Art & Digital

Overview

 

At the beginning of the year, we had a choice between two exhibitions to organise: RAF Leuchars and Archaeology in the Kingdom of Fife.

Although I am very interested in the Royal Air Force and military history, I felt that the theme of archaeology was more appealing since it spanned a wider age range than the other one. I was interested in discovering Fife's history and looking forward to working with small objects.

I chose this group along with six other students: Mathilde, Erin, Kirsty, Raven, and Holly.

 

We were asked to pick a sub-group that defined our responsibilities within the team:

• Display

• Education

• Sponsorship and Publicity

• Printed Materials

 

I was interested in the social media aspect of the exhibition, how to advertise it, and also the designing of the publicity items, which is why I settled quite quickly for the Sponsorship and Publicity as well as Printed Materials sub-groups with Holly.

Erin and Mathilde chose Display, and Kirsty and Raven teamed up for Education matters. The University allowed us a £2,000 budget for the exhibition.

 

First, we all did some research on the history of Fife, St Andrews and archaeology and then each of us was given a category of objects to focus the research on. I was in charge of researching fede rings and papal bullas, but had a lot of trouble finding information on them. Official themes for the exhibition were chosen in December: jewellery, religion, apparel, weaponry, afterlife, and utilitarian. We each wrote a 150-word paragraph on a category for the publication, mine being fede rings and religion.

 

The text panels displayed in the exhibition were written by Erin and were divided as such:

• Introduction: Form & Function

• Style by design: Jewellery & Apparel

• Sealing the Deal: Politics & Trade

• Everyday Ornamentation: From the Household

• Emblems of Faith: Religious Relics

• Mysterious Treasures

• The Afterlife: Fife's Earliest Funerary Traditions

• Dig Dunfermline: Community Archaeology

 

 

 

My work in Communication: Digital Media, Social Networking & Local Press

 

• Facebook Page: Treasures of the Kingdom, Fife's Decorative Heritage Unearthed

 

I created the Facebook page on 13th November 2014, after we chose our title and some of our star objects. Everyone in the group liked and promoted the page.

We chose the Skeleton Ring as a profile picture because it is our star object, and we did not have a group picture. I wrote a small description of the exhibition, with the help of Holly and Kirsty for the grammar and tone.

Since then, I have been promoting the exhibition and our events regularly. Everyone was welcome to write anything on their own. I usually wrote when something important was happening (our bake sale, our setup, our opening night, every education event and when articles about us were published) and to advertise upcoming events. Some of them were really important, such as the Festival of Museums, and some institutions shared our statuses.

 

• Twitter account: @Fife_Treasures

 

After Facebook, an obvious social media tool was Twitter. I created the account and linked it to Facebook, so that if anything was published there, it would also appear on Twitter.

I tweeted like I wrote on Facebook, and again we were often retweeted by big institutions such as On At Fife, Festival of Museums, DigIt etc.

 

• Website

 

At first, I created an account on Wordpress, for I had heard it was easy to use. It turned out that I had a lot of trouble doing anything with it, and I did not particularly like the layout or the way the pages worked. I was also at the fact that it was more a blog than a proper website: the principle of Wordpress is to post articles and follow other blogs, like Tumblr, and I could not do a proper website without paying anything.

I was advised to use Wix, an easy platform for a website, which worked out so well that I ended up using this platform for these personnal portfolios afterwards!

 

• Instagram: @fife_treasures

 

In January, I wanted to take a step further in Publicity and Social Media with an Instagram account. The purpose of Instagram is to post pictures, to follow people and to be followed.

My intention was to have people use hashtags on Twitter and Instagram about our exhibition, and to incite them to tag us on their posts or pictures. It was to promote the exhibition and to get us closer to the audience.

All the objects pictures I uploaded on Instagram received a lot of "Likes", some of them up to 30, a success I was happily surprised with.

So far, the hashtags I suggested have not been used on either Twitter or Instagram, even though there is a panel in the displaym suggesting to use them.

 

 

Local Press

 

I contacted a few newspapers and magazines to advertise our exhibition. Most of them contacted me afterwards and asked questions and pictures, and wrote the article themselves using the information I provided.

See all the articles here:

• St Andrews Citizen

• The Saint

• Owl Eyes Magazine

• St Andrews in Focus

 

Design of Communication Supports

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sponsorship

 

I was also in charge, with Holly, of finding sponsors to help us for our exhibition. We mainly asked for raffle prizes since we hosted a raffle on the opening night. We obtained cheese, bread, drinks, for the catering and also objects such as olive oil or whisky sauce, earrings, a set of tea, vouchers for restaurants etc. The town businesses in St Andrews were very supportive of us. I dedicated a whole page on the website to thank them.

 

 

Gallery

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