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Launching
Meanwhile
in Oxfordshire
Reactivating dormant spaces for communal enjoyment
Background
Meanwhile in Oxfordshire is a first of its kind £1.7m project that aims to support local communities in the wake of COVID-19 by bringing 50 vacant spaces back into use across Oxfordshire. Its mission is to regenerate highstreets, boost the local economy and create spaces for people to connect and experience culture.
The initiative emerged from a collaboration between meanwhile-use organisation Makespace Oxford, community arts charity Fusion Arts and six other local partners. It is supported by Oxford City Council, Oxfordshire's district councils and the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership.
In March 2021, Fusion Arts were looking to launch the project on their platforms and publically announce their involvement. The organisation was keen to emphasise that they would be bringing their goal to support artists, individuals and communities through the promotion of accessible art, culture, social and climate justice to the programme. They were aware that different stakeholders accessed their communications through some of the same platforms and therefore needed to share the exciting news with multiple audiences at once.
Brief
“We are thrilled to be bringing our meanwhile-use expertise and focus on creativity, people, communities, and social justice to the heart of Meanwhile in Oxfordshire. With so many stakeholders to consider, we need to develop a communications campaign that simultaneously creates buzz and intrigue amongst the general public; informs artists, community groups and independent businesses of this exciting opportunity, encouraging them to get involved; showcases the cultural, communal and financial value of our work to funders and mentions our project partners. Do you think you can help?”
Process
Clearly, there were a lot of things to say and many people to say them to! Following conversations with Fusion Arts’ Artistic Director, I boiled the launch message down to three key aspects:
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The expertise and values Fusion is excited to bring to the project
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The economic and social benefits of the project
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How to get in touch / who to get in touch with
A vital communications touchpoint for Fusion Arts is their Instagram channel. This is where they have the highest number of local followers (44% of their 2,600 followers are Oxfordshire based and range from practicing creatives, to partner institutions, to funders, to members of the community) and content shared here tends to get high levels of engagement. My first port of call was therefore devising how the project would be launched on this platform. As there were three key campaign messages, I felt it would be impactful to create a large graphic that could be divided up across three Instagram posts, commanding space and attention on followers’ feeds and Fusion’s page, and increasing the probability that users would encounter at least one of the tiles. Each post would tell the story of the Meanwhile project but focus on communicating one key bit of information. A call to action would be included in each caption and further project details would be accessible on the organisation’s website and via Linktree.
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To create the graphic, I drew inspiration from the yellow and magenta colour scheme of Fusion’s logo as well as the overlapping, semi-transparent circular graphics that I had already begun to incorporate into Fusion's marketing materials. For the background, I used a grayscale version of a quintessentially Oxford composition; a panorama of Broad Street. I then used a map of Oxfordshire as a guide to overlay the overlapping circle graphics roughly in the position of Oxfordshire’s towns and cities onto the image. My intention was for these circles to signify both the collaborative and wide reaching scope of the project, and to resemble confetti in celebration of the announcement. Bearing in mind that while this was Fusion’s campaign, the project itself was a collaborative initiative, I used cursive and outlined typefaces on contrