DEGREES UNEDITED

Being on time for a-n’s Degrees publication: how to generate a self-defining marketing strategy, promoting your end of year show whilst adding to a portfolio of skills as an artist in the virtual era.

Who self-promotes who?

Every year there is a turnover of promotional activity for every Art School and Fine Art department that can fall short of the talent in the exhibition itself. So here's a question you may want to ask yourselves: is it up to you or your university/college to take charge of the marketing of your degree show?

The answer lies with how active you can be as a group of professionals, forwarding the potential of your work and advertising it effectively. The course and its embedding within institution is bound to demand certain elements of coverage, but is it not just as well using the collective talent inherent in the year group to make the most of what's out there?

What's involved

Galleries and artists work succinctly to manage their promotional activities and before the digital palm-held boom such working patterns bubbled away beneath the surface. But now everything is 'atmosphere blogosphere' the process behind creative practice is more exposed and as art practice is re-defined, integrating and maintaining promotional strategies will run parallel with creative output.

Your degree show, for example, is an obvious point in time for when certain things necessitate completion. But there are other dates that are equally as functional to promote your exhibition well in advance. The best point at which to start is with the advert for your show and its place in publication both online and in paper. But getting to this point necessitates certain ports of call to make sure the embedded content of your advert is timely.

Collective calendar action

To designate and share administrative responsibility helps in setting deadlines alongside other groups whilst outreaching to forms of exposure.

a-n sets a deadline for submitting an advert in time for inclusion in its annual Degrees supplement. Why not use this as the "mid-point" around which to formulate the rest of your pursuits, moulding a sphere of activity, which asks what needs doing before and what can be done afterwards?

Collating your calendar internally in time for external deadlines such as this works to your favour. Degrees 2011 for instance will set your efforts in sight of the UK-wide peer group providing professional exposure and established distribution to thousands of readers (For example see Degrees 2010).

Working to deadlines

Developing your strategy

• Start getting double exposure on your activities and use Degrees unedited as a route into the professional realm.
• Maintain your dialogue: either through singular blogs or group project blogging, you can fill the rest of the arts community in on your activities.
• Get your own link on the a-n site and make yourself searchable.
  http://www.a-n.co.uk/link/... to you »
• Develop other forms of web content building a profile for your 'event': create a Facebook group to 'DIY' alternative interest generate mailing lists.
• Set up a Twitter account: give your show alternative exposure and keep people in the picture.
• Develop a 'splash site': a webpage with a searchable domain name will function in leading people who search for you, directly to other elements of your promotional strategy. This gives you the chance to present the 'look' of your degree show, reflecting the advert.
• Get a contactable email address, for sending out to mailing lists and receiving queries from press.

The advert

Your advert should be designed with links to all the elements listed above: then you get a-n subscribers from all forms of professions taking note of the extent of your self-promotion.

The more places you pop up the better as the more recognisable an art-graphic is, the more likely a show is to be exposed. Cathryn Jiggens from the ads team at a-n comments: "the best way of formulating an advert is to get in early. Here at a-n we want to be discursive with students who are enthusiastic about self-promotion, and who want to take the advertisement of their show seriously. The result is a press ready PDF for professional advertisement..."

The ads team, who also work individually as artists, understand the value of conversation as well an art student's situation when it comes to creative promotion in the virtual sphere and paper publication. If you want to make a head start the best thing to do is drop them an email (ads@a-n.co.uk) or give them a call (+44 (0)20 7655 0390) to find out what's possible.

Maintaining your model

• By being involved with the publication your advert is automatically replicated to the listing sections of Degrees unedited and Interface.
  a-n.co.uk/interface/whatson
  a-n.co.uk/degrees_unedited/whatson
• Maintaining your status and keeping hard at it: using the Degrees unedited window of opportunity allows you to get on with your workload, whilst your exposure grows.
• Replicate the advert as an e-flyer, embedded into your mail out. A handy way of doing this is uploading the image, around 800 pixels high, as a GIF to Google-docs. Then copy and paste the image from this document in to the body of your email.
• Reviews: look at how a good review is something worked on and well developed. Consider how making connections through the unedited sites (for example searching for reviewers on the Interface database) can benefit your post-exhibition exposure.

What is out there, and who but you makes the most of it?

Artists published as students in past annuals and avid contributors to the Degrees unedited blogs were commissioned and highlighted in both Degrees 2009 and Degrees 2010 scoping career developments to date and future prospects from direct research insight. For some, their longevity as practitioners up to seven years on is testament to marketing and organisational skills practiced during studentship.

By the time we reach 2020 you could have a similar story to tell... it starts here!

Links

• Double exposure in the unedited realm »
• Uniformly blogging for individuality »
• To comment is to be invited to review? »
• Three graduates from 2003 offer perspective on their practice to date (featured in Degrees 2009) »
• What next: editorial features in Degrees 2010 »
• Blogger profiles (some featured in Degrees 2010) »
• Degrees 2010 publication PDF »

First published: a-n.co.uk February 2010