Mass media
Museums and galleries are working with the television industry in innovative ways to reach new audiences. Simon Stephens reports
Whether it’s fly on the wall documentaries or curators-turned presenters, television is becoming an increasingly important medium for museums and galleries looking for different ways to reach new audiences.
And now television will have an advocate on the inside following Arts Council England’s (ACE) recent announcement that Peter Bazalgette, the television producer behind the Channel 4 show Big Brother, will become its new chair in January next year.
Bazalgette has already been involved with ACE as an adviser to The Space (see box), the digital arts service that the arts council has developed jointly with the BBC.
Technology, particularly the digital revolution that has made projects such as The Space possible, has changed broadcasting over the past decade, and the relationships cultural organisations have with television has changed with it.
There was a time when the big television broadcasters held all the cards. Making programmes was expensive, so it was difficult for even the largest cultural organisations to produce high-quality content.
And even if a museum or gallery could make a programme, how would the public see it if it wasn’t broadcast by one of the main channels?
But the cost of high-quality production has fallen rapidly, allowing all sorts of organisations to make programmes. Not only that, digital technology means that film and video content can be delivered to the public in a huge variety of ways, whether that’s through a museum’s own website or via the digital services of third parties.
There are also new ways to reach audiences, such as social media, and a variety of devices the public can receive digital content on, such as mobile phones, tablets and internet television.
The most high-profile example of this new broadcasting landscape for culture is Tate, which set up Tate Media in 2002 to develop its own film and video content.
“The idea was to exploit emerging technology and to capture more of our own content and to distribute it,” says Jane Burton, the head of content and creative director at Tate. “It was suddenly possible.”
Tate now produces lots of films and videos, distributing much of this on the internet. In March the organisation relaunched its website, which had 1.7 million unique visitors in its first month. Tate also shares content with media organisations such as the Guardian and the Huffington Post.
“[Working this way] allows us to say what we want, and not be mediated,” says Burton, although Tate does work with independent production companies and the big broadcasters where appropriate.
This issue of control is important for museums and galleries who want to have a greater say in how their content is used, so there is now much more emphasis on partnerships.
The British Museum works very closely with the BBC following the success of A History of the World in 100 Objects, which led to content on radio, television and online.
And television coverage contributed to the success of the museum’s Grayson Perry show, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, which was the subject a documentary under the BBC’s Imagine strand that was produced by independent production company Seneca.
The Victoria and Albert Museum has also developed a partnership with the BBC through Handmade in Britain, a year-long season of programming exploring the history of British decorative arts. And it’s not just the BBC that is working in partnership with museums and art galleries.
Sky Arts is a relatively new player, having been created after Sky took full control of the struggling Artsworld channel in 2005. Being a dedicated arts channel has helped it to develop some innovative partnerships.
Last year Sky Arts worked with the National Gallery to broadcast live from the opening of the Leonardo da Vinci blockbuster show. The 80-minute broadcast, presented by Mariella Frostrup White Cube gallery director Tim Marlow, was screened in 40 UK cinemas as well as on Sky Arts 1.
“There was an initial suspicion from the National Gallery,” says Sky Arts channel director James Hunt. “The worry [for galleries] is that: ‘If we are going to give it away free then nobody will come.’ Actually, the opposite happens: it creates an audience.”
This year Sky Arts has worked with Tate Liverpool on a commission that has seen US artist Doug Aitken develop a series of films about the creative process based on interviews with people such as the architect Jacques Herzog, the actress Tilda Swinton and the musician Jack White.
This is the first of six projects in the Sky Arts Ignition Series, which will see the broadcaster spend up to £200,000 (on each project) on half a dozen artists’ commissions.
Hunt says the initiative grew out of Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth project, which Sky filmed in 2009. This led to a desire to work collaboratively with other visual artists.
“The channel’s Ignition Series is an interesting new model of broadcaster-led funding,” says Tate Liverpool executive director Andrea Nixon.
She says that having access to Sky Arts’ platforms helped the project to develop in “exciting ways and gain the kind of exposure that is often out of reach for arts organisations”.
But projects such as this are not the norm; what of the more traditional ways that cultural organisations work with broadcasters? How do museums and galleries without the clout of Tate or the British Museum fare in their dealings with television companies?
The 1996 documentary The House, a behind-the-scenes look at the Royal Opera House, still casts a long shadow and even now is referred to by many cultural organisations when they talk about working with television.
But cultural organisations still want access to the huge audiences that television can deliver, and some have allowed television companies access to their inner workings, often with positive results.
In 2009, BBC4 aired a programme about Sissinghurst, which was produced and directed by Claire Whalley, now of What Larks! Productions. The series focused on the relationship between staff at the National Trust property and the donor family, Adam Nicolson and Sarah Raven, who wanted to make changes in how the place was run.
