This spring and summer I’m co-running a course for arts organisations in the West Midlands where they’ll devise and develop a bespoke social media strategy. The course is being run with Helga Henry from Fierce under their Metapod banner with support from Arts Council England. Fierce have a track record for delivering arts development courses (I went on one last year as the token sort-of-creative-industries person and found it invaluable) and if it’s successful we’re hoping to roll it out nationally. So it’s fair to say this is my Big Project for 2009.
The premise for the course is fairly simple. I will take 10 people from a range of small to medium sized regularly funded arts organisations and over 6 months help them understand the tools at their disposal, identify and engage with their existing and potential audiences online and leave them with a fully functioning and mature social media strategy. There will be regular sessions run by Helga and myself which will follow the traditional model for such things but the bulk of the work will be done online using public blogs (serving as a base to enagage with online communities from) and a private Ning network (for mentoring from myself and their peers).
We’re keen, as are the Arts Council, that this course be used by the organisation as a whole and not just be seen as a resource for marketing. I want the participants to see how this sort of engagement can not only drive ticket sales but help they develop the work that they do by bringing on board the knowledge, experiences and passion of their audiences and peers across the world. That means involving everyone in the organisation at all stages of the development and delivery of their art and, most importantly, ensuring it’s done in a sustainable and manageable way. Hence the need for each organisation to develop a bespoke strategy.
More details will be released when we open the application process in a couple of weeks but I wanted to get something out there before Helga and myself go to SXSWi. This course was developed from a number of ideas and projects (and was prompted by this post on the Fierce blog) but a good reference for my thinking would be my post How could Shakespeare get Internet Social from last September.
The one thing we haven’t figured out is what to call it. Previous Metapod courses have had names like “Fast Forward” and “Be Effective”. “Social Media Strategy Development For Regularly Funded Arts Organisations” isn’t really snappy enough. Any ideas?
No idea about a name for it but the project looks dead exciting. Congratulations, looking forward to seeing the fruits of it.
Fascinating and good luck with it Pete! How will the organisations be chosen?
@David That’s Helga’s department, so caveats apply, but I believe they have to be regularly funded by the Arts Council (an RFO, in the lingo) and will have to make a case in their application. All will be made clear when the application process opens in a fortnight.
While the Arts Council umbrella is a fantastic framework to deliver this through (did I just write a sentence using the words framework and deliver? I think I did.) it’s become clear to us that what we’re developing here could be applied in a variety of ways. As I said, the current long term plan is to roll this out nationally (not to mention run it again in the West Mids for the other RFOs) but it could easily be adapted for orgs outside the Arts Council umbrella and other sectors. If I start saying things like “Social Media Academy” then I’m probably running ahead of myself, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.
You should get in touch with CJ from PCM Creative in Nottingham, she’s doing a similar training course with RFOs for Arts Council:
http://www.pcmcreative.co.uk/
Great project; the name should be your blog title, does exactly what it says on the tin.