This is Part 4 of my Planning Your Gallery Show presentation. After deciding on a theme, planning the layout for my ‘The Spaces Within‘ gallery show and designing my promo pieces, I focused on getting the word out. Although in some ways, I had been promoting the show from the beginning.
The first thing that I did was take advantage of First Fridays in the Exchange. I purposely booked my show to start on the first Friday of June so that I could join in with the First Friday promotion happening already. By paying a $20 yearly membership fee, my show was included on their website and printed guide. Since my show took place, they’ve also started promoting First Friday shows on their Facebook and LinkedIn pages so there is even more coverage available through them. I also posted my show to various free online community calendars, such as The Uptown, CBC, CTV, etc. And of course I distributed both print and email versions of my Promo Postcard.
I added a new gallery to the Photography section of my website, introducing my ‘The Spaces Within‘ gallery show and sharing my Artist’s Statement and Price List Brochure. However I held off on posting any photos there, as I wanted people to see them in person, at the gallery. Once my show ended, I posted the complete collection to my website.
I also made full use of my blog… posting my progress as I put together the show, and sharing behind-the-scenes stories. In this way I slowly built up interest over the weeks of planning. On that note, as indicated by my first post on the subject, I started seriously planning my show in mid-April. So all told, it took me approximately one and a half months to pull it together. Of course it would have taken longer if I had decided to frame my photos.
I’m also on Twitter, Instagram and Flickr, so every time I posted anything new on my blog, I let my social network know. I also posted quick tweets and photo updates whenever it was appropriate. For all of my posts, I utilized the hashtag #thespaceswithin.
Last but not least, through a work friend’s connection, I managed to get on the CTV Morning Show. I was on there for a grand total of 2-3 minutes, but it was a fun experience. The host was really gracious and put me at ease, so thankfully I didn’t sound too nervous.
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You’ll need to decide which methods of promotion will work best for you and your show, but keep in mind who your target audience is and find channels that will reach them. Be sure to promote in a variety of ways.
If you missed Parts 1, 2 and 3, you can read about Theme here, Layout here and Design here. Part 5 will be posted in a week or so.