Cultural Digital newsletter #108
Cultural Digital
Hello
This week online classes are the hot thing. There's also the usual jumble of links and at least one thing with 'strategy' in the title, because those are always popular.
This week the Royal Academy of Arts held a class called #LifeDrawingLive and it was really good. Even I had a go, although I'd check the hashtag on Twitter for a better idea of how people got involved. Interesting to see the art schools that had scheduled events around this.
The RSC broadcast a Live Lesson too. This was to schools "to see how director Erica Whyman works with actors as they approach the play. The Live Lesson will take place during the actors' second week of rehearsals and students will see how they work on the text and find meaning in the language". Here's a round-up of some tweets.
Improving the British Museum’s Digital Offering for Schools. "Kevin Bickham on how user-centred design methodologies and co-design sessions are helping to improve the British Museum’s offering for schools and young audiences".
Exploring museum collections online: Some background reading. "As we embark on our project we are keen to explore how we might facilitate audience discovery of the wealth of material that will shortly be published online." Yay! More people putting their background reading online. This is a good round-up of approaches to online collections with links to others too.
Digital Strategy at the SFMOMA. An interview with Sarah Bailey Hogarty, the Senior Creative Strategist, and Chad Coerver, Chief Content Officer.
Meet The Innovators Harnessing Technology For Art Museums. NEW INC's inaugural Members of its Museum Technology Track run the gamut from "a curator developing technology that makes museum exhibitions more accessible to underserved populations, to a team augmenting an artist's work with virtual components".
Fiona Morris: 'Theatres must place digital at the heart of all they do'."So how does the arts industry become self-reliant in digital terms? How do we put it at the heart of what we do, not treat it as a functional add-on? The latter really doesn’t work".
Arts Council England's National Lottery Project Grants are replacing Grants for the Arts. Among the various changes, it says that "Project Grants will also be more open to supporting those working in creative and digital media". I've not seen any more details on what that means though.
LACMA's Collator "lets you be your own museum curator", or at least your own art book publisher. You can create a customised book using images from their collection.
#ArchiveLottery: Randomly Opening Up Archaeology. "The origins of #ArchiveLottery go back to 2012 and the Day of Archaeology. It works by people tweeting random numbers to the Archive, these numbers represent a shelf which we then go to and select one item located there. The object is quickly photographed and tweeted back with a brief description and link to the Museum’s excavation catalogue".
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at the Royal College of Music, New Wolsey Theatre, Natural History Museum, Snape Maltings, and King's Place.
Next week there'll definitely be something to play with. Until then, please share this around your friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Thanks for reading!
Chris Unitt
The Library is a treasure trove of arts/digital info. It even includes a spreadsheet with every link from this newsletter (for easier searching). Find out more about The Library.