The National Trust’s 2008/09 annual report says of the documentary: “While not always comfortable viewing, on balance we enjoyed our media exposure in the BBC’s Sissinghurst television series.”
The trust’s broadcast and media manager, Harvey Edgington, acknowledges that television coverage often does a great job of driving visitors to its properties. And he realises that an anodyne programme about the organisation might not do it any favours.
“The BBC are not going to put something on that is just a glorified version of ourselves,” he says. “They want something with interest and integrity.”
Another recent observational documentary that shone a light on the sector was Behind the Scenes at the Museum, created by Richard Macer of Platform Productions and first broadcast on BBC4 in 2010.
There were three programmes in the series, covering the Freud Museum, London; the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port; and the Commercial Vehicle Museum in Lancashire. Platform describes the series as looking at museums that are “struggling to connect with a modern audience”.
Stuart Gillis, now the head of Derby Museums, was the director of the waterways museum during the filming. He is positive about the experience.
“I think the programme completely caught the character of the situation,” says Gillis. “I don’t think it masked it and I think it caught me, my strengths and weaknesses, and the character of other individuals. On balance, was it worth it? Yes. I would do it again.”
On the other hand, some members of staff at the Freud Museum are still slightly bruised by the experience.
Marion Stone, development director at the museum, feels that the programme was presented by the film-makers as “rather serious, and slightly high-minded and academic” but did not turn out that way.
She argues that it failed to show the broad range of work the museum was involved in and instead focused on times “when tempers flared, or something went wrong or something funny happened”.
Ivan Ward, the deputy director, says the programme “was not vicious, it was kind of affectionate”. But he argues that by the time filming started the museum was connecting well with its audiences, which meant that the film-maker had to look for another story.
Whatever the benefits of being involved with behind-the-scenes documentaries, it is wise for museums to go into them with their eyes open. It is a risk, and museums have to decide whether it’s a risk worth taking.
John Wyver is the head of Illuminations, a production company specialising in arts and culture. He says that having access to a broadcaster’s audience will have implications.
“I don’t think TV is ever in the business of outright deceit, but it is a relationship and it might not work to your advantage,” says Wyver.
Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, has developed a successful career in television as a presenter of history documentaries for the BBC. She is aware that some people in the sector are concerned about appearing on television.
“When I do interviews, some curators are often worried that they are going to get it wrong or they are going to be put in a bad light, and so they clam up. But nobody on television is out to make you look bad: they want to work with you to make it work. If you agree to go on television you need to embrace it.”
Arts Council England is very keen on digital opportunities for the arts. Its Achieving Great Art For Everyone document referred to “the dizzying potential of digital technology in transforming the way we make, distribute, receive and exchange art”. Its plans are summed up in a document issued in July, Arts Council England’s Creative Media Policy.
One of its major digital projects is The Space, a digital arts service it has developed jointly with the BBC. It was launched in May and last month it was announced that the pilot project is being extended for a further six months.
The arts council invested £3.5m in new art commissions for the service and earlier this year set aside £8m for the future of the project. The Space has attracted more than 900,000 visits and over 2 million page views since it was launched, an audience achieved with very little marketing. There is no dedicated area of the site for museums, as content from the sector goes into the visual and media arts section.
One of The Space projects features images owned by Bradford Museums and Galleries from the city’s Belle Vue Studio. The online exhibition, curated by Tim and Elizabeth Smith, includes interviews with some of the members of the city’s Asian community who appear in the photographs.
The Space also features Black Country Stories, a portrait of life in the post-industrial Midlands that includes the work of Magnum photographers Martin Parr and Mark Power, whose work from the project was recently at the New Art Gallery, Walsall. So how will The Space develop in the future? Some feel it could make more of its digital platform.
“I’m disappointed that the models and forms of The Space are as conservative as they are,” says John Wyver, of independent production company Illuminations, who nevertheless believes the digital arts service has great potential.
“It should be more innovative, involving and participatory. There is no sense of community or dialogue. It feels very old school in its address to you as a user.”
Alison Cole, the executive director of The Space, says she is keen for it to be more ambitious.
“One of the things we’d like to do is to open up more of the hidden treasures of the nation’s cultural archives through its partnerships with the BBC and other partner organisations,” says Cole. “And [we want to] be experimental and accessible, exploring new digital art forms and finding new ways to connect with audiences.”
There are some challenges with rights issues that will continue to be a headache for The Space, and there is also competition from cultural organisations who want to develop their own digital platforms with exclusive content.
