Digital Works Podcast

Beks Leary (National Gallery) on the challenges & opportunities of working in larger vs smaller teams, different ways of thinking about audiences, and the value of building meaningful relationships with creators

• Digital Works • Episode 60

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A chat with Beks Leary, Senior Social Media and Content Lead at the National Gallery in London.

We talked about Beks's career, which has encompassed working at a diverse range of organisations including the Bush Theatre, BBC, and National Theatre before Beks's current role at the National Gallery. 

Beks explained the opportunities and challenges that come with working in smaller vs larger organisations, the different ways that broadcasters, performing arts, and collections-based organisations think about audiences. 

We spent most of our conversation discussing the recent 200 Creators initiative (https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/ng200-programme/200-creators) which saw the National Gallery build relationships with creators across social media platforms to reach new audiences. 200 Creators is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Ash:

Hello and welcome to the Digital Works podcast, the podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector. I'm Ash, your host, and each episode we explore how people and organisations in the cultural world and beyond are using digital to create, connect and adapt. And if you need a hand with your own digital work, I'm also a consultant who helps cultural organisations make the most of all this stuff. In today's episode, I'm joined by Beks Leary. Beks is the Senior Social Media and Content Lead at the National Gallery in the UK.

Ash:

We spoke about the experience that Beks has working as part of both very large and much smaller organisations and the different challenges and benefits that come with this, the different ways of thinking about social media audiences at an organisation like the BBC compared to a cultural organisation, and we looked at the 200 Creators Initiative at the National Gallery, which saw the gallery working with a whole load of digital creators over the last 12 to 18 months. Bex has a really thoughtful, smart and insightful perspective. Enjoy Morning, bex. Thanks for taking the time to have a chat with us today. Thank you for having me. So I want to start where I always start with these conversations, and that's hearing a bit about your career, your sort of journey through to where you currently are at the National Gallery, because I think our paths have crossed numerous times over the years.

Beks:

Yeah, a long time ago. Maybe first when you were at the National Gallery, because I think our paths have crossed numerous times over the years.

Ash:

Yeah, maybe first when you're at the Bush Theatre yeah when you're doing digital works and those seminars and things, yeah, so tell us more about the life and times of Bex Leary so my first jobs were kind of summer jobs.

Beks:

So I did some work at Salisbury International Arts Festival and then did my master's in London. So I did an arts and cultural management MA at King's, which I think was a good stepping stone into the world of the creative industries. So my first London job was at the National Centre for Circus Arts. You'll see as we go I've been collecting the national institutions in Hoxton. They're kind of the radar of circus essentially. And then I went to the Bush Theatre in Shepherd's Bush. I was their digital marketing officer. So it was quite a broad scope of a role. Absolutely loved it. We reopened the building when I was there yeah, a really passionate new writing theatre. So that work was really exciting and I led all of the basically everything digital because it was a small team. So I did all the CRM. I did led all the socials digital marketing, but I also led marketing campaigns as well.

Beks:

From the bush I went to the BBC and worked in their TV content social team, working on flagship BBC One programmes as a social media manager, which obviously entered me into the world of a huge monolith of an institution, in contrast to the slightly smaller ones I'd been in before I still felt like I was working in a close-knit team there, but, yeah, I was suddenly learning about accounts that had millions of followers rather than thousands of followers, and then that was when I really obviously specialized into social media as kind of my main work discipline.

Beks:

So, yeah, I was there for a few years and then started at the National Theatre to lead their socials and content strategy just before the pandemic hit. So that was a fun time to be in theatre. But, yeah, led them through the pandemic, led them through launching their streaming service, at first for free on YouTube over the pandemic and then as a paid for streaming platform. So, yeah, really proud of the work that I did, like leading that social content strategy for the national theatre. Yeah, and then that's how I've ended up at the national gallery as their senior content manager. So I'm leading a team of 11 social digital content professionals. Yeah, overseeing all of the content production strategy, delivery both for digital products in gallery and online.

