Including...record-breaking digital art, Zoom fatigue and The Royal Court's 'Living Newspaper'.
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Digital Snapshot, bringing you all the latest digital news, case studies, tips and guidance for the arts, culture, museums and heritage world. We hope you are all keeping well and don't also feel like this chair...
Some exciting news to start us off; The Audience Agency has been awarded a grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Part of the Digital Skills for Heritage programme, this strand aims to develop collaborative practice amongst communities to encourage digital engagement with archives. You can find out more about the other grants awarded under this tranche of funding on the NLHF website.
And remember, if we can help you with any of your digital activity, including research, strategy or training, please do get in touch.
Latest News
- I mentioned in the last issue that you were likely to hear lots about NFTs over the coming months. Well, that's proven to be correct... Firstly, a previously fairly unknown artist sold a piece of his work via Christie's for $69m, making him "among the top three most valuable living artists". Someone bought Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet for $2.9m. And this 'blank' artwork containing 100 trillion pixels sold for nearly $20,000. If you want to read more about what all this might mean for the cultural sector, here's an interesting piece relating to NFTs and museums. And a viewpoint from a practising artist.
- In other news, Facebook has launched an Instagram 'Lite' version to target emerging markets. They're also planning to build an Instagram for under 13s.
Useful & bookmarkable
- Let's start this section with a useful article about exactly why so many of us are suffering from Zoom fatigue. And if you ever want an excuse to quickly exit a Zoom call, you might want to try this 'Zoom Escaper' tool. ?
- A large number of examples of content and tone of voice style guides here.
- The National Lotter Heritage Fund has released a helpful guide to using open licenses.
- Cookies have been a big part of the fabric of the internet for a long time, but we may be approaching a new era.
- Although these tips about how to grow your newsletter subscriber list are ostensibly aimed at publishers, some of the advice is definitely relevant to the cultural sector.
- Some of you may pay to subscribe to Substack newsletters on subjects you're really interested in. The rise of Substack as a platform demonstrates that people will certainly pay for good, relevant (to them) content. Anyway, have a look at how much the most popular Substack newsletters earn. It's a delight that currently the Substack with the most subscribers is written by a history professor from Boston College (she's on course to make more than a million dollars a year from it).
- For performing arts organisations, this looks like a useful free webinar from The Space; Low-cost performance capture for arts and culture.
Distracting & entertaining
- A fun and interesting use of TikTok by the Quebec government to promote the importance of older people being active. If the target audiences is that age group then I question whether this is the right platform but some of the videos are amazing nonetheless.
- The Royal Court relaunched its 'Living Newspaper' concept. More detail here.
- I liked this image search engine - its founder hopes people will use it for inspiration.
- Like me, some of you may have experienced the RSC's new online Dream project, a triumph of technical achievement. This Twitter thread nicely encapsulated both the positives and the less successful elements of the experience. Here's a piece on the BBC about its creation (which starts with coverage of NFTs - told you they are everywhere at the moment!).
Good Reads
- The Audience Agency's research into digital behaviours during Covid (including audience intentions post-Covid) indicates that there is certainly an appetite for inspiring, entertaining or otherwise informative online events and experiences. But I think this piece will resonate with many - I Miss Being Part of an Audience.
- TikTok is certainly not just silly dancing and memes. New research shows the part it played in encouraging the angry mob that overran the US Capitol building.
That's it for this issue. As ever, if you come across any interesting or noteworthy content please do send it my way. We are here to support you with training, research and consultancy, so please do get in touch. You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.
You can find me or The Audience Agency on Twitter. See you soon.
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