Case Study: an artist's creative approach to content planning
How artist Ailene Cuthbertson created a six-video virtual art studio tour (whilst still working her day job as a software developer + with the stress of an international pandemic).
About the client
Ailene Cuthbertson creates timeless, emotive portraits that spread her love of dance, nature, and storytelling. She uses her art as a form of magic to bring her imagination to life - transforming her models, and herself, into dream archetypal heroines. Her images are uplifting and full of warmth, light, and glamour (the magic kind).
Ailene was a finalist in the 2018 Emergent award at the New Zealand Art Show and has been a finalist in the Cliftons Art Prize. She has shown her work at exhibitions nationwide in New Zealand, and has been a regular at the Raglan Arts Weekend studio tour.
When not bringing to life worlds full of magic and wonder, you’ll find her working as a software developer because she also loves being a nerd.
About the project:
Ailene created a virtual studio tour after New Zealand declared a national emergency and locked down - preventing her from taking part in the annual Raglan Arts Weekend open studio event. But thanks to the work Ailene had done inside of Cultivate Your Content (an online course I used to run with Kathryn Hofer of Modern Planner), alongside the Content Ripple Planning Guide, she discovered that she had everything at her fingertips to create a virtual studio tour instead!
— The Garden Plot activity inside of Cultivate Your Content (a crowd favourite!) helped her decide to focus on video content
— Thanks to this focus, Ailene had lots of footage from reference photos, of herself working in her studio + screen captures and B-roll footage to work with
— She took the Content Ripple Planning Guide and incorporated it into her art sketchbook (to help her work through the process)
— And most importantly, Ailene harnessed the ability to be curious + creative and organically pulled together six videos in only a few weeks (while still working her day job as a software developer, along with the stress/worry of an international pandemic...)
(More details below!)
Project year:
2020
“I love how the Content Ripple approach makes you get clear on your starting point and the visual of how each Ripple will build on the next on the way out. I wasn’t expecting that it would give me so much peace of mind. If you miss a social media post, no worries, look at all the other posts rippling their way out into the world. Something shiny comes up, don’t worry about it for now, it’s not on your Ripple!”
In her words…
During Cultivate Your Content, two things stood out amongst the ah-ha moments and inspiration:
I was treating content-making as a bolt-on to after the art-making whereas they could actually be the same activity.
So to help with this, I bought a GoPro (which now goes with me literally everywhere). Over the summer, I captured a ton of reference footage for my next art collection.I wrote "art journal" in one of the Cultivate Your Content exercises and wanted to explore that further.
I started art journaling/my sketchbook (a course by Lisa Sonora called Creative + Practice if you want to check it out). And now, my content plans now are mostly visual and continuing with the Cultivate Your Content gardening metaphor - which I find so helpful!
The Content Ripple approach to content planning really appeals to me because it’s visual.
I found it really useful to get super clear on the starting point and how each Ripple builds on the next. The way I used the Content Ripple method for this project (my virtual art studio tour) was to define the structure and focus of my content. For example, I decided that each blog post would have three social media posts (and then I get to experiment with what they'll be). And the focus of the blog posts was to talk about and invite people to the Raglan Arts Weekend.
Of course, given the global pandemic and lockdown, my planned blog post schedule went out the window. But by replacing "Raglan Arts Weekend" with "online studio tour" in my Ripple, everything still worked and I had a focused way of talking about the tour. No running down rabbit holes and stressing about promoting my YouTube channel, for example, because it's not on the Ripple!
While I was photographing the Ripple in my sketchbook, I kept thinking how simple it looked and others might look at it and go "well, that's just a bunch of circles."
There's a couple of things to that:
You can make the Ripple your own, so it really only has meaning for you, and
That's the beauty of it - because simple is hard! (My job title is User Experience Designer, so I have experience with how easy it is to do complicated!)
Full virtual art studio tour: watch here
Visit website: oldmountainart.com