English Heritage and Google Arts and Culture
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Elizabeth Bullock – Senior Digital Manager (Curatorial) (English Heritage) In November 2017, English Heritage and Google launched a major partnership with Google Arts and Culture. This was Google’s first single-partner project, the first time that they had worked with a heritage organisation and their first time working with a multi-site organisation. This session will look at how English Heritage pulled off the delivery of such a huge volume of content in a very short space of time, what to consider when embarking on this kind of project, what large tech companies can enable that you can't do yourselves, and how such a project has extra complications for heritage and multi-site organisations.
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English Heritage and Google Arts and Culture
- 1. ENGLISH HERITAGE AND GOOGLE ARTS & CULTURE Lizzy Bullock Senior Digital Manager, Curatorial, English Heritage @lizzybethness
- 3. THE PROJECT • Launched November 2017 • 1 year’s work in theory, 8 intensive months in reality • Google’s first single-partner project • Google’s first project with a multi-site
- 5. 2,500 items
- 6. Ultra-high-resolution photography of 53 artworks
- 7. 31 exhibits
- 8. 5 cardboard VR tours
- 9. THE BENEFITS
- 10. PR
- 11. Reach
- 12. Reputation
- 13. WHAT DID WE LEARN?
- 14. Prepare to work very hard and very fast
- 15. Communication will be intense
- 16. Multi-site projects are a logistical nightmare
- 17. You will need help
- 18. Stay organised
- 19. There will be things you can’t control
- 20. Stand your ground when you need to
- 21. IF WE HAD OUR TIME AGAIN…
- 22. IF WE HAD OUR TIME AGAIN… • Identify measures of success from the beginning • Take our time • Build project into contributors’ work streams
- 23. THANK YOU Lizzy Bullock Senior Digital Manager, Curatorial, English Heritage @lizzybethness @EnglishHeritage
Editor's Notes
- This is the URL of the project. Obviously you can also Google English Heritage Arts and culture. Helpfully the project is also called English Heritage
- We captured 29 sites on streetview. Some of which are currently only available by appointment or guided tour. So this represented a great opportunity to increase access to our sites.
- We uploaded 2500 items, most of which are objects, ranging from flint axes to old masters. Many of these have never been online before. We don’t have a collections online platform. It is something we are developing. This was a great opportunity in the interim to provide access to our collections.
- We also had high resolution images taken of 53 of our artworks, including 2 ceilings. Now being used by our conservation team to monitor the condition of the paintings
- The biggest piece of work for my team was the production of 31 exhibits – these are articles authored by our historians and curators, presented in a slide show format. My amazing team of editors spend a lot of time developing, editing proofing and building these.
- And there are 5 VR tours of our sites. 4 using streetview and 1 a 360 curator led video. If anyone would like a Google Cardboard, find me in the break we have a lot left!
- So what were the benefits to EH? Primarily, of course, we have been able to use Google’s technology to give people much greater access to our sites and collections. But let’s be honest, there are more mercenary benefits too.
- A lot of press. More than we expected. We also appeared on a Google Doodle, and won a UK Heritage award.
- Content has been viewed in 71 countries by 146,000 users – by this I mean our exhibits and our objects. Largest audience group are in America – many of whom will never have heard of English Heritage otherwise. We have taken our content out to where people are consuming digital art and culture, rather than expecting them to come to us.
- Sorry for the fuzzy slide here, but what this shows is the streetview of Grimes Graves, an obscure Neolithic flint mine in Norfolk being promoted alongside the pyramids of Giza. Grimes Graves is a hugely significant site, historically, and this platform helps to give it the status it deserves.
- What did we learn from this project. The points I lay out here are on the whole not specific to working with Google. They are applicable to most partnerships with large tech companies or creative agencies.
- Once you are on board the train, it will not stop. Expect a project of this size to be all consuming. Make space for it. It will take more time and resource than you think. Museums and heritage organisations are slow, they have procedures and boards and working groups and sign off processes. That way of working is a snails pace for a company like google. Prepare to adjust your timescales, have sudden last minute deadlines and be nimble in a way that may be unfamiliar
- Expect a lot of emails, with a lot of stakeholders. Long email chains, Google hangouts, collaboration via Google docs. This may be a challenge for some of your less technically-inclined members of staff. In a company of Google’s size, you will not have just one contact – the UK GAC team is different to the editorial team over in Paris, who are different to the streetview team, who are different to the gigapixel and art camera teams. Furthermore tech companies and agencies have a high turnover of staff. You need to be nimble and adaptable – keep your project team lean, and make sure you all know your roles and who you need to keep in the loop.
- As a national organisation we wanted to make sure we covered as much as the country as possible. Prepare to do a lot of travelling. And prepare to be very very nice to your site staff. For instance Streetview teams are very busy and can normally only come on one particular day. We did this in-season, meaning capture had to be done before the site opened. Gigapixel and art camera photography takes hours and has to take place over night.
- A project of this scale takes dedicated time. We swiftly realised that you cannot carry out a project like this alongside your day to day work. Luckily, Google funded a temporary member of staff, the wonderful Rose Arkle to be a dedicated Google Curator for the duration of the project. Rose was the lynchpin – on the ground arranging object photography, liaising with curators, organising and often attending streetview captures, and supervising those overnight high res shoots. It was a lot of work. She wasn’t home much for most of summer 2017.
- Get systems in place for everything you do. Keep your records straight. It is very easy on a project like this for something to get missed or overlooked. As the project drew closer to launch, we had daily catch up with our Google contacts just for editorial delivery.
- When you are working in partnership with anyone, particularly high profile partners, you cannot entirely control the message. This is a screenshot of video that Google created for launch featuring one of our Curators. This is not English Heritage house style, brand or tone of voice. This is Google content. This can be a challenge for your brand, design and marketing teams. Make sure they are engaged, but this may go against their natural instincts, prepare for some back and forth.
- You know your content and your brand values better than anyone. Stand up for them. Initially Google were not interested in our more ancient sites, as prehistory isn’t something they feature strongly. But the 400 places in our care span 2 millennia. We insisted that if you want to tell the story of England, you have to cover all time periods, so we now have a spread from the neolithic to the cold war. Ultimately they agreed and were pleased with the result. Remember that this is a collaboration. While your external partners are experts in their area, you are the experts yours.