On day one of the conference, the inaugural speech on “The audiences of the future” was made by Françoise Serralta, founder of one of the most important prospective agencies in the world, PeclersParis.

We are in a digital world, yet we are by no means digital people: we are essentially made to desire and to recreate new forms of art through this desire. We are the famous “desiring machines” that French philosopher Deleuze identified as a driving force within every human being – that is, within every art consumer. Hence the fact that even in a digital world, we are certainly not becoming digital people and our cravings remain the same, if not more powerful and unbridled as before. So arts places have to stand up to that very high level of expectations and not be afraid of risk-taking.

Museums are increasingly places for magic, spiritual emotions and transcendence. They represent the opportunity for something that is hidden in our everyday life. In times of crisis, that which is fundamental is more important than ever: Life, Death, Sex, God… I leave you to ponder what is the core of our lives and existence.  Practically, Françoise’s speech dealt with the key idea discussed throughout the conference: what is the deep reason why people come to museums, and consequently, what are the missions of the museum going to be in the next ten years?

I am meeting Françoise for an interview the blog in the following days. What a fantastic opportunity to ask questions about trends in exhibitions programmes, clarification on the different visitors socio-types and so on.

So, being a delegate or a non-delegate, what would be your questions to Françoise? You have exactly five days, so please leave a question via Twitter using #ctm10 hashtag, Facebook, my email address or this blog.

Hello, I’m Richard, writing my first blog from the 2010 Communicating The Museum conference in Vienna. We have come to the end of the first day, except for dinner at the Albertina Palace (imagine I am typing this blog with the vigour of a hundred-metre runner, in an effort to build up an appetite). Apart from the stifling heat in the conference room – unofficially the subject of the day – we saw many interesting speakers, new approaches and a healthy divergence of opinion. 

From my perspective (attribute it to the cold-hard-stats Anglo-Saxon that I am), I was particularly interested in Andrew McIntyre’s discussion of inherent flaws in our attempts to profile and segment audiences. The way we have been concentrating on number of visits to the museum, rather than the visitor – whether current, past, or present – is, Andrew argued, misguided.

In the methodology employed by leading surveyors, such as the Target Group Index, numbers are calculated on a year-on-year basis, measuring visitors in the last twelve months. To label these people ‘regular visitors’ and to hold them central to our thinking, to the exclusion of all irregulars, is a skewed way of thinking and produces an inaccurate profile of an institution’s audience. According to both the TGI and the UK government’s own Taking Part survey, ‘regular visitors’ to museums and art galleries comprise some 47% of the population. However, as Andrew said, this adherence to quantitative data gathered in an economic-based time frame contains many pitfalls. Of course, such statistics are vital for budgeting: for a true understanding of the potential audience, though, we must let go of this economic-centred approach and put a qualitative approach to the visitor at the centre of our thinking. 

The TGI approach assumes that visitors whose visiting cycles are longer than one year do not count as ‘regular visitors’: they are, conventionally, thought of as ‘non-visitors’ (part of the 53%). As research shows that museum visiting cycles are often longer than twelve months, this is clearly not the case. What is more, from Andrew’s qualitative research, these ‘longer cycle’ visitors still consider themselves regulars.

When those who either have visited a museum or art gallery, or those who describe themselves as potential visitors, are taken into account, the percentage of ‘arts participants’ in the UK rises to over 90%. If marketing strategies, audience profiling and segmentation ignore almost half of an institution’s individual visitors, evidently we are missing opportunities.

This twelve-month approach to audience profiling can equally produce a skew in the opposite direction: large ‘blockbuster’ events, one-off exhibitions in the past twelve months which receive great publicity and therefore a bump in the number of visitors will give an inflated number of ‘regular visitors’, if measured year-by-year. A long-term approach, combined with qualitative surveying, irons out these inflated periods and gives a much more accurate audience profile.

I really liked the implications of what Andrew was saying, and, though it was very heavy on statistics, its theme of focusing our attention on the audience resonated with much of the conference. By counselling what is in effect less reliance on economic statistics and instead gathering qualitative data, we are redefining the entire concept of the audience. They are not simply those who visit regularly, as a purely economic picture would show.

As Damien Whitmore said of the V&A in his opening speech, the visitor is everyone who interacts with the museum, whether on location or on the opposite side of the world through web content. In the future, therefore, a more open approach – and an open mind – is clearly required.

Richard Hadden

Hello everyone, and welcome to CTM10 from Vienna, where it is currently thirty-five degrees in the shade and sunnier even than London.

I’m Richard, and along with Claire who normally writes this blog, we will be blogging throughout the conference, bringing you summaries, insights and (hopefully) some sharp dissection of the speeches, masterclasses and various sessions of Communicating The Museum 10: ‘Audiences: Keeping the Old, Finding The New’.

Just so you know (if you are already looking at this blog through the iPhone app, it seems you do), we have a CTM10 iPhone app available to download now. (Search for ‘Communicating The Museum’.)

