Digital tools for Cultural managers

This ENCATC Breakfast Training will show you the most up to date and innovative digital tools waiting at your fingertips and how you can exploit them for your needs and those of your organisation. Get in depth in depth knowledge and expertise in our concentrated and to-the-point training format. From popular demand, ENCATC is bringing again to Brussels our trainer and social media researcher, Chrisopher Hogg, from Goldsmith’s University of London. He will guide you through the training and hands-on experiences so you can immediately unlock the potential and efficiency of these digitals tools. 

Following the research of ENCATC’s survey and the ENCATC Masterclass organized on the topic in December 2015, this ENCATC Breakfast Training on Digital Tools for Cultural Managers will dive deeply into the topic and provide hands-on experience for trainees to understand how to efficiently apply and use these tools.

The Breakfast training will be followed in the afternoon by a seminar on “Digital Storytelling - The age of the 6 second fragment”. How can you tell a story online in a world of constant interruption? How do narratives behave in a world of fragments of small digital content? What can we learn from video games in the way we tell stories? And why are we amazing at putting on a cultural experience, but find it so difficult to tell stories about the value we create? This session looks at all of these questions, and seeks to pass on the skills necessary to tell memorable stories online. We will do practical exercises in writing about our projects with power and authenticity. Finally we will look at the role of live video in bringing people closer in to the art. 

This ENCATC Breakfast and the seminar are for cultural managers, academics, researchers, educators, trainers, policy makers, artists and any professionals who have a stake in the cultural field or who are interested to learn more about digital tools. 

Christopher Hogg is a social media researcher and digital marketing consultant. He is also a playwright, storyteller, stand-up comedian, technologist and librettist. Chris, from London, is researching his PhD in British Comedy and Its Value to the British Economy at the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths College. It was at Goldsmiths in 2014 that he gained a distinction in his MA in Writing For Performance. As a counterpoint to creative precariousness, Chris has worked at the cutting edge of digital marketing for nearly two decades; his understanding of this medium is extremely deep and practical. Chris's latest project is teaching Social Media Marketing for Artists, Artistic Institutions and Cultural Entrepreneurs at Goldsmiths.

REGISTRATION: click here

PLACE: 

Polish Institute in Brussels - Place Flageyplein 18, 

1050 Brussels, Belgium

LANGUAGE: English

• Why do you think it is important for cultural managers to use digital tools for the implementation of their activities? How could these tools impact their work and increase their efficiency?

Well, I can only speak in detail about the situation in the UK. But in the last two years, Smartphone penetration has reached 78%. More and more people are using these devices as the hub of their lives. There is not a forest of newspapers anymore on the metro, there is a forest of phones. People can begin the journey of a visit to your institution from anywhere. Most importantly, you can use the devices to bring people closer to your cultural institutions. This is a great creative opportunity. However also, the data that comes from Social Media gives us a great opportunity to really understand an audience in real depth. However it is also important to point out that different people like to be communicated with in different ways. Some love printed word, some love video, some love social media. We are all different.

• What are today the basic digital tools that each manager should be able to at least use efficiently?
  

Followerwonk - to analyse and compare their audience with those of others. BuzzSumo - to see what the most shared content is in your community. Canva - a great tool for quick and good social media design. Cloze.com - Personalised CRM. similarweb.com - to analyse your competitors. All these tools are free - and there are plenty more.

• What are the needs in terms of education?

I think getting together with other cultural managers is the key, not only can you practice these tools together, but sharing of practical examples is the key. To compliment this, there are some absolutely great online educational resources that are becoming available. Get Smarter in South Africa have a 94% completion rate for online digital  courses, which is astounding. For quick questions, YouTube is of course great. It is the second largest search engine in the world and a great visual resource.

• Do you think that the use of digital tools could increase and diversify the audience of a cultural organisation?

Great exhibitions, or plays, or any cultural diplomacy, are always trying to answer the questions that are going through society's mind. I believe that these tools can help you see your audience at a very detailed way. You can see if the creative decisions you make, match the people who support you. 

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