Ash:

And I'm sort of fascinated by that trajectory and I suppose, on reflection, the differences you may have found working at somewhere like the Bush and then the BBC and then the national theater and then moving into sort of visual arts collection based organization at the national gallery. You know, you said you work with a team of 11, which is such stark contrast to what you hinted at, your work at the bush involved, which sounds like we're doing the work of a team of 11.

Ash:

And you know, I think for people who work in smaller organizations there's perhaps the assumption that sort of bigger is better and you've got, you know you've got access to more resources and more profile. But I'm interested to hear a bit more about your experience, you know, with that content and social and digital focus in those very different organizations that you've just listed. How do they sort of compare and contrast to one another?

Beks:

I think the key thing with working in socials for a smaller organization is that there is much less pressure and much more creative license in terms of you can go on the fly with things. You can try things. If you publish something and need to delete it, five minutes later it's probably only had a couple of likes and it's not going to make the news, whilst if you mess up at the BBC, as every social media manager has in their time, that makes the news, and so necessarily, the sign-off processes and due diligence and all of that are much, much stricter in those bigger organizations, as you would expect. And it doesn't mean that they're not creative. It just means that, yeah, I think, as you're learning, you can test things out a lot more, but then in a bigger organization, you're working alongside lots of professionals who have experience in your realm, whilst if you stay in smaller organizations, you're going to be self-taught essentially. So I think, yeah, until I was at the bush, I was almost entirely self-taught. Obviously, you know you go to seminars or you go do online courses or whatever, but in terms of the teaching around me from colleagues, no one else was a digital specialist, whilst then you end up at the BBC, and I can't remember how many were in the team at that point, but you were in a team of, say, 30 social media specialists and the amount that you can learn from that is amazing. So, yeah, I definitely think there's pros and cons both ways, different working practices.

Beks:

In terms of differences, I guess across then, kind of galleries and theatres and TV, yeah, there's lots of interesting differences there. I think how they think about audiences is very different. If I compare the National Theatre, the National Gallery and the BBC, I should say I'm not speaking for any of my current or former employers here, this is all my opinion, but all three extremely passionate about their mission and their need to serve the public and all of them are starting with that. But then how they shape thinking about audiences quite different. So the BBC was, just in terms of social media, just absolutely obsessed with reaching younger audiences. That was all we were tasked to do reach under 34 year olds in the UK. If my content did really well in Japan and the US, it was like oh yeah, it went viral, but you didn't reach anyone in the UK, so it doesn't really matter. Yeah, so BBC young people um, they just want longevity into the future the national theatre.

Beks:

I think a live medium necessarily changes how an organisation relates to its audience, because your audience is there.

Beks:

It's bums on seats every night and, yeah, it's stating the obvious, but your audience is almost part of the art form. Your show is different every night because your audience is different every night and so audience first thinking I, I think, has been embedded in theatres for a lot longer than it has in museums and galleries and collections based organisations, where my experience is that people talk about the public a lot more rather than the audience and there's now, think, an exciting shift towards people really thinking of audiences across galleries and museums in a new way. I think that's been my experience. I've only obviously worked in one museum as an institution, but that's kind of how I've seen it.

Beks:

So, for example, if you're hearing about the kind of directors of the National Theatre planning a theatre season, you'll have the sense of kind of this is the National Theatre planning a theatre season. You'll have the sense of kind of this is the big family Christmas show, this is the new writing to excite, kind of the industry and young people and students, and this is for this kind of group of people Whilst exhibitions. That tends to be articulated as this is the academic research we have done, which is really exciting, and we're really excited about sharing this with audiences, but it starts with something new from an academic perspective and then is shaped for the audience.

Ash:

I think that's a really interesting observation that you've made there and it sort of echoes things that I've found through these podcast conversations.