We will be updating the blog daily, so stay tuned, connected and thoroughly wired. For those who cannot wait for the blog updates, follow us in truncated form on Twitter (agenda_paris), live from the Berger Saal at the Kunsthistorisches Museum from 9am tomorrow.

See you tomorrow,

Claire and Richard.

In late 2009, the Musée de la Poste decided to take a radical ste p in its digital and online strategy, moving  from one institutional and aging website to an aggregative and collaborative space hosted by an entirely free software created by French webdesigners Netvibes. Laurent Albaret, who spearheaded the project at a museum dedicated to philately and the history of the French post, willingly acknowledges the potentially provocative nature of this initiative but has been able to respond to the mission statement of the entire Museum.The Netvibes account of the Musée de la Poste is what we perceive a digital strategy to be nowadays : collaborative on the intern and flexible and reactive on the extern, extending the museum’s outreach and ultimately triggering interest from non-visitors.

Laurent Albaret shared his thoughts on this, and here for French speakers only.

How does a Museum give up on its website?

« There was no real conscious effort within the museum to develop our presence online. It was more a question of context. When we changed the museum’s visual identity in October 2009, the museum’s institutional website was already 6 years old, rigid and far from user-friendly. It was basically impossible to offer real-time info about the museum and its events » Laurent Albaret recalls.

« With this problem in mind, a Facebook group was created with a very positive feedback, earning us more than 500 friends within a few weeks. This was my initiative and was essentially led by the « History and prospective studies » department. This got us thinking at the museum. But the actual implementation of the Musée de la Poste Netvibes came from a well-structured initiative in partnership with an agency called rfcpatrimoine.

« Their idea was to place the museum at the center of an intelligent internet environment, creating an aggregator to ultimately get more people to come to the museum ».

« Other new networks came about quite naturally too: a Wordpress blog, a Twitter page with 414 followers, a Flickr account and a Facebook fanpage were added to the already existing tools. »

« The decision to use Netvibes, an open-source software, was made with the interests of the museum management in mind: why not use a free tool which could help us to promote our museum? »

Netvibes - how it works and keeping it alive.

« Netvibes is an aggregator which allows us to add entries to our main digital tools in a single portal, be it our website, our blog, or a database on philately, as well as the main social networks.The idea was to keep an institutional website hosted by the global group La Poste which would remain the museum’s official showcase and adding a blog and using Netvibes to develop flexibility and reactivity thus allowing the users to take a direct look at all the social networks while offering an unusually large scope for interaction, such as through smartphones. » 

« Keeping all of this up and running is no mean feat because these many different ‘sources’ have to be updated quite regularly’

« We have resorted to internet users, mostly philately lovers, who suggest websites and blogs that they themselves use, which in turn enriches our content and makes the Netvibes a reference portal for all the themes connected to the museum.

« Internally speaking, we have a monthly calendar available to all members of the publishing committee which allows us to manage information and deadlines.

Teamwork

« Last January, two months after the portal was launched, I came to realise that I could not manage all this on my own because a tool like this requires an input from all the Museums’ teams.Whilst continuing the collaboration with rfcpatrimoine, we set up a monthly publishing committee. We were then able to assign the information-gathering and writing tasks to each committee member. Our main task is to build up content within the museum as well as being in touch with recent events, for example the going on sale of a special stamp in solidarity with Haiti on January 19th which we published on our networks just one hour after the official press conference.

Aggregator Vs Website

« Going for Netvibes is a risk we wanted to take and which caused some apprehension among…. The museum staff ! The previous website was seen as safer territory because the information was not so layered and there were fears that the new project would require some further specialised knowledge brought about by a new form of internal dialogue.

« We have had valuable feedback from our internet users’ side of things. In the majority of cases, they were not confused but somewhat pleasantly surprised and curious about our new online image, which is something they were not expecting from us.

Visitor’s feedback

« We made a survey of our audiences as early as December 2009 on their online practices as well as asking them to share their thoughts on the museum’s digital evolution.  The returns we had were mostly very positive, notably as regards to our modern approach, which was seen as refreshing in contrast to the old-fashioned and outdated ways of your typical middle-size Parisian museum. 77% of the users said the content was ‘rich’, providing them with information to improve their understanding of the museum (55%). 67% considered that our new online services sparked their interest to come and visit the museum.

« I think that the ‘transition period’ is now over and our new online environment seems to be quickly growing on our internet users. We have also started attracting a new type of audience, the 18-25 age group, who are of course very much in touch with the latest technology.

Small Museums Vs Big Museums?

« Middle-size museums like ours who are seeking more visibility have also gone for this online strategy which is, to be honest, very cost-effective.  When the big museums get on board, the weight of their staff and financial means will assure them a seat at the foreground. But I hope that institutions like ours will retain their status as web 2.0 pioneers and be able to engage in other innovative initiatives. We already have a loyal audience that is growing by the day »

Hello everyone!

Last post considered how to engage audiences and this one will as well, though in a different manner, as audiences are going to be the main Focus of our Communicating the Museum conference this year.

