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Insider Solutions
Case Studies 2004 - Hammertown
An innovative publicity campaign by young people to attract a younger audience to the Hammertown exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery. The project involved using digital media to create a range of publicity material and an Interactive Arts Day in the gallery.
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The project was a collaboration between The Fruitmarket Gallery, Standard Life and Media Education, in Edinburgh and was funded through the Arts & Business New Partners Scheme. The Fruitmarket Gallery is a publicly funded, leading international visual art space in Edinburgh. The gallery was aware that they were not attracting many young people to visit the gallery. The education officer at the gallery develops and runs a wide ranging programme relating to the galleries exhibitions, engaging the public with the artwork and arts activity. The gallery had previously worked with young people through education activities with schools. However the gallery wanted to engage with young people on a wider level, outside of the school context. The gallery Education Officer met with Media Education - an organisation that provides practical media and technical training to community groups and young people. Media Education proposed a project idea that would involve young people in the publicising of an exhibition, engage them with the artwork and the gallery, and introduce young people to new creative skills. What were the aims and objectives?
Having explored a variety of possible funding sources The Fruitmarket Gallery was successful in gaining sponsorship for the Exhibition from Standard Life. The partnership was also to include a collaborative education project. The time between the initial project proposal being submitted by Media Education to The Fruitmarket Gallery and the project taking place was about one year.
Standard Life and Arts & Business were credited on all of The Fruitmarket Gallery's publicity material. The Fruitmarket Gallery has a strong public profile which makes it attractive to sponsors. A member of staff from Standard Life was given a two month training secondment to The Fruitmarket Gallery and was involved with managing the project. The young people involved in the project were recruited by Standard Life's Community Involvement Department who made contact with youth and community groups. Staff at Standard Life assisted with the project which included a graphic designer who worked with the young people on their poster designs.
The remaining monies were used to pay Canadian artists fees for workshops, gallery talks, artists' accommodation as well as artist and musician fees for the Interactive Art Day. The Fruitmarket Gallery usually pays artists doing education work £150 per day.
The planning for the project was done collaboratively by The Fruitmarket Gallery Education Officer, Standard Life Community Involvement and Media Education staff. The structure was devised by Media Education. Forward planning included booking artists, equipment, rooms, liasing with Standard Life and Fruitmarket Gallery staff. It also included making sure the project was represented in The Fruitmarket Gallery's publicity material and all project partners were appropriately credited. There were regular progress meetings between The Fruitmarket Gallery, Media Education Staff and Standard Life before and during the project. The actual project activity was delivered by two members of staff from Media Education, along with artists from the exhibition and those brought in for the Interactive Art Day. A Standard Life employee had a two month secondment at The Fruitmarket Gallery over the duration of the project. He was involved in much of the day- to-day running of the project. The project structure was based on involving 4 groups of twelve young people. Each group had:
A half day induction at Standard Life offices
An artists talk and discussion about the work on exhibition at the gallery
A full day of working in and around the gallery on publicity ideas
Time to realise the young peoples publicity ideas.