Ash:

You know, when you speak to people who have spent most of their time and focus in museums and galleries, their frame of reference is maybe slightly different to people who have maybe spent more of their time in the performing arts and maybe their starting points for what they are trying to articulate is different and whilst everyone's sort of executing similar activity, it heads off in slightly different directions because of those different configurations. But it always, to me at least, feels like those two sides of the cultural sector or those two archetypal types of institutions probably have quite a lot to learn from each other. Do you have any sort of thoughts on that? It feels to me, for example, that actually museums and galleries can be really, really great at storytelling through their sort of interpretive content and some of the digital content that they put out, often better than many performing arts organisations who seem to reserve their storytelling for the stage and it's less prevalent through their digital activity and their comms. Does that feel like a fair observation?

Beks:

I don't know. I think you have to work so much harder with digital content in museums and galleries in one aspect, which is that you have to make the story, whilst actually both in TV and theatre. The gift is that if you've got a recording of a show which obviously you do in TV and I was very fortunate to have most of the time in theatre you've already got the story, and if you're doing a trailer, you've got a script to work from and ideas to come from the stories that those writers have told. So whilst, yeah, every time you're doing a social media video or a piece of digital content in a museum or a gallery, you are coming up with that story from scratch. So I do think, yeah, that is a difference, and learning from each other.

Ash:

Is that an exciting challenge as a sort of content professional?

Beks:

100%, yeah, I think, almost when you're, yeah, in theatre, it was, you know, picking the most amazing clips from a show where that storytelling work has already been done for you and actually you're just trying to sense which of the bits that are going to make sense in a social media world or speak an intellect language or resonate with a particular audience that you want. Whilst, yeah, I do really enjoy the challenge of having to build those stories from scratch, especially when we go behind the scenes at the gallery, I think finding those stories which so often is talking to people around the gallery, and finding those amazing things from the archives, or knowing that an amazing conservation project is going on and tracking that over three years, five years even yeah, I think that, like long-term storytelling probably exists a lot more because of the rhythms of galleries, and museums are much longer term, I think, than the rhythms of theatres initiative program.

Ash:

How is a network community that the national gallery has been doing this year? Because I think it's a really interesting example that I wish we saw more of of cultural organizations reaching out in a sort of collaborative and open way to other creatives who are digital natives and fluent and comfortable with the shape and language and dynamics of internet culture. Tell us a bit about what is this initiative, what is it trying to achieve, and then we'll talk a bit more about sort of how it's been going so.

Beks:

So 200 Creators is a creator or influencer program that we developed in celebration of our bicentenary. So hence 200 was the brainchild of my predecessor, john Shevlin, who's now at the RA, royal Academy, and was project led by our fantastic social media and community manager, ellie Wyant. Social media and community manager, ellie Wyant. Yeah, so I've been kind of overseeing and supporting on the strategic direction of it and Ellie really has been at the heart of delivering it. Its aim was to open up the social media channels of the National Gallery to voices that we might not have heard from before in relation to our collection, our building, our people, but first and foremost to reach those creators communities. So to reach beyond the bubble that we already have and that we already exist in, and to go out across the UK and internationally and reach into communities that may not have ever experienced or thought they might enjoy an art gallery. So it's been a project that was a very long time in the making. As I said, started before my time at least three years in planning as it went through approvals and getting kind of senior buy-in, and I think that kind of worked to build a budget and build a plan and that all takes so much time, like this project didn't emerge out of thin air and was incredibly hard work. So, yeah, the way that it worked or is working is that there's a group called the 20 creative collaborators, who are the 20 that we commissioned. So we paid them four thousand pounds each. There was an open call to source those names and we also made a few approaches and ran social ads and, yeah, tried to gather as much interest in that as possible and there were criteria for the scale of following and engagement. You needed to have to be eligible and you needed to be based in the UK as well. So, yeah, those 20, we were looking for kind of a diversity of thought and background and types of accounts. So we've ended up with everything from somebody who was on Bake Off, someone who was on Drag Race UK, more traditional art, history accounts, history accounts, a potter, this like amazing creative breadth of people, and then that's the sort of microcosm of the wider network, which is the 200. And so those are again a wide variety of creators and they have all been gifted membership for the year at the gallery and then the whole network which includes the 20 we are creating and we have been creating lots of opportunities to engage with them and for them to engage with us. So before we appointed the 20, there was kind of a lab event at the gallery where there was an opportunity for them to kind of develop ideas for their pitches, to meet staff, to get to know the gallery. That was the first time that some of those people had ever set foot in the national gallery, whilst others were obviously more familiar with us. We did a big celebration event to launch the content and the program once everyone had been appointed and we've run kind of best practice workshops with meta as well for everybody, which has been a really exciting collaboration, and we're hoping to do the same with TikTok as well.

