uk or give me a call on 01273 623336. I look forward to hearing from you!

Sky Arts’ Museums at Night trailer is here!

We are so delighted with this fantastic video – it’s the trailer for the documentary Sky Arts are shooting about Museums at Night! Talented producer Mike Wiseman and his crew shot, chopped and scored this atmospheric video in just one day. Of all the lovely things to receive before going home for the Easter holidays, this has to be one of the best.

Feast your eyes! We recommend turning the volume up loud and expanding the video to fill your screen.

We’d like to thank the Old Operating Theatre Museum for showing the crew their amputating table, which will be in action during their Surgery by Gaslight Museums at Night event, and the National Gallery for introducing their Museums at Night Renaissance evening.

Happy Easter, everybody – with only 3 weeks to go until Museums at Night weekend (Friday 13th – Sunday 15th May) we’ll be in touch again very soon!

New helpful video: Make the most of your event listing!

Going through all the Museums at Night events in our database, there are a few opportunities to really market your events that you may not be making the most of. I’ve made a video explaining how even the simplest of events can be described in ways that get readers’ attention.

There are also some exciting benefits to our new DDE system you may not be aware of: for example, you can now add a picture into every event and exhibition listing! Watch the video and learn more:

Whatever event listing you register in Culture24’s database is exactly what we share with all our partners online, and any journalists who ask for listings related to their area of interest, so it’s worth taking the time to make it sound compelling – and, of course, to spell check your words!

Event title: Please don’t just call your event Museums at Night – that’s the name of the campaign. Use the title to give a flavour of the event which will make viewers want to click on it and find out more! For example, can visitors explore or discover something? Are you offering sunset views or talks at twilight?

Excellent event descriptions: The examples I quote from are Topsham Museum with their lovely Railway Celebration; Mill Meece Pumping Station and their poetic Night Shift; and Darkness Falling mysteriously at Coughton Court.

Essential information: Please take a moment to fill in details of the start and end times of your event, whether you’re charging for admission, if visitors need to book in advance – and if so, the phone number or email address they need to contact! If you’re targeting a particular audience, whether family or adult, you can also make a note of this. And don’t forget to tick the Programmes box marked Museums at Night 2011!

You can see all the Museums at Night events at http://www.museumsatnight.org.uk

Find out about becoming a BBC Things to Do partner at http://www.culture24.org.uk/bbcpartnership

Do you have any other questions about Museums at Night? Drop me an email! rosie@culture24.org.uk.

Museums at Night FAQs answered – on video!

I love talking to people, and it’s great that so many people ring me up and email me to ask about the Museums at Night campaign. Many of these conversations cover the same ground, however, so I thought I’d make a video to answer some of my most frequently asked questions – as well as introducing this year’s BBC History Magazine Guide to Museums at Night.

Yes, it’s back for the second year! Register your Museums at Night events in Culture24’s database by Thursday 17th February for the chance to be included in the Guide.

Clearly, I should have been a newsreader! Those links I mention:

The Museums at Night 2010 campaign evaluation http://bit.ly/bb3IBf
Museums at Night event planning tips http://bit.ly/eAcsoc
How to register your event on Culture24’s database http://bit.ly/gJwQqm
Charging for admission http://bit.ly/hDNeME
Get the Museums at Night e-newsletter http://eepurl.com/45xU

Find out more about the campaign here: http://www.museumsatnight.org.uk

Any questions that I haven’t already answered? Would you like to see more videos about the campaign? Let me know in the comments, or as always, you can contact me at rosie@culture24.org.uk or on 01273 623336.

Museums at Night videos: Meet fans of the mighty machines at the Hovercraft Museum

Here’s another series of Museums at Night video vox pops: visitors to the Hovercraft Museum explain how they heard about the event, what they think of it, and what they’d like to see in future.

Over on Youtube, a volunteer from the Hovercraft Museum has commented, “Thankyou for posting this video, I am really glad to hear all the positive feedback from our visitors (I am a hovercraft museum member, who helped out at the show). It was something new for us to try and went a lot better for us then we thought it would, and will probably arrange another one in the future!”

Thanks very much for the feedback: it’s good to know that our videos are useful for venue staff and volunteers!

Two more Museums at Night videos: the Hovercraft Museum and the Tank Museum

I’ve got two more videos to share today, coming from very different museums who participated in Museums at Night.

The Hovercraft Museum only opens on certain days throughout the year, but had received a lot of advance publicity – possibly thanks to their James Bond and Top Gear ice cream van hovercrafts. Warwick Jacobs also spoke up for their event when he was interviewed on Radio 4’s You and Yours Museums at Night special programme. Their full day and evening of activities was a tremendous success, and just watching this video makes me want to take a ride on a hover!

The Tank Museum received a lot of advance publicity for their evening event (including writing a guest post on this very blog!) Dave and Sean are fans of military history, and had visited once before several years ago, but discuss what drew them back to this particular evening event: “It’s nice coming round the Tank Museum when there aren’t little kids running round with ice creams!”