We’ve never done a full audience analysis for this newspaper (what a captivating way to open an issue…) but I’m kind of intrigued about how it splits up between the digital newsletter we send every week, and people just going about their daily lives.
Like… do you know we do a weekly email newsletter? And 90% of the jobs and opportunities in that don’t make it to these pages because the deadlines are really short, and exhibitions and event at some of the independent galleries around the region are often missed here too, because the announcements are a week before the event?
There’s a big difference between the pace of print and digital that means we can compile things better here, and make sure you (hi ) and everyone else is aware of as much art in Merseyside as possible.
I’m saying this like we’re at all organised. We’re not. The digital newsletter is meant to go out every week, but it only fired up again at the start of last month after a year away, and there’s a load of people signed up to that who don’t live near here, so it’s like travel planning when they open it.
But for you, reader-sat-in-a-café/shop/cinema/library/gallery/bar-somewhere-in-Merseyside, that newsletter could be a really useful link to a new job in the arts, or if you’re already an artist, a paid opportunity looking for a quick turn around.
I’d love to know who the people reading this paper are, but the beauty of print is that I never will. You’ve got the comforting anonymity of being detached from a screen right now. These sheets aren’t going to give you a pop-up ad for a pasta roller from Temu based on your recent browsing. They’re not going to tell me which of your ten-year-old Facebook memories are most often interacted with.
But yeah, if you’d like to be anonymous and get weekly emails with everything happening in every gallery in Merseyside each week, and all the jobs and opportunities you can get your head around, sign up: www.artinliverpool.com/subscribe-to-e-newsletter
I’ve also just realised that this editorial gets printed on the website, and sent out in the newsletter too. That’s going to make some really conflicting reading for some people. Sorry. Too late.
Shameless newsletter plug aside, I’m a fan of this month. October’s got a lot to see, and it’s all pretty special.
The essential venue to visit this month has to be The Walker though. Their three new exhibitions all challenge representations of Black artists in gallery collections and give voice to the unnamed subjects of paintings and historical atrocities that have be linked to the galleries collection since it opened (reviews of Chris Day’s ‘Now You See Me’, and ‘Stitching Souls’ by Karen McLean later in this issue).
FACT’s ‘Art Plays Games’ is a stunning example of art you can spend time with, and incredibly worth getting lost in, and Open Eye’s ‘The Flowers Still Grow’ is just as useful for you and me as it must have been for those involved in making it.
Oh, and if you’re picking this up before 5th October, there are reviews of a very different take on Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare North and a spectacularly lovely ceramics exhibition at Bluecoat Display Centre.