Beks:

I think one of the things that we have found really exciting about the program is not only how exciting the actual content has been, but it's been that we hadn't really anticipated how much these creators were really seeking connection amongst themselves.

Beks:

So lots of the things that they were saying after coming to these big events with us was I got to chat to so many people that I recognized from my feed or I might have dm. In the past I never had these opportunities to actually talk in real life to these people and make new friends and connections across the creator influencer ecosystem in the UK. I think that's just been so lovely. They have a WhatsApp group now where they chat to each other, and they all took selfies and went to the pub after the event. I think that's just been so nice to see. Is that actually we're facilitating something that we, as the gallery, get an enormous amount out of, but we do feel like they are getting a lot out of it as well and it feels like we'll sort of talk more about the nuts and bolts of the program and the types of content that's come out of it in a moment.

Ash:

But I really love that last point that you made and the role that national gallery played in sort of being a generous convener of these people and helping them to meet each other and sort of holding space for that, because it does feel like, you know, lots of cultural organizations play a version of that role already with creative communities, but it's interesting that you know somewhere like the national gallery is now playing that role with social media creators and influencers, which is, I imagine, probably wasn't on the list of hoped for impacts on the on the sort of one pager for the project, but feels like a really important achievement yeah, weirdly, this is what I wrote my master's dissertation on is the value of influencers as like creative participants in your organization, almost from a like learning programs kind of mindset.

Beks:

And I do think it will be really interesting when we come to see more of the kind of evaluation stage, how that kind of comes out and the data and responses from the creators that have been a part of it. But, yeah, I do think that there's like a responses from the creators that have been a part of it.

Ash:

But yeah, I do think that there's like a participatory element to it that we sort of hadn't really foreseen, which is really exciting. You know, you mentioned there's there's sort of 20 creatives who you've actually commissioned right that there's money has changed hands. What sort of things have they been creating as a result of those commissioning relationships and I suppose also how prescriptive maybe?

Ash:

was the brief from the National Gallery. Was it sort of come in and do whatever you want, or was it actually we're interested in you focusing on these elements or responding to these ideas? These are the things we'd rather you didn't do, because I think getting a sense of that is useful perhaps for other organizations listening to this who may be considering versions of this type of relationship it was really important to us that the brief was as open as possible and necessarily there had to be.

Beks:

You know some constrictions. Like you, you can't do something in the gallery that wouldn't be safe for a visitor to do. Or if we take you up onto the roof, as we did with Alice Loxton who runs the account history, alice, obviously that wouldn't be something that the public would have access to but you can't show the route to get there because that would be a security nightmare for us. So that you know, there were necessarily a few restrictions, but I think for us to feel like we had real integrity with it, we wanted it to be very much led by the creator's creativity, and so that's why I said it wasn't just about our paintings. It's been about people responding to the building, people responding to the work that our staff do. So basically, any way that you could be inspired by the National Gallery, we were really up for the conversation on and we did help and support shape things. We helped with fact checking. Obviously we, you know, if someone is talking about a painting, we want it spoken about accurately in so far as everyone can have a personal relationship and reaction to the art. But if you're going to say what year it was painted, that needs to be correct and I think, think, yeah, maybe some examples.

