Social media and social conventions

I recently came across this blog entry on a website called Sociability, it's a summary of a talk given by Andy Gibson at an Arts Council event Do the arts speak digital? Andy Gibson is a consultant specialising in the social uses of technology. It's definitely worth reading the whole thing but I'd like to pick out a couple of ideas that are particularly relevant to things that I've been considering and some ideas that I'm working up.

I've been thinking a lot about audience development and what that means. It seems to me, possibly naively, that the focus is mostly on making your audience bigger, developing relationships with hard to reach groups for example or encouraging those that don't traditionally engage with the arts. Of course all of that is important but I'm also interested in thinking about how you develop your current audience as well, how you deepen your relationship with them, how you can encourage their creative participation, especially through the use of social media and the low barriers to engagement that it offers. A quote from the blog - 'I believe that social tools make the invisible networks of our culture visible, and therefore possible to engage with'. What Andy Gibson also elaborates is that not only do social tools allow us to engage with our audience more easily than we could before, it also means that they can engage with one another. If you follow Fabrica on Twitter then you can also see who else follows us, the same with Facebook and other social networks.

I've been thinking about how to use social media in a playful way to encourage some of those things, creative participation, deepening of relationships, the opportunity for our audience to engage with each other. As previously discussed the photo competition we're running via Flickr is part of that. I'm working up a couple of other things, no details as yet because I'm still thinking them through, both of which will happen during the Tina Gonsalves show, Chameleon (title tbc), in October/November this year. One, forming part of Brighton's White Night activities, will be a drawing game, (no actual drawing ability required - I'll be taking part so you can be assured of that), resulting in an online gallery. The second will be something that plays with the idea of contagion, of passing things on, in the same way that Tina's show is about emotional contagion. It'll be a game that will specifically use Twitter and I'm hoping will put people in touch with each other as well as fostering their relationship with us. I think that together, in addition to the photo competition, they will represent a step forward in our use of social media and hopefully the beginnings of a model for future interactions.

Another thought from the blog to end on - 'So if it’s a time to play with convention, it’s also a time to challenge some of the 19th Century assumptions about how things “should” be done.' The convention of the silent audience he points out is relatively recent and one that's beginning to crumble. Time to find new ways of interaction.
Love this image which represents sociability in a virtual society.