Place, from a distance: using digital media to go local

Abstract

• Objects in a museum’s collections are often a natural focus for digital media activities – but what about the places the objects come from?International audiences have long been fascinated with Scotland’s historic landscapes and communities. Domestic audiences, partly due to pandemic lockdowns making knowledge of ‘the local’ more integral to day-to-day life than ever before, are no less enthusiastic. How can museums’ digital media tap into this desire to understand and explore the world immediately around us?One approach is to tell the stories of specific places, using objects from our collections as the connecting thread rather than the focus. Over the past two years, National Museums Scotland have experimented with ways to do this, including on social media and in editorial content such as blog posts, videos, and ‘Explore’ webpages. In this lightning talk, Digital Media Content Producer David Weinczok will discuss the guiding principles behind this experimentation, give examples of how following it has broadened our digital reach beyond our traditional, core audience, and explain how it influences our approach to online storytelling.