Enter a new stage or hide behind the curtain? - A little insight into network practices of opera houses, theatres and museums

There are many opportunities for cultural institutions to integrate social networking into their marketing activities. However, in Leipzig not many cultural institutions have investigated the opportunities, although nationally and internationally there a some fantastic examples for an effective and interactive way of using social networks.

Where to start analyzing social networks in culture? Facebook seems a good point of origin. Yet although it is really cheap and easy option, I was surprised to see that not many cultural institutions in Leipzig use this opportunity.

For “Oper Leipzig”, I only found a group run by an outsider – the page being neither appealing nor very up-to-date. Also, “Theater der Jungen Welt” has its most recent entry on 6th October. The facebook sites of MDR symphony orchestra and radio choir have only been introduced recently and both have fewer than 50 fans. Only “Museum der Bildenden Künste” (Museum of fine arts) has a very well administered page and holds with over 200 fans the record. The Gewandhaus – one of the most important cultural institutions of the town – is not present at all. The search for local cinemas on facebook also showed not results at all. Neither of the organizations I looked at had a blog or even a guestbook to allow interaction with the audience/the visitors.

However, organizations such as “Deutsche Oper am Rhein” Düsseldorf, Thalia Theater Hamburg or the Berlin Philharmonic show at least well run Facebook pages. Although also here we still see a range from just over 200 to more than 25.000 fans.

There are some approaches also in Germany with a somewhat broader scope, one of them I found in an article on www.kulturmanagement.net . In times of rising rivalry among regions and cities, politicians and economists have recognized the crucial role of culture within this competition to gain tourists and investors. For example, Marcus Gerresheim, owner of the Mobile Discovery GmbH, developed in cooperation with the administration of the Rhine/Neuss-Region an interactive multimedia software which allows any user of a mobile phone to receive audio-guide-like information on selected cultural sites. Just imagine: you become member of this network, plan your trip on the internet, cycle along the Rhine guided by your mobile phone, you stop at a nice little church, sit down on a bench, type in the relevant number and listen to high quality information – or literature and music related to the region/site. You can also buy tickets directly over this platform. And you can allow that cultural institutions within a certain radius contact you directly and inform you via SMS about the events of the day. What I quite like about the idea is, that I as a tourist don’t have to look actively for events myself but get a hint from a cultural network I trust to give me high quality recommendations. And from the institutions point of view, that I have an opportunity to “grab” many new visitors passing along and communicate with them.

But howabout cultural institutions outside Germany? My random google search soon proved that in general they seem to be more adventurous. Apart from having a really professional blog, The Royal opera house Covent Garden operates a page on facebook (nearly 20.000 fans), twitter and YouTube. Moreover, the patriarchal temple of the muses does not only use modern networks, it even made one of them the subject of an opera. “Twitterdaemmerung” is based on a libretto that was written by hundreds of random twitter user and was first performed only a few weeks ago. Here is what CNN reported about the performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWBRPy6QPs&NR=1. Funny episode on the side: ROH claimed to be the first ones doing so. But they were wrong! Curse of networks – they finally got trapped by a guy called Bill Dyszel, who is not only author of books like “Microsoft Outlook for Dummies”, but also an entertainer and opera singer, having been member of the New York City Opera for 14 years. Dyszel claims the laurels for the first twitter opera for himself. In his latest masterworks, he processes his traumatic experiences, transforming the lack of acclaim into powerful, haunting yet hilarious musical phrases: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4q3UIWfano&NR=1.

Another very interesting approach I have encountered is the joint network “creative spaces”, launched by nine of Britain’s National museums. Here, you can search among 300.000 items and put together your own collection of favorite art, exchange pictures, crossover to the education sites of the museums to learn more about a certain subject, form groups with similar interest - ranging from “Anglo Saxon Jewelry” to “Portraits with pets”.

The google search "social networking museums" led to two further interesting results: Nina Simon in her blog “Museum 2.0” offers a convincing argument, why cultural institutions have to care about social media. Another blog “Museum 3.0” also discusses the question “what will the museum of the future be like?”

Once you got this far in my argument, I can actually dare to become a little more detailed. The report “Cultural Institutions and Web 2.0” examines different approaches within the Australian scene and gives a nice and structured overview over the current efforts. Form page 8 onwards there are numerous examples of how cultural institutions make use of social network platforms for education, promotion or mere cataloguing. “Connection rather than collection” seemed to me one of the most crucial points in the current development. I was quite happy to read that in order to build up social networks museums are forced to build networks themselves – in my opinion a positive side effect of the high investments for developing technologies. I didn’t really get through every single one of the 46 pages in detail, I admit (just to prove Paul’s point that our ability to read is damaged …). However, there are some interesting issues raised about how museums have to face aspects like copyright, target groups and old technology that initially were only intended for mere information purposes.

My final conclusion for now is that there can be no conclusion to the topic as yet. The deeper I ploughed into the material, the more I realized that on a limited space and in a limited amount of time I could merely give a broad overview or rather a collection of impressions. To sum it up: there are extremely exciting and forward-looking approaches concerning social networks in culture. Unfortunately, you still find them more often outside Germany.

Leipzig, 28.11.2009 - Tobias Wolff

Facebook sites:

Oper Leipzig: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=ts&gid=6613358506)

Theater der Jungen Welt: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Leipzig-Germany/Theater-der-Jungen-Welt-Leipzig/98256366086?ref=ts

MDR symphony orchestra: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=search&gid=159792520469

MDR radio choir: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=144013974960&ref=ts

Museum der Bildenden Künste: http://www.facebook.com/mdbk.leipzig?ref=ts

Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Deutsche-Oper-am-Rhein/178452829166

Thalia Theater Hamburg http://www.facebook.com/thaliatheater

Berlin Philharmonic http://www.facebook.com/BerlinPhil?ref=search&sid=746253992.1990237285..1&v=wall

Mobile Discovery GmbH http://www.mobile-discovery.com/mo.html; http://www.kultohr-rkn.de

Royal opera house Covent Garden: http://www.roh.org.uk/discover/socialnetworks/index.aspx

“Twitterdaemmerung“ (CNN): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWBRPy6QPs&NR=1

“Twitter-opera – the revenge”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4q3UIWfano&NR=1.

Creative Spaces (article): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7902323.stm

Creative Spaces (Website): http://vna.nmolp.org/creativespaces.

Museum 2.0: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/04/simple-argument-for-why-museums-and.html.

Museum 3.0: http://museum30.ning.com

Dr Michael Middleton, Julie Lee “Cultural Institutions and Web 2.0”, Queensland University of Technology 2007: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/10808/1/Cultural_Institutions_and_Web_2_0.pdf