Why don't more regional and national art societies hold Online Conferences?
When you're a local art society there's nothing to stop you limiting your activities to your locality - because, in all probability, that is where most of your members live. They'll either turn up or not to group events depending on how much they like being social and sociable.
However - if you're a regional or national organisation - why do we still behave as if everybody has to go to one place to get together to discuss / see / learn about / demonstrate our favourite art genre / medium?
In these days of reducing our carbon footprint, surely we need to be doing more in terms of finding alternative and more sustainable solutions which allow people to get together and enjoy what they like best about their art - and learn from one another and others.
One of the major benefits of the C19 saga (count the ways you can say "you know what" without triggering google filters!) is that more and more people have learned about the technology for getting online. I think if I'd been an investor in Zoom I'd be very happy right now!
What we saw in 2020
Lots of Annual get-togethers and annual conferences by art societies - which occur predominantly in the USA were cancelled in 2020. However this happened early enough in the year for a number to have time to work out how they could "replatform" the conference - out of a hotel and onto Zoom.
Those who had some gumption got their act together, had a major think - and took the Conference Online. I think this might well be because there's a considerable amount of income for art societies generated by these conferences.
Which is how, in October 2020, I came to be sitting in my armchair for four days straight and participating in Online in October the very first Virtual Annual Conference of the American Society of Botanical Artists.
Given this was very much a "suck it and see" and a somewhat "seat of the pants" exercise it's amazing how well it worked. They took their normal convention schedule and digitised it - which meant a series of sessions which were mini workshops, evening ones which were lectures or presentations and then a social at the end of the day. In a lot of ways it was very much like the Conference I attended - and spoke at - in Pittsburgh in 2019. However, the major difference was I was always five hours behind and social interaction - which was the only time members faces got on screen - was always in the middle of the night for me so I didn't actually make it to any of the socials. However I got through most of everything else after buying the "all in" option.
How did others cope with the change?
I took a look online and came across other examples of online conferences organised by different art organisations
Art Societies
- The Glass Art Society - has a very international outlook and may well have held the first online conference by an art society in May 2020
the organizers of the annual Glass Art Society conference pivoted from their extensively planned in-person event in Småland, Sweden, to the artist organization's first-ever online conference in May 2020.
- The Art Society had an Online Conference about Life Drawing in October 2020
Other member organisations
- The Museums Association went online in 2020 - and recorded the Conference highlights for members to refer back to