But ACE chief executive Alan Davey describes The Space as a “gamechanger” and incoming arts council chairman Peter Bazalgette was an adviser on its development so its immediate future looks assured.
And now television will have an advocate on the inside following Arts Council England’s (ACE) recent announcement that Peter Bazalgette, the television producer behind the Channel 4 show Big Brother, will become its new chair in January next year.
Bazalgette has already been involved with ACE as an adviser to The Space (see box), the digital arts service that the arts council has developed jointly with the BBC.
Technology, particularly the digital revolution that has made projects such as The Space possible, has changed broadcasting over the past decade, and the relationships cultural organisations have with television has changed with it.
There was a time when the big television broadcasters held all the cards. Making programmes was expensive, so it was difficult for even the largest cultural organisations to produce high-quality content.
And even if a museum or gallery could make a programme, how would the public see it if it wasn’t broadcast by one of the main channels?
But the cost of high-quality production has fallen rapidly, allowing all sorts of organisations to make programmes. Not only that, digital technology means that film and video content can be delivered to the public in a huge variety of ways, whether that’s through a museum’s own website or via the digital services of third parties.
There are also new ways to reach audiences, such as social media, and a variety of devices the public can receive digital content on, such as mobile phones, tablets and internet television.
The most high-profile example of this new broadcasting landscape for culture is Tate, which set up Tate Media in 2002 to develop its own film and video content.
“The idea was to exploit emerging technology and to capture more of our own content and to distribute it,” says Jane Burton, the head of content and creative director at Tate. “It was suddenly possible.”
Tate now produces lots of films and videos, distributing much of this on the internet. In March the organisation relaunched its website, which had 1.7 million unique visitors in its first month. Tate also shares content with media organisations such as the Guardian and the Huffington Post.
“[Working this way] allows us to say what we want, and not be mediated,” says Burton, although Tate does work with independent production companies and the big broadcasters where appropriate.
This issue of control is important for museums and galleries who want to have a greater say in how their content is used, so there is now much more emphasis on partnerships.
The British Museum works very closely with the BBC following the success of A History of the World in 100 Objects, which led to content on radio, television and online.
And television coverage contributed to the success of the museum’s Grayson Perry show, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, which was the subject a documentary under the BBC’s Imagine strand that was produced by independent production company Seneca.
The Victoria and Albert Museum has also developed a partnership with the BBC through Handmade in Britain, a year-long season of programming exploring the history of British decorative arts. And it’s not just the BBC that is working in partnership with museums and art galleries.
Sky Arts is a relatively new player, having been created after Sky took full control of the struggling Artsworld channel in 2005. Being a dedicated arts channel has helped it to develop some innovative partnerships.
Last year Sky Arts worked with the National Gallery to broadcast live from the opening of the Leonardo da Vinci blockbuster show. The 80-minute broadcast, presented by Mariella Frostrup White Cube gallery director Tim Marlow, was screened in 40 UK cinemas as well as on Sky Arts 1.
“There was an initial suspicion from the National Gallery,” says Sky Arts channel director James Hunt. “The worry [for galleries] is that: ‘If we are going to give it away free then nobody will come.’ Actually, the opposite happens: it creates an audience.”
This year Sky Arts has worked with Tate Liverpool on a commission that has seen US artist Doug Aitken develop a series of films about the creative process based on interviews with people such as the architect Jacques Herzog, the actress Tilda Swinton and the musician Jack White.
This is the first of six projects in the Sky Arts Ignition Series, which will see the broadcaster spend up to £200,000 (on each project) on half a dozen artists’ commissions.
Hunt says the initiative grew out of Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth project, which Sky filmed in 2009. This led to a desire to work collaboratively with other visual artists.
“The channel’s Ignition Series is an interesting new model of broadcaster-led funding,” says Tate Liverpool executive director Andrea Nixon.
She says that having access to Sky Arts’ platforms helped the project to develop in “exciting ways and gain the kind of exposure that is often out of reach for arts organisations”.
But projects such as this are not the norm; what of the more traditional ways that cultural organisations work with broadcasters? How do museums and galleries without the clout of Tate or the British Museum fare in their dealings with television companies?
The 1996 documentary The House, a behind-the-scenes look at the Royal Opera House, still casts a long shadow and even now is referred to by many cultural organisations when they talk about working with television.
But cultural organisations still want access to the huge audiences that television can deliver, and some have allowed television companies access to their inner workings, often with positive results.
In 2009, BBC4 aired a programme about Sissinghurst, which was produced and directed by Claire Whalley, now of What Larks! Productions. The series focused on the relationship between staff at the National Trust property and the donor family, Adam Nicolson and Sarah Raven, who wanted to make changes in how the place was run.
