The ArtKlick Blog

Phew - it’s been pretty full on for the past couple of months so I thought I would put together a summary of the progress and plans for Art Klick.

Membership
- 140 members signed up with 63 filling out profiles and listing artwork.

Sales
- 5 sales of original artwork, two of which have led to commissions.

Feedback
- The feedback from artists, photographers and developers has been really positive and encouraging.

Tertiary Institutes
- Met with almost all the creative tertiary institutes in New Zealand and they are keen to encourage their students to sign up and profile their art.

Art Klick Moves to Wellington
- On Monday the 29 September I am moving to Wellington to join the growing number of stat-up’s who are working together to inspire, support and learn from each other.

- Wellington is also the place to be for the arts with new things going on all the time. One opportunity that has been presented is to set up the Wellington division of Looksy who are a group of like minded people collaborating to encourage a community of user generated creativeness. They already have their own show on Alt TV so if anyone is keen to get involved get in touch!

- I have also applied to be a company in The Summer of Code program which pairs IT students up with (usually) start-up companies in the industry - giving the student great work experience and the companies an opportunity to expand their scope. Student wages are subsidised by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology which is great. I hope to get a skilled graphic designer and programmer to help re-design Art Klick into a more functional and community based website (See New Design Plans in next post)

Art Klick Blog (this) and Zine
- Now that the North Island trip is over this blog will begin to serve as a resource of articles, interviews and events. Anyone is welcome to contribute - this is a great opportunity for new journalists who are looking to get started. At the moment I can’t afford to pay anyone (I don’t even get paid) but opportunities are sure to arise. If you are passionate about the arts and journalism or if you have something you would like to see covered please feel free to get in touch.

- The Zine will be a free monthly online magazine with the best of the blog posts and events for the coming month. Depending on budget and popularity we hope to turn the Zine into a print magazine with a similar vibe to Juxtapoz and Vice.

Art Klick T-Shirt Design Competition
- What would be a cool New Zealand art website be without an opportunity to get that art on a T-Shirt? We aim to launch a T-Shirt design competition similar to the highly successful model of Threadless which would involve designs being submitted and voted on by the community. The top 5 designs will then be printed as limited edition T’s and sold via the website at an affordable price - and yip - they will be organic

The Free Art Project - Rhythm and Vines 08/09
- The Free Art Project is set to be launched at the New Years music festival Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne. The concept is for as many people as possible to do one brush stroke each on a canvas, take a photo of them pointing to their brush stroke, email them the photo and then post them a piece of the canvas. A T-shirt will also be created of the completed artwork.

- The aim of the project is to get the public involved in the arts, increase brand awareness and have fun. This is just one of the many ideas to get the public involved in contributing to the arts and growing our unique culture.

Art Klick TV
- Video is the way to go - it’s so much more interesting to watch a 3-5 minute video than read a blog post (if you got this far congratulations!). Art Klick TV will include coverage of art events, artist and collector interviews and anything that is relevant to New Zealand art. Anyone that has some good recent footage or would like to submit videos feel free to give me an email - it’s all about community, the more you get involved the more it becomes yours

New Design
- After running the beta version of Art Klick for the past four months I have received some great feedback. Two elements of the site I really want to improve are the community and prints. I will leave this for the next post as this one is already getting pretty long!

Summary
- So things are moving forward pretty fast, I can’t wait to move to Wellington and get started on the new design. And again, anyone who is keen to get involved and help out is more than welcome - I have some good people helping me but the more the merrier!

Thanks for taking the time to catch up on the progress, and I hope you are enjoying the great spring we are having so far

James