Museums are bad at social media
Museums are bad at social media
PLUS: Transforming hospital wards with art
Hello.
It’s Wednesday, which means it’s ‘views and interviews’.
Museums and galleries are doing social media wrong — with posts about broken telephone lines and events no one wants to book onto (hence the rubbish posts asking them to). In today’s 250 Take, social media expert Adam Koszary — of absolute unit fame — argues that with even political parties getting with the (digital) programme, it’s time for cultural organisations to follow suit. And fast.
IRL is still hugely important of course. Charity Hospital Rooms knows art can bring dignity and joy into challenging physical spaces. That’s why they’ve been asking artists to transform Britain’s mental health hospitals. In the Big Interview below I speak to the organisation’s founder on the eve of a new exhibition that supports their work.
And my Hot List features a blockbuster art book which is finally out in paperback.
Let’s dive right in!
— maxwell
*Purchasing through links in this edition may earn me a valuable affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.
The 250 Take
Today’s 250-word opinion column from a guest writer is penned by the newly freelance social media expert Adam Koszary. Here he implores museums, galleries and beyond to catch up with the realities of social media in 2024.
💬 Cultural organisations are failing at social media. Put users first.
“If you were on your phone this summer, it was difficult to avoid the UK Labour party’s viral TikTok campaign or Kamala Harris’s brat rebrand. Both show that you can be serious institutions and still have fun on social media.
Social media could be the manifestation of why cultural spaces exist in the first place — a public forum for co-creation of meaning, debate and joy in culture.
Instead, it’s too often under-resourced and misunderstood. It’s used as a bulletin board. We broadcast messages to people rather than have conversations. Under pressure from organisational KPIs, we focus relentlessly on what we want rather than what our audiences want.
Every person working in social media I talk to doesn’t want it to be this way.
Whenever we see success in social media — such as the National Gallery’s 200 Creators, Black Country Living Museum’s TikTok, weird medieval guys, the Tank Museum’s Patreon or my own absolute unit — that success relies on creating human content which builds connection and relationships. When the relationship is there, the rest will follow.
The world is no longer becoming ‘increasingly digital’. It is digital. There is an appetite for arts and heritage which is currently being met by content creators and private companies.
We have the same capacity, expertise and passion to be doing the same, but it requires recasting social media as user-first rather than organisation-first. Social media and marketing teams need more power and trust to delight our audiences.
If we don’t, others will.”
Adam Koszary is a consultant for social media and content for galleries, libraries, archives, museums and anyone Doing Good Things. He has a website and a dog called Keith.
The Hot List
My curated round-up of what’s new to see, do, watch, read and more. From the UK — and around the world.
BOOK
1️⃣ The Story of Art without Men | by Katy Hessel
This Sunday Times bestseller is out in paperback and it tells the story of art for our times — and one with women at its heart. It was Waterstones Book of the Year in 2022.
published 29 August by Penguin | pre-order your copy here
GALLERY LATE
2️⃣ Tate Modern Lates: Curated by Little Simz | Tate Modern, London
Award-winning rapper Little Simz takes over with a specially curated evening of music, conversations, workshops and more. It’s totally free and she’ll be in conversation with broadcaster Clara Amfo.
Saturday 31 August, 18:00 — 22:00 \ find out more
TALK
3️⃣ William Dalrymple: How Ancient India Transformed The World | at various UK venues
Join the historian and co-host of the chart-topping podcast Empire as he shares the rarely told story of India’s role as a cultural and scientific superpower of the ancient world.
from 2 September | book tickets
ART FAIR
4️⃣ CHART 2024 | Copenhagen, Denmark
The leading contemporary art event in the Nordics sees the region’s best galleries come together for a fair that shines a spotlight on what’s hot right now across Scandinavia.
29 August to 01 September | more details here
The Big Interview
Artist Yinka Ilori has work all over London. He’s even just unveiled a huge new orange installation at Piccadilly Circus. But one of his biggest pieces in the capital is seen by very few people.
Ilori’s Hope for A Better Tomorrow is a vast, tall, rainbow mural that’s bathed in daylight. And it’s inside Springfield, a psychiatric hospital in South London.
Ilori was one of 19 leading contemporary names who were commissioned to produce works for the hospital last year. Artist Sutapa Biswas — whose deep blue mural of a night sky appears nearby — said they were all tasked with “reintroducing humanity to spaces that are actually quite frightening.”
It’s a mission given to Ilori and Biswas — and to countless others like Anish Kapoor, Sonia Boyce and Julian Opie since 2016 — by the charity Hospital Rooms. It’s an organisation which has aimed to create mental health hospital environments that offer solace, comfort and dignity through art.
Convincing hospitals to work with Hospital Rooms was a struggle at the beginning, but over the past eight years they’ve grown into a significant force for good in the art world. In part that’s been through a three-year partnership with mega-gallery Hauser and Wirth, who is committed to raising £1 million for the organisation by next year. £725,000 has already been raised. The latest push to reach the target is an exhibition at the gallery’s Mayfair home, and an auction of new works with Bonhams.
Although, Digital Art School — opening tomorrow — is less a traditional exhibition and more a huge art workshop where visitors can make work of their own. It’s an ‘installation’ version of Hospital Rooms’ artist-led digital workshops which they’ve given to all 58 Mental Health Trusts in England.
To mark the exhibition’s unveiling, today’s interview is with Tim A Shaw who co-founded Hospital Rooms with curator Niamh White. Here we chat about what visitors can expect at the show, why the NHS was initially resistant to their ideas, and why it’s so important to bring art into the heart of these challenging spaces.
***
Hi Tim. So why bring art into mental health hospitals?
