Supporting collections through the pandemic

Art UK has been helping collections tell their stories and generate revenue throughout the pandemic. Camilla Stewart, Head of Commercial Programmes and Collection Partnerships, highlights some of their current initiatives.

We have been working with collections across the UK to digitise sculpture collections as part of our HLF-funded sculpture project and have continued to invest in Art Detective – a platform that gathers questions about artworks in public collections and crowdsources knowledge from experts and the public to help solve these questions. We launched our new learning portal, adding resources created by Art UK and partner collections. And we have also launched our new Curations tool, which allows collections to create digital exhibitions through Art UK, and share these with audiences.

You may be aware of our weekly Thursday twitter event, #OnlineArtExchange, where collections share their favourite artworks from other collections based around a particular theme. For Art UK partner collections (these are collections that pay Art UK a small annual fee, which supports Art UK’s sustainability) there are additional ways to get involved. Perhaps you have already participated in the Guardian’s Great British Art Quiz? We are currently mid-way through another project with the Guardian – the Great British Art Tour – where each day a curator writes about an important object or artwork from their collection.

Partner collections can also get involved in the Art UK Shop to generate revenue from print on demand, image licensing and merchandise sales. Over 80 collections participate in the shop, including the National Portrait Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and the Museum of English Rural Life, with more joining each month. The top performing collections in the shop this year are likely to earn around £11,000 in revenue from print and licence sales. Over 3 million unique users from across the globe each year visit Art UK and 66% of traffic is organic.

There is mutual benefit in multiple collections pointing to a single authoritative e-commerce platform in terms of traffic, Google rankings and the possibility of sharing marketing costs. So the more collections join the shop, the more everyone benefits from increased exposure and sales. Alongside art prints and image licences, we are now offering collections the opportunity to create print on demand products such as tote bags, make-up bags, mugs, coasters and tea towels.

For more information on Art UK contact Camilla Stewart, Head of Commercial Programmes and Collection Partnerships
Camilla.Stewart@artuk.org