Arts and Social Media

Today instead of focusing on just PR, I thought we're branch out into another interesting topic - The Impact of Technology on Cultural Partnerships.  I must thank my Irish Twitter friend Saoire O' Brien for turning me onto this.  If you;re on twitter, go ahead and follow her for very interesting stuff that's arts-related.

PR for Playwrights on the other side of the Pond

I suppose you can tell I'm from the East Coast originally, the way I reference Europe as "across the pond".  But a theatre in London is doing a very smart thing right now, using technology to help themselves and playwrights!  So being the old reporter that I am, as well as also being a playwright,  I had to check it out.  The theatre is also promoting the site as a social network for playwrights. You can read about it HERE.

I got the tip on this from one of my contacts on the Linked-In Technology in the Arts groups.  PR for the arts is one of the most difficult of all PR jobs.  It seems that here in the US, the arts are the poor stepsister to film, TV and tech-related entertainment.  Like many of the performing arts, theatre is thought of as elitist and beyond the ken of the regular person.  This is just so much crap because theatre is generally always about people and there is nothing like feeling the energy created by actors on stage. 

Unfortunately most of the media "gatekeepers" forgot that while we need to support many groups that are trying to help solve the problems of  homelessness, hunger and job creation, we also need to support the arts because they feed the soul.