Arts Professional Story: Kathryn Born, Chicago Art Machine
Why did you start a network of arts websites for Chicago, and how are you going about it?
.jpg "Kathryn Born, Founder, Chicago Art Machine")
Kathryn Born, Founder, Chicago Art Machine
Chicago Art Machine came from the need to pool resources and help connect the local arts coverage scene. Right now three sites largely connect to it, but we’re (I say “we” because it’s a large team effort) beginning to connect more with other sites. For example, if we post a review about an exhibit, it would be useful to link to other reviews from other sites to create a dialogue. But one issue I've discovered is that local arts and culture writers don’t want to lose their own websites, so it’s critical to share resources and cross-promote, while allowing sites to remain autonomous.
One additional goal is to save everyone time and energy through shared sponsorship and advertising opportunities. It would be a win-win, as through one sponsorship agreement, advertisers could have ads appear on a dozen influential local websites, and the revenue would be shared among the host sites.
Currently the core of our network includes:
An "Independent Film and Storefront Theatre" site is in the works, along with an umbrella site which will aggregate highlights of all the aforementioned sites. The name for the network as a whole is Chicago Art Machine
This all got started when I had the idea of starting a grassroots media conglomerate a few years ago, with plans to go forward around 2012, but in the meantime, I got picked up to write for Chicago Now, (the blog network owned by The Chicago Tribune) and gained a following from the blog I created, Art Talk Chicago. The audience grew, and I built a team of writers and staff, and in September '09, we launched the magazine and the Google-based map and online gallery calendar that's on ChicagoArtMap.com.
We built this system because there were no comprehensive listings of gallery openings. Talking to critics and gallery-goers, I found that they were visiting dozens of sites and ultimately relying on Facebook and word-of mouth to find out about exhibition openings and new venues. Sites were relying on galleries to upload their own information which created a vast selection of partial listings. So the first task was to do our own data entry (which we still do by hand).
With the help of a developer we found online, a lovely man named Thor from Siberia, we built the entire application for about $1,000. The idea was to have the gallery scene data be sortable, searchable, filter-able, and categorizable. All the information is worthless if you can't parse it out to serve up the information you actually want. So the result is that you can search the map for gallery openings on a particular night and find ones in a geographical area. Or you can search by type, like "apartment gallery" or "institution", or by specialty, like photography.
Chicago Art Magazine is pretty self explanatory. We call the group of critics the "Friday Night Army," and they do lots of gallery reviews. We've also added more features and articles. New sections, like current art news and long-form art criticism, are starting to come online. Our editorial staff is starting to build and more than 30 people are somehow contributing to the sites.
The idea is to have a large amount of varied content that's supported by advertising. Flashy, commercial pieces attract a wider audience and garner the type of traffic that advertisers seek. The "profitable" content, so to speak, subsidizes the more niche content (like long-form scholarly pieces). Similarly, ChicagoArtCollector, which focuses on the ideas of art ownership as it relates to new art forms, is a separate discussion entirely.
Behind the scenes, we deal with the elephant in the living room—the challenge of trying to create an advertiser-supported, financially viable, online local magazine. Each element of that phrase sounds daunting, but we’re really determined to pay writers. I’ve been an underpaid arts person for over 15 years, and I didn’t want to perpetuate the cycle of people being asked to work for free indefinitely. Not to say that the goal is for people to pay rent by freelancing with us, but some type of compensation is needed if we're going to rebuild an art-writing community.
But it's easier said than done. Advertising is in shambles and we’re in a recession. As a result, I created yet another branch of the magazine, a blog called “The Transparency Pages” which engages in theories and documentation about monetized online publishing, and measures the degree to which we’re succeeding or failing (complete with budgets and editorial blunders). In addition, I sporadically write pieces on how a skeleton crew of physically disconnected individuals can manage more than 30 people (the majority of whom we’ve never met) using every Internet-communication tool in the toolbox. I also discuss the new thinking Internet writing requires, new modes of marketing, SEO, etc.
If we were a print publication, I estimate that we would be spending more than $10,000 an issue. Instead our operating budget is around $3,000/month, 95% of which goes to the people who help out. This is the early stages of trying to compensate writers and staff.
Beyond the logistical realities, the goal was to use the map to democratize the gallery scene. If a venue can put together a press release, we'll put it on the calendar. Everyone gets to stand at the starting line in the race to gain an audience for their venue. The editorial goal was to write about art in a simple, lively way with a whole bunch of pictures (and video and audio). The belief is that writing about art can be a literary style that’s as colorful as the art we describe.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if the sites “make it” or not. What matters is the community we showcase and the elaborate electronic document that we leave behind. Through a thousand webpages, we show what our local art scene looks like, and tell the story of how we fight to make sense of it, all while swimming in the chaotic waters of a new electronic world.
Kathryn Born is an artist, and writer of fiction and poetry, along with arts and culture commentary. Her work has appeared on Chicago Public Radio, in Time Out Chicago, and the Bad at Sports podcast. Her novel is working its way towards representation and her first book of poetry, The Lovers, the Death, and the Crimes, published by StepSister Press, will be released in April.