ArtMemphis 2.0?

Tonight at the Urban Arts Commission's offices on Broad Street some of the movers and shakers in the Memphis arts community got together to discuss some common goals. Representatives from the University of Memphis, Memphis College of Art, Rhodes College, The Brooks Museum, local non-profits like Marshall Arts and commercial galleries like L Ross Gallery, Joysmith Gallery, Jay Etkin Gallery, and David Lusk Gallery gathered to share ideas about reinvigorating the visual arts scene in this city. I was the youngest and most inexperienced member of the discussion--invited to represent the students of UM--and I felt a little out of my league while we were there. Others present have been working for this community for most of their lives. I have a lot to learn from them, but what do I have to offer?

There seemed to be three common goals for this Town Hall discussion: increasing community visibility, improving arts advocacy, and advertising and promoting our existing visual culture.

Someone mentioned hiring someone like LTB media to feature Memphis in some magazines for the slight sum of $40,000. That seemed a little steep to me for a temporary bump in tourist interest. A more efficient and effective solution was put forward by many; web presence. A feature in a magazine or two is a nice (though expensive) replacement for criticism in the local paper, but I agree with the man who suggested that a working website provides more bang for the buck.

Young, educated, digital natives like me require even more than a website. We're not going to go hunt down the url that a group of galleries print up in an advertisement published in the Commercial Appeal, or the Flyer, or Art Papers, or Southern Accents. We're too busy reading eachother's blogs. And the people who publish those magazines know that--that's why they include features like blogs on their websites! Print advertising isn't enough and neither is a one-dimensional website.

When a major company wants to reach someone like me, they hire a community manager, a.k.a. a web2.0 evangelist. Anyone interested in promoting a new product or evolving brand on a national scale can't just throw up a website and expect people to google it. A Memphis visual arts website needs someone who can not only maximize google hits, but can also serve as an articulate and passionate voice in a variety of online communities. A community manager uses facebook for event organization, twitter for quick news alerts, and delicious for collecting and organizing the records of the city's zeitgeist. Web 2.0 evangelists are savvy with all of the tools in the social media toolbox; they can project a certain image that reaches well beyond the pages of the local print paper or a haphazardly distributed postcard.

So who will be Memphis's visual arts evangelist? Dwayne Butcher has made tremendous inroads by promoting artmemphis.net. Tonight's town hall meeting helped me realize that we need more field reporters twittering -- and not just that an opening is crowded, but what the address is and why we should go (and on twitter; in 140 letters or less). We need to create more useful groups on facebook and add more links to artmemphis.net on myspace. We need more bloggers who blog about all of the art they see in town, in addition to pet projects (or thesis videos). We need more youtube posts from arts events and more youtube interviews of the people who believe that art is "motivated by a genuine sense of care for one's community."

If you're reading this blog, you're in the game. You have a stake in promoting Memphis visual artists. Now get a twitter account and tell us about the show you're going to this Friday, or start a facebook group for the artists in your gallery, or find your favorite artist on artmemphis.net and send them an e-mail that says, "Hey, thanks for making good art and for making that art visible in this forum." In terms of operant conditioning, a constant stream of positive comments is far more powerful than a fancy trophy on a formal night. Those little digital interactions are making our city’s visual culture “sticky.”

To those of you who are already madly facebooking, youtubing, emailing, twittering, updating delicious bookmarks and building our community online, THANK YOU. Your hard work means a lot to emerging artists like me.

For people who don't live online, a print advertisement in a magazine with a link to a website is a stretch. You might reach someone. But if you want a definite connection to the young, urban, creative person you want to reach in Memphis, I can promise you the fastest most efficient way to connect is to use web 2.0 like youtube, facebook, myspace, or twitter to direct them to your online up-to-the-second updatable calendar.

Most of the things I'm writing about here are goals that I've set for myself; I hope you don't mind me sharing them with you. And as far as goals go, I suppose I should (finally) send Bryan Blankenship my artmemphis.net profile.