Anna Balandina

 

Anna Balandina is the Head of Communication Department at the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA)

1. How did you live the #MuseumWeek experience? Did you notice any new dynamic in your institution since then?

​​Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) is a small art museum in global context but great art museum in local arena so we experience #MuseumWeek and other similar activities on Twitter as #AskACurator, #MuseumRainbow etc. as a great opportunity to engage, share and connect worldwide, and to open new ways of seeing museum for our local audiences and museum staff. LNMA is a pioneer between cultural institutions in Latvia of starting to use social media platforms as an important communication tool to improve relationships with our audiences. The local practice for cultural institutions on social media is still mostly one-way communication, not creating original and engaging content and I think #MuseumWeek in general is a good reason to take a look from aside to your institutions communication on social media. We have noticed that the number of museums from Latvia that are participating in these activities is increasing every year. So I hope for some good resonance in Latvia of #MuseumWeek this year!

2. During the event, was there the opportunity to invite specific audiences like fans, Instagrammers, artists, influencers acted upon…?

I would say that we still have a wide field to experiment in inviting different specific audiences to participate and engage in #MuseumWeek, indeed it would be an interesting experience. But I can mention that one specific audience we are involving is the museum staff. During these activities we are involving different colleagues and we find it as a great opportunity to introduce them with social media and to provide an understanding about the role of social media in museum’ s everyday life.

3. What is the benefit for your institution to be on Twitter?

All the previous interviewees mentioned a lot of benefits that we agree with. It is easy, short and fast way how to get in touch with museum, museum’ s visitors, friends and partners. I can not imagine our institution would not be there!