Beks:

So, sophia Smith-Gaylor she was a journalist with the BBC and Vice and has been credited and awarded as being one of the first journalists to really use vertical video as a journalistic method.

Beks:

So she was an incredibly exciting person for us to be working with and she worked closely with our scientific department.

Beks:

She's very interested in etymology and language and so she looked basically at the story of the language of the color blue and how that relates in different languages to different things For example, the ultramarine pigment, how that relates to language around blue and that's been one of our biggest hitting pieces from the content that's been created. But, yeah, she absolutely had like journalistic free reign to explore that topic and spoke to one of our scientific experts to get some of the information that she needed and interviewed her and we sported with the filming. I think that was a really lovely collaboration. Adetye Atelier, who are a couple who are architects by trade but also artists, actually ended up doing both social content and a podcast episode with us and their work is about African mythologies and then they used some of the kind of Greek and classical mythologies that are in our collection. To build a story of the resonances between those different mythologies, but where there are similarities between them, um gosh, there's so many to talk about.

Ash:

I could go on how institutionally you know, your colleagues and maybe your, the traditional audience. That maybe is unfair. How how is what's the response been? Like you know? For people who maybe they're not spending a huge amount of time on social media or you know and sort of engaging with these types of creatives usually, but are perhaps coming across their work as the result of this project. How has that been?

Beks:

So I would say that 90% of the content has landed extremely well with our audiences. A hundred percent has landed really well with the creators audiences and I think where there's been some slight resistance, I think from our audiences, it's where it's been. Yeah, just probably something that is a lot further out there than we would typically post. So we're really proud of all the content that has been created, one in particular piece of content that got a few negative reactions from our audience and did lose its followers, but I think we still back that content. Like it was still really important for us to be engaging with a whole realm and spectrum of different creators who come from different backgrounds and create in different ways, and for them to make content in a way that is true to them and authentic to them. And actually, if we lose a few followers because that's not for them, then that's okay, because that's probably where our content direction is going. We want to keep working with creators but yeah, on the whole, everyone's really loved it. It's had millions and millions of views.

Ash:

What's the future of this program? Is it going to persist beyond the bicentenary, or is it? I imagine, from a sort of budgetary and funding point of view, was it always meant to be a time-bound, celebratory thing, and then everyone would move on after that period had finished.

Beks:

It's all in the works. There definitely will be a legacy. We will definitely continue the network in some form. I think the thing that was a real learning for us was for Ellie, our social media manager, and Millie, her community engagement officer. Producing 20 plus pieces of content most of them created at least three pieces of content in a really short space of time was a huge amount of work. You know. Most of them wanted to film in the gallery or on the roof or behind the scenes at the gallery and that's essentially 20 creative production projects. There's no way we would be able to resource that again in the future and I think in terms of the fees and the cost of the events, that was a very special thing for our bicentenary. But we will continue to run the network and commission creators. It will just be on a smaller, manageable BAU scale going forward.

Ash:

Which is exciting. Which is exciting, and you know, for people who are working at cultural organisations of whatever type, listening to this and thinking that feels like it's an idea worth exploring. At my organisation, what are the sort of hard-won lessons? If someone comes up to you and say we're going to do something like this, you go. You really need to think about this, this and this. This is going to be way harder than you think. Actually, this won't be as much of a problem as everyone thinks it will be people will be interested.

Beks:

People will want to be part of it. If you're an interesting cultural organization, which I'm sure you are if you're listening to this people will want to be part of it. I think we had a fear at the start. What if people don't want this, like we put all this work in? And what if no one cares? You don't need to worry about that. They will love it.

