Marketing/Audience Development
London 2012 Cultural Olympiad
Stories of the World
I worked freelance during 2010 and 2011 to help co-ordinate the various marketing and PR required by the Renaissance Northwest and Renaissance Yorkshire strands of this national project.
In the Northwest the project involves the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Platt Hall — Manchester City Galleries, Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery, Bolton Museum & Art Gallery, Lancashire County Museums Service: Queen Street Mill, Burnley, & Helmshore Mill Textile Museum. In Yorkshire there are fifteen participating partners, including Museums Sheffield, Barnsley Museum & Heritage Service, Leeds Museums & Galleries, Bradford Museums & Galleries, Scarborough Museums Trust, York Museums Trust & Hull Museums.
Image credit: Joel Chester Fildes
Teams of co-curators aged between 14–24 years old are working with staff and the designated and renowned collections at each venue in the run up to 2012. They are in the process of developing new responses and reinterpretation of collections using various different media and techniques. There’s a video about the northwest project here and Yorkshire here.
I also co-ordinated the Digital Journalists (DJs) scheme across both regions. This involved training co-curators from across the museums who have a particular interest in journalism, photography or creative writing to use various social media channels to create a dialogue about their work. Both regions are documenting the project in on their own project blogs. The aim was to leave a legacy online about the project, raise the profile of what’s happening ‘behind the scenes’, and to provide the co-curators with further skills development.
My work also involved close liaison with LOCOG and ensuring the Stories of the World brand was executed correctly on a regional level.