Getting young people involved with a museum’s social media strategy can bring a “fresh and contemporary voice”, as well as engage harder to reach audiences, says Jody East, the creative programming curator at Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.
East recruited people, aged between 15 and 21, to use Instagram to promote the Fashion Cities Africa exhibition, which is on at Brighton Museum until 8 January 2017.
The two-month project received funding from the Museums Association’s Transformers programme, which paid for East to receive training and guidance from Culture 24 – a charity that steers cultural institutions through digital projects.
The funding also covered the cost of a training session for the young people with a digital artist and PR specialist involved in promoting Fashion Cities Africa. The training workshop with artist Phillippa Stanton, who goes by 5ftinf on Instagram and has almost 500,000 followers, proved to be particularly enlightening.
“I’d always thought that Instagram was about taking a quick snap, sticking it up and not really thinking about it,” says East.
“[Stanton] really curates the shots and she doesn’t just put something up that she hasn’t really thought about. She thinks about how she is taking the photo and how she edits it. But it’s all done on her phone and is still instant.”
The young people were invited to the museum before the show opened to get behind-the -scenes pictures of the preparation process, which produced some interesting results and fresh perspectives.
“They see things differently to how people immersed in museums seem them,” East says. “They are slightly less precious about it.”
“One of the digital ambassadors wasn’t really fussed about the content of the exhibition, but he loved the mannequins and he made these really quirky Instavideos of them, which were really interesting,” she adds.
It was challenging, however, to keep the youngest members of the group engaged and only six of the ten ambassadors remained part of the project until the exhibition opened. According to East the “relaxed” and flexible structure of the programme suited the older participants, but wasn’t always prescriptive enough for the younger teenagers.
East says this kind of project is particularly successful with young people with a specialist interest and therefore worked well with those that had worked as interns during Brighton Fashion Week.
To this end the museum hopes to work with LGBT youth group All Sorts to promote its exhibition about the artist Gluk – one of a series of events held to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts in England and Wales.
As well as working with digital ambassadors that post content from their own social media accounts, the museums appointed a young person to manage the museum’s Instagram account for the Fashion Cities Africa exhibition.
It was a paid role and the individual was recruited via the museum’s workforce development scheme, where front-of-house staff are given the opportunity to work on museum projects.
“It’s really important that it has a meaningful benefit to the young person involved,” says East.
The museum has also appointed a 20-year-old apprentice, who will work across a range of teams at the museum, including a promotional campaign to document the restoration of the Saloon redevelopment at the Royal Pavilion.
A number of different social media platforms, video and podcasts will be used to document the conservation work being carried to restore the room to how it originally looked when it was built in 1823.
“The difference with this is that it is not going to be Instagram focused, and we are going to make it less platform and more content led,” explains East.
“We are going to focus more on what’s appropriate for particular stories.”
The project, which will be completed next year, is ripe for stories, whether that is the layers of paint being stripped away to identify the room’s original colour or the factory in Axminister that was on the verge of going bankrupt before it was commissioned to recreate the carpet.
It has become even more important for Royal Pavilion & Museums to promote its work and engage new audiences using social media since it introduced admission charges last year.
But while social media activities are all part of efforts to get people through the doors they also have the added benefit of engaging younger audiences on a deeper level.
East will talking about using social media ambassadors at the MA's one-day seminar On Message: Effective Strategies for Marketing and PR, which is taking place on 6 December at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
East recruited people, aged between 15 and 21, to use Instagram to promote the Fashion Cities Africa exhibition, which is on at Brighton Museum until 8 January 2017.
The two-month project received funding from the Museums Association’s Transformers programme, which paid for East to receive training and guidance from Culture 24 – a charity that steers cultural institutions through digital projects.
The funding also covered the cost of a training session for the young people with a digital artist and PR specialist involved in promoting Fashion Cities Africa. The training workshop with artist Phillippa Stanton, who goes by 5ftinf on Instagram and has almost 500,000 followers, proved to be particularly enlightening.
“I’d always thought that Instagram was about taking a quick snap, sticking it up and not really thinking about it,” says East.
“[Stanton] really curates the shots and she doesn’t just put something up that she hasn’t really thought about. She thinks about how she is taking the photo and how she edits it. But it’s all done on her phone and is still instant.”
The young people were invited to the museum before the show opened to get behind-the -scenes pictures of the preparation process, which produced some interesting results and fresh perspectives.
“They see things differently to how people immersed in museums seem them,” East says. “They are slightly less precious about it.”
“One of the digital ambassadors wasn’t really fussed about the content of the exhibition, but he loved the mannequins and he made these really quirky Instavideos of them, which were really interesting,” she adds.
It was challenging, however, to keep the youngest members of the group engaged and only six of the ten ambassadors remained part of the project until the exhibition opened. According to East the “relaxed” and flexible structure of the programme suited the older participants, but wasn’t always prescriptive enough for the younger teenagers.
East says this kind of project is particularly successful with young people with a specialist interest and therefore worked well with those that had worked as interns during Brighton Fashion Week.
To this end the museum hopes to work with LGBT youth group All Sorts to promote its exhibition about the artist Gluk – one of a series of events held to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts in England and Wales.
As well as working with digital ambassadors that post content from their own social media accounts, the museums appointed a young person to manage the museum’s Instagram account for the Fashion Cities Africa exhibition.
It was a paid role and the individual was recruited via the museum’s workforce development scheme, where front-of-house staff are given the opportunity to work on museum projects.
“It’s really important that it has a meaningful benefit to the young person involved,” says East.
The museum has also appointed a 20-year-old apprentice, who will work across a range of teams at the museum, including a promotional campaign to document the restoration of the Saloon redevelopment at the Royal Pavilion.
A number of different social media platforms, video and podcasts will be used to document the conservation work being carried to restore the room to how it originally looked when it was built in 1823.
“The difference with this is that it is not going to be Instagram focused, and we are going to make it less platform and more content led,” explains East.
“We are going to focus more on what’s appropriate for particular stories.”
The project, which will be completed next year, is ripe for stories, whether that is the layers of paint being stripped away to identify the room’s original colour or the factory in Axminister that was on the verge of going bankrupt before it was commissioned to recreate the carpet.
It has become even more important for Royal Pavilion & Museums to promote its work and engage new audiences using social media since it introduced admission charges last year.
But while social media activities are all part of efforts to get people through the doors they also have the added benefit of engaging younger audiences on a deeper level.
East will talking about using social media ambassadors at the MA's one-day seminar On Message: Effective Strategies for Marketing and PR, which is taking place on 6 December at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.