How their ideas would be realised was left undefined in the project structure but a budget was available for it, so that it could evolve in response to the young peoples ideas. Sessions for parts one, two & three all took place over a fortnight, so there was not a long gap between activities. The artists talk was on a Saturday. The induction and full-days activity took place on weekdays during school time. Having time out of school did increase the participants commitment levels to the project. "This was a new experience for the young people. They really enjoyed the induction day at Standard Life because they learnt new skills including using the mini-disk recorders and digital camera's. It was the first time these young people had been to an Art Gallery" How were young people recruited? Standard Life Community Involvement Unit, a department devoted to cultivating positive, active professional and cultural community links,recruited young people for the project. The opportunity was offered to:
Although there was the potential to involve 48 participants there was a lower take up than expected. There were 22 participants on the project. As well as participants from the above organisations, there were also some employees from Standard Life who assisted during the project sessions. 1/2 Day Induction Day x 4 groups 1/2 Day Induction Day x 4 groups The induction days were hosted by Standard Life bringing together young people from different backgrounds and were also attended by the Standard Life employees. They ran from 10am - 1pm enabling Media Education to find out about participants experiences and attitudes, providing an introduction to the project and a taster of the activities. Participants learnt interview techniques and how to use digital recording equipment, then interviewed each other using mini-disc recorders and taking digital photos. They then brain stormed ideas on how to get young people to come to the gallery. These ideas formed the basis of the rest of the project. These inductions sessions finished off with a sociable lunch provided by Standard Life. A Full Day Session x 4 groups These took place at The Fruitmarket Gallery. In response to young peoples ideas in the induction sessions, the project then focused on designing, publicising and delivering an Interactive Art Day at the Fruitmarket Gallery. The young people worked with Media Education and artists to develop a programme of activities to take place in the gallery for the Interactive Art Day, These were designed to overcome the barriers young people feel about visiting an Art Gallery. At the beginning of the full day sessions participants went out into the streets and conducted video interviews with members of the public about visiting galleries. The groups worked with media education staff, artists, and a Standard Life graphic designer to develop a range of publicity ideas - these included designing a Polaroid type flier, a fold out interactive flier, a press release, a poster design, a radio insert and a rickshaw as an advertising vehicle. The press and radio unfortunately did not cover the event, however publicity material was printed and distributed. The young people chose where to distribute publicity material and were involved in doing it themselves. It was mostly within clubs, cafes and other public places in the town centre. They all received copies of fliers and posters produced. "My favourite bit was going and asking the public questions on video" Saturday 2nd November, 12pm - 4pm On the morning of the Interactive Art Day a rickshaw was commissioned to distribute fliers advertising the event, decorated with posters.
Live music, DJ-ing workshop, Sculpture Workshop, opportunities to create your own titles and comments for the art works, Polaroid portraits and a live video projection. The atmosphere was relaxed and the young people really engaged with the gallery space and made their mark. Their titles and comments were left up for the remains of the exhibition. "The project is a rare and valuable opportunity for young Scots to access and freely interpret artworks while exploring potential career paths with practical insight. It's a terrific chance to exchange and learn by both the gallery, sponsor and participants. It will undoubtedly invigorate the way we approach our communications and hopefully be a spring board to other young peoples discovery of visual art." How was it documented/ evaluated? Ongoing video documentation was made of the project. This has been edited and made into an explanatory video about the project. Evaluation
100 young people in the exhibition and the gallery. The gallery generated new ideas for attracting young people and established new contacts with different community groups. The project demonstrated that young people can successfully market youth arts projects to their peers and that they hold the key to engaging young people in gallery education. They can bring ideas, experiences and an open mind and provide galleries with a whole new perspective on how they market their exhibitions and activities to young people. The Fruitmarket Gallery intend to build on the success of this project and are planning a second Interactive Art Day for September 2003. The Fruitmarket Gallery Education Officer would like to establish a young peoples Steering Group that could feed into a range of the gallery's activities. In further projects involving young people they would like to develop stronger relationships with youth workers to engage them more usefully in activities and in the exchange of skills and experience to enhance the quality of provision. They would like to develop the recruitment process to ensure full uptake of opportunities for participation by young people. Additionally it was felt that in the future it would be useful to set clear learning objectives for participants that could be measured. Key issues to consider in a project like this? Hiring equipment such as digital video cameras and mini-disc recorders can be expensive. To make the most of digital imaging and sound you need access to computers with appropriate software. Additionally you need access to someone who knows how to use it and is skilled at facilitating others to use it. Creating a video to document a project can produce an excellent sense of the activity. You must plan in editing time to make the most of the opportunity and also plan what you will use it for e.g. a document for the people involved or a document to encourage support for future activity. The 'product' of this project was left fairly open-ended in planning. Structuring a project in an open ended way can allow for creative and unexpected solutions/ideas/events that young people have a strong sense of ownership over. |
Young people marketing an exhibition to other young people
Sponsorship
The day was a success, over 100 young people visited the gallery and engaged with the activities. These activities included:
The 22 young people involved in the project received valuable media training, including an insight into how a publicity campaign is mounted from concept to delivery. A very successful event was generated that engaged over