About ten years ago a close friend of Niamh White and I was sectioned and had to spend time in an inpatient mental health unit. It was a white, stark, cold place that seemed far from what these spaces should be like. It felt inhumane and unfair, and we decided immediately we needed to see if we could work with artists and patients to change one of these wards. We eventually managed to convince one hospital to let us work with them, and we haven’t looked back.
It took you almost two years to convince that first hospital. Why were they resistant do you think?
It can feel quite radical to do anything like this in an inpatient mental health unit. These are very risk averse places — everything behind those air-lock doors has to be scrubbable, ligature free, robust.
Also, many mental health units can feel very separate to the world outside, and often segregated. Having artists coming in over a period of months to spend time with patients and staff, lead workshops, and then install complex artworks didn’t sit well with everyone. We were turned away by a number of NHS trusts who we have since gone on to work with over the years. Doing one project opened the doors to doing more, and over time we now are inundated with requests for projects, and also from hospitals around the globe.
Tell me about some of those subsequent projects so far. What has the feedback been from patients?
We have completed 25 projects across the country, and have worked with psychiatric intensive care units, mother and baby units, child and adolescent services, older people’s mental health services, forensic units and acute wards. Each project has been very different to every other, and we have now started working across whole sites, or even whole hospitals.
Our first project was at Phoenix Unit, a long stay specialist unit for people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The patients we have worked with have said the art workshops and installations have “helped me to forget the pain caused by anxiety (about an installation by Alvin Kofi), “inspired you while recognising your struggle, which is really important” (about a mural by Jasmin Sehra) and “It humanises us” (about a work by Ellie Tsatsou).
And what about feedback from the artists?
We are very lucky so many brilliant artists want to or agree to work with us!
We undertake and research and development stage for each project now, and a lot of work goes into thinking about which artists we’d really want to work with on a specific project. It is a difficult project for any artist, and it can be challenging but we support as much as we can the whole way through.
Doing something in a space that people may not have a choice not to view it is a challenge and a responsibility, but great artists often love troubleshooting and being challenged themselves. Michelle Williams-Gamaker put it really well: “It’s humbling, but outside of that world it’s more interesting for us to work in spaces like this because pushes us to think about work without ego.”
How do you decide who to work with and how?
Every mental health hospital, and the people who work in and are service users in them, deserves and needs projects like this. We now have application rounds for our projects, and we work with our team and our board to make final decisions on who we work with.
We only complete a few projects each year, and it’s important to us that we keep doing new things. We work with trusts that are performing well, and trusts that have a lot of difficulties, but we do need there to be a team of people who are open-minded and acknowledge there needs to be a change.
Why did you want to work with Hauser & Wirth?
Niamh and I actually met at Hauser & Wirth about 14 years ago, when Niamh worked on the front desk and I was a freelance art technician. We have been together all that time and now have a 4-year old son!
We learnt a lot from working at the gallery and worked with so many amazing artists on some very ambitious exhibitions. Neil Wenman — who is the Global Creative Director— came to us with the offer of a three-year partnership and the support from Neil, Iwan and Manuela and the gallery team has been unreal.
As well as being able to raise lots of money for our work, the exhibition each year at the gallery is an amazing opportunity to introduce thousands more people to the work Hospital Rooms does. We have been able to do so much more in mental health hospitals because of this partnership.
What can visitors to the new Digital Art School exhibition expect to see and experience?
We hope walking into the gallery will be an experience!
There will be a 140sqm floor painting by artist Nengi Omuku, based on a work she is making for Hellesdon Hospital currently in Norwich; thousands of sheets of paper lining the walls, which represents two weeks of engagement in our Digital Art School; dozens of artists’ creative propositions, from artists including Ryan Gander, Pipilotti Rist and Julian Opie; and a 4m wide screen with our Digital Art School workshops playing each hour, on the hour.
The whole feel is of a working studio (albeit a huge one!), with hanging plants, books, a seating area, and even artwork beanbags. There will also be all the artworks that will be in our fundraising auctions so people can see all the live and online-only lots by artists including Lonnie Holley, Rana Begum, José Parlá, Sutapa Biswas and more.
What will you do with the hoped-for cash raised by the auction?
The money will go towards our upcoming projects that will be taking place in Yorkshire, Bristol, Birmingham and London, and our Digital Art School.
How hard is it to raise money through philanthropy in the UK at the moment? Or are you raising money from other sources too?
Fundraising for us has changed a lot.
We used to rely really heavily on grants and trusts and foundations. We still do, but we now also raise a lot of money from private donations and friends and patrons schemes, corporate partnerships, selling editions. We also now get a contribution to each project from the NHS trusts, and our annual auction with Hauser & Wirth and Bonhams makes up a big part of our income.
We have to be creative in fundraising too, to survive and thrive. It’s always very difficult and it helps to be a little nimble to be able to figure out how to find new ways to raise money for our work. We’ve grown as a charity, year-on-year, and hope to be able to keep reaching more people and doing more ambitious things, so keep an eye out for how to fund these ambitions.
What are you most proud of so far in your Hospital Rooms journey?
When we started Hospital Rooms we were told that doing an ambitious, collaborative art project in an inpatient mental health unit would be impossible. We have demonstrated it that is possible and we do feel quite proud that many people think that being able to access art, being able to take part in creative activities, and having an environment that also care for you is something that every mental health patient, visitor and staff member deserves.
We’ve also just sent more than a quarter of a million pounds worth of art materials — in beautiful Digital Art School boxes — to mental health sites across the country. We are proud of that and our little self-made fulfilment centre in East London!
Digital Art School by Hospital Rooms is at Hauser & Wirth in London’s Mayfair from tomorrow until 10 September. Entry is free. The supporting auction — hosted in partnership with Bonhams — is at the gallery on 11 September.
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