The National Trust’s 2008/09 annual report says of the documentary: “While not always comfortable viewing, on balance we enjoyed our media exposure in the BBC’s Sissinghurst television series.”
The trust’s broadcast and media manager, Harvey Edgington, acknowledges that television coverage often does a great job of driving visitors to its properties. And he realises that an anodyne programme about the organisation might not do it any favours.
“The BBC are not going to put something on that is just a glorified version of ourselves,” he says. “They want something with interest and integrity.”
Another recent observational documentary that shone a light on the sector was Behind the Scenes at the Museum, created by Richard Macer of Platform Productions and first broadcast on BBC4 in 2010.
There were three programmes in the series, covering the Freud Museum, London; the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port; and the Commercial Vehicle Museum in Lancashire. Platform describes the series as looking at museums that are “struggling to connect with a modern audience”.
Stuart Gillis, now the head of Derby Museums, was the director of the waterways museum during the filming. He is positive about the experience.
“I think the programme completely caught the character of the situation,” says Gillis. “I don’t think it masked it and I think it caught me, my strengths and weaknesses, and the character of other individuals. On balance, was it worth it? Yes. I would do it again.”
On the other hand, some members of staff at the Freud Museum are still slightly bruised by the experience.
Marion Stone, development director at the museum, feels that the programme was presented by the film-makers as “rather serious, and slightly high-minded and academic” but did not turn out that way.
She argues that it failed to show the broad range of work the museum was involved in and instead focused on times “when tempers flared, or something went wrong or something funny happened”.
Ivan Ward, the deputy director, says the programme “was not vicious, it was kind of affectionate”. But he argues that by the time filming started the museum was connecting well with its audiences, which meant that the film-maker had to look for another story.
Whatever the benefits of being involved with behind-the-scenes documentaries, it is wise for museums to go into them with their eyes open. It is a risk, and museums have to decide whether it’s a risk worth taking.
John Wyver is the head of Illuminations, a production company specialising in arts and culture. He says that having access to a broadcaster’s audience will have implications.
“I don’t think TV is ever in the business of outright deceit, but it is a relationship and it might not work to your advantage,” says Wyver.
Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, has developed a successful career in television as a presenter of history documentaries for the BBC. She is aware that some people in the sector are concerned about appearing on television.
“When I do interviews, some curators are often worried that they are going to get it wrong or they are going to be put in a bad light, and so they clam up. But nobody on television is out to make you look bad: they want to work with you to make it work. If you agree to go on television you need to embrace it.”
The Space is the place
Arts Council England is very keen on digital opportunities for the arts. Its Achieving Great Art For Everyone document referred to “the dizzying potential of digital technology in transforming the way we make, distribute, receive and exchange art”. Its plans are summed up in a document issued in July, Arts Council England’s Creative Media Policy.
One of its major digital projects is The Space, a digital arts service it has developed jointly with the BBC. It was launched in May and last month it was announced that the pilot project is being extended for a further six months.
The arts council invested £3.5m in new art commissions for the service and earlier this year set aside £8m for the future of the project. The Space has attracted more than 900,000 visits and over 2 million page views since it was launched, an audience achieved with very little marketing. There is no dedicated area of the site for museums, as content from the sector goes into the visual and media arts section.
One of The Space projects features images owned by Bradford Museums and Galleries from the city’s Belle Vue Studio. The online exhibition, curated by Tim and Elizabeth Smith, includes interviews with some of the members of the city’s Asian community who appear in the photographs.
The Space also features Black Country Stories, a portrait of life in the post-industrial Midlands that includes the work of Magnum photographers Martin Parr and Mark Power, whose work from the project was recently at the New Art Gallery, Walsall. So how will The Space develop in the future? Some feel it could make more of its digital platform.
“I’m disappointed that the models and forms of The Space are as conservative as they are,” says John Wyver, of independent production company Illuminations, who nevertheless believes the digital arts service has great potential.
“It should be more innovative, involving and participatory. There is no sense of community or dialogue. It feels very old school in its address to you as a user.”
Alison Cole, the executive director of The Space, says she is keen for it to be more ambitious.
“One of the things we’d like to do is to open up more of the hidden treasures of the nation’s cultural archives through its partnerships with the BBC and other partner organisations,” says Cole. “And [we want to] be experimental and accessible, exploring new digital art forms and finding new ways to connect with audiences.”
There are some challenges with rights issues that will continue to be a headache for The Space, and there is also competition from cultural organisations who want to develop their own digital platforms with exclusive content.
But ACE chief executive Alan Davey describes The Space as a “gamechanger” and incoming arts council chairman Peter Bazalgette was an adviser on its development so its immediate future looks assured.