From the 29th August to the 4th September 2016, the Savona Ceramics Museum took part in #52museums, a social project that began in January 2016 and which for months has involved the most important museums in the world, from the Quai Branly in Paris to LACMA in Los Angeles, from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to the Fondation Beyeler in Basel.
It all began with a simple yet effective idea: an Instagram account account managed by a different museum every week, to promote itself via photos and video to a worldwide audience. A communication channel that has grown month by month, thanks to word of mouth and the prestige of the museums involved, and which today is followed by almost 12 thousand people all over the world, especially overseas.
Our museum was able to take over this important account for a week and we decided to share it, proposing a collaboration with the Design Museum of Barcelona. It immediately seemed to be the perfect institution; being a major international museum overlooking the Mediterranean, with a rich ceramic collection and a strong dialogue with history and the surrounding architecture.
This, indeed, was the theme that the Savona Ceramica Museum used for its week-long take-over of the @52museums account: ceramics and the city. The museum’s collection reflects an age-old tradition of Savona, Albisole and the surrounding areas, found everywhere from factories, to homes, to workshops, public art and street furniture. We wanted to give people all over the world another reason to come here; not only to visit our wonderful museum, but to see a whole district of culture and tradition, right next to the beautiful ocean. We also launched a competition, #2ceramics, inviting citizens to get creative with images of the local area, then to send us their beautiful photos and become “ambassadors” of Savona ceramics.
So how did it go?
For a week, our museum and the museum in Barcelona became a “post factory”; we churned out 59 photos, 2 videos and 13 gifs over 7 days on the @52museums Instagram account, receiving a total of 7,787 likes, 6,490 views and 80 enthusiastic, curious and entertaining comments. Every day was dedicated to a new theme, taking our followers both inside and outside the museum; telling them about the white-blue Savona ceramics, public art, twentieth century ceramics and contemporary ceramics. We dedicated a special section to the relationship between Savona and Barcelona, uncovering the points of contact in our collections – the pieces from Savona that can now be found in Barcelona, and those that are Spanish in our Savona museum.
We also announced the 8 winners of our #2ceramics contest: @marg0t0n, @crissy84cp, @killyou4g, Enrico Bittoto, Javier Chambi, Lucio Levratto, Manuela Barban and Erica Camperi shared their photos with thousands of people and will now receive some well-deserved gifts from the museum bookshop.
It was, indeed, an overwhelming experience, the benefits of which go beyond these small numbers; it was a chance to build relationships on an international level, to promote our city and region and to give the museum’s audience a well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
We can’t wait to do it again, are you ready to click ‘like’?