This years theme is as we previously announced "Audiences: Keeping the Old, Finding the New" and we will greet both museums professionals, as well as cutting-edge experts to discuss how to retain and reach out to new audiences today and tomorrow. New types of audiences are emerging and being singled out but also new ways of dialoguing with them are becoming part of the arts organisations' communication strategy. Is it all about attendance figures? What does this shift mean for the structure of the museums in terms of philosophy and teamwork? 

Here are some of the issues we are going to be working on

>> What attracts audiences, what do they like, what do they want?

>> Segmentation, niche audiences, non visitors, the old and the new : who are they?

>> How to reach audiences : what communication do they use?

>> How do we retain them? What works? What are the efficient tools?

>> What is the future of the relationships with our audiences?

>> How can we work together with our audiences to produce content?

>> How is the role of marketing and communication changing? 

The pink Lady you can see above, fresh as well as a classic, embodies these questions. Maybe she is a symbol of the multiplicity of audiences who enter arts organisations nowadays, or maybe she represents the multiplicity in one single person/visitor, how complex they have become and how crucial they are in the communication process. 

Can you guess who she is?

Our line-up is being finalised at the moment and is looking fantastic. We will keep you posted on the several speakers we will have on this blog.

This year our president Damien Whitmore, head of Public Programmes at the Victoria & Albert Museum will start the conference by delivering an inspiring speech about the fundamentals of developing audiences drawing from his experience as directing the complete rebranding of the Tate including the hugely successful launch of the Tate Modern.

At the V&A, He oversees the museum's exhibition programme and has rebranded the organisation, launched the widely acclaimed V&A magazine and more than doubled attendance figures.   

This will be the starting point for a row of discussions, masterclasses and return on experiences by arts organisations middle-size and big, local and international, mature as well as new. 

The conference takes on a shorter and more dynamic format, but stays true to its style, with great venues, such as the Kunsthistoriches Museum, the Albertina and the Mumok, and remainining a unique occasion for Museum and arts professionals to network.

We also felt that this theme was the unique occasion to discuss how arts organisations can work and come together as teams to achieve a common goal and have set up a special fee for museums curators.

All arts organisations are welcome.

Stay tuned and hope to see you in Vienna this summer!

Visit our website for more information.

 The meeting gathered a panel of bloggers from different backgrounds but with a shared interest in contemporary art around Marc Sanchez Artistic Director of the CNAP –the National Center for Fine Arts which organisesmajor cultural events for the Ministry of Culture - and Aurélie Lesous, who is in charge of mediation and educational programmes for Monumenta.

  On at the moment is a piece much talked of : Christian Boltanski’s installation entitled « Personnes » for Monumenta, a widely acclaimed yearly artistic confrontation between the 13,500 squ. meters of the Nave of the Grand Palais and a internationally renowned artist creating a piece for the occasion.

Monumenta’s main focus is to promote contemporary art beyond its usual fanbase, reaching out to wider audiences to fullfill the gap in understanding that  exists between audiences and contemporary art, changing typical reactions such as  « How should I interpret this ?», or « I could do that myself ! » into a dialogue.

 We were all gathered to discuss the reception of contemporary art amongst audiences and the work Monumenta achieves in this respect and had a very thought-provoking exchange on the conditions required to engage audiences online as well. 

 We first discussed the philosophy of cultural mediation, Aurelie insisted that the first goal of mediation is to propose and not to impose. The interesting thing about initiatives like that is that the Grand Palais is not filled with guards at the moment but with mediation-trained agents, not a familiar sight in a usual museum in France. If the visitor wishses to, he can then engage in a dialogue with mediators about the particulars of the work presented and thus start to work on his own impressions. 

 With that in mind, a discussion about the online translation of  this belief in dialogue started.

 Why not extending these precisous dialogues and personal impressions beyond Monumenta ? Why not having a blog to communicate on this, or more genrally a job done with participation of staff to enhance Monumenta?

 The reason why Monumenta has chosen not to engage in a full online development says Marc Sanchez is because he does not necessarily feel comfortable with talking  about an arts event while organising it. What is the role the staff would endorse ? Could it be perceived as mere advertising ? In this regard,  Marc Sanchez discussed some past experiences, some of them when he was a manager of the Palais de Tokyo which spoke in favour of his doubts, typically some mediators who took part to the dialogue being quite violently bashed for being bound to  be biased and do sheer promotion of the work. The way I personnaly see this issue is about finding your own voice. If staff engages in a conversation about Monumenta and are criticised for that, it can be because they haven’t yet their own space of expression where they would be asolutely legitimate in launching and framing debates and collecting some testimonies. In Monumenta's case, creating a space where the mediation-trained staff can interact with audiences seems more relevant.

 What are your thoughts on the subject ? Are those fears legitimate  and how do you swiftly accompany the change in the way staff and audiences interact ?

You can follow Monumenta on The Monumenta Twitter thread as well as on the dynamic Monumenta Facebook group.

Thanks to the Cnap for receiving us and for being open to discussion, this is much appreciated.

Photo credit : Alexandra Rigaud