So this week I discovered the value in old fashioned press releases!

My job role in social media means Twitter is often the first place I go to promote our products... however after attending a course in 'Marketing for arts' with City Arts Nottingham with the wonderful Gillian bates I decided to try another method.

When launching our Nottingham Urban Ballet Calendar I spent a day writing my first press release using the techniques I had been taught and sent it off to some local newspapers. To my surprise I got replies straight away! One from the Nottingham Post who were so interested they gave us the full page 3 and then NTU Alumni contacted me and wanted to put their spin on it... I gladly agreed! Interest grew in the cause and Experience Nottinghamshire decided they wanted to sell our calendar in the Nottingham Tourism Information Centre, the display looked beautiful and we were so proud to have our calendar on their shelves. BBC Radio Nottingham called us in for a talk with Mark Dennison which was a great experience, I have never been in a studio before and the nerves kicked in but we soon settled in and ended up with a ten minute slot on his morning show. 

Following this I reverted to my social media platform and tweeted my head off about it and thanked everyone involved, the interactions were brilliant and created such a positive effect on the calendar sales. 

So to conclude... I think a little press release training is a massive help; it can really boost a project and your confidence in your writing. Following the press releases we gained interest from so many areas and it helped us reach our audience... so give it a go and have confidence in yourself even if you have not written one before it could really pay off! 

My project explored 19th century painting and the symbols used within them. By examining these symbols and re presenting them in a constructed photograph, the series highlighted how women have been represented through Western painting. The act of replacing the commonly used female subject with a male figure had the deliberate intention to raise questions for the viewer, therefore interrogating ideas of traditional gender stereotypes through photography. My images were inspired by the style of Caravaggio and were presented as an old portrait painting would be (in gold gilt frames) as I really wanted the audience to feel like they could be in a portrait gallery.