Beks:

Well, yeah, we've been really overwhelmed by how excited people have been to be part of the network. It needs money and it needs resource. You need to do it in a way that you can resource as a team. If you've got a much smaller team, you would need to do it in a much smaller way. I think bring in your legal team early. We had so many meetings with legal about the contracts. It's really important that you are protected as an organization and that the creators are protected, that they know exactly what they're delivering.

Beks:

I think we got that right, but it did take a lot of work. Yeah, even the network. We had letters of agreement with every one of them because, yeah, we wanted to be really clear about the boundaries of what was expected and obviously, when we weren't paying people, we actually weren't expecting anything of them. We used an agency to source a lot of the wider network called fetch friends. They were absolutely fantastic works, brilliantly, to our brief. We could not have sourced the full 200 creators by ourselves and got all of them to sign letters, agreement and done all of the back and forth of those people to get them along to the launch event and all of that.

Beks:

Yeah, so consider using external support, no matter the size of your organisation. I would suggest Senior buy-in is obviously so important. We had a review panel that included a director of public engagement and because the whole kind of directorial team were really excited about the project, she was an amazing support on that panel. She really got what we were trying to do and the mission of it and I think having that articulated and built into the project from the start is so important so that you're not fighting battles that you don't need to at the point that you're actually working with the creators and at which point time is probably tight and you've got delivery deadlines.

Ash:

So have those conversations as far ahead as you can, I think and again, people who are listening to this hearing about this project, wanting to find out more. Is there any sort of evaluation work being undertaken? Will you be able to share any of those results? What should people be keeping an eye out for in the coming months as you start to, I suppose, draw the project to a close and reflect on it?

Beks:

yes, we're going through the evaluation process now. We're hoping lots of the creators will fill in the survey and tell us. We know what they've thought because they've anecdotally told us. I hope that they will tell us formally. We've already got lots of the numbers in, so we will be sharing them. Ellie and I are doing the rounds of the conferences, so you'll see one of us at a conference near you in the next six months. Yeah, we will share more numbers and, yeah, more evaluation side of things brilliant.

Ash:

And, and to finish, you know you work with a large team. You are a national institution with an international profile as we sort of look forward to 2025. What are you excited about working on next?

Beks:

We've got a really exciting year. We're still in our birthday. The birthday celebrations were meant to be a year, obviously, now that they're now like two years, so there's still huge projects to come. We are reopening the Sainsbury wing, so that's the wing of our gallery that houses the oldest part of the collection. Typically, we're reopening that with a new welcome space in May 2025. Very excited that, not only because of the actual opening of the spaces so we've got more room for everyone and more room to display the paintings. There's a rehang of the whole collection to go alongside that but we're also going to have this huge, what we're calling a media wall massive screen in the opening. I'm really excited about programming that. So you're welcome to the gallery. We'll have a digital element to it. We are working on a new podcast. Heard it here first. We were quite forward on the front foot when it came to podcasting at the National Gallery, but we haven't had one for a while, so I'm excited to bring that back. So look out for news of that.

Beks:

And yeah, there's so much going on. This year there's a big kind of performance happening, related piece of artwork by Jeremy Deller, which culminates in a huge exciting thing in Trafalgar Square in July 2025. So I think that will be the big kind of not the end of the bicentenary celebrations, but the kind of culmination of the bicentenary celebrations. Not the end of the bicentenary celebrations, but the kind of culmination of the bicentenary celebrations which, yeah, I think we're all really excited about. Having something so open out in Trafalgar Square related to the gallery, I think that will be really really exciting. So, yeah, I think those are the few things that I'm excited about working on.

Ash:

I mean it sounds like an exciting year. We'll have to get you back on to talk about all of these things. Thank you so much for your time this morning. It's been a really brilliant conversation.

Beks:

Thank you so much for having me.

Ash:

It's been great. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation and want to hear more, you can find all episodes of the podcast on thedigitalworks, and if your organization needs help making sense of digital, you can get in touch with me via my website at ashmanco. That's man with two n's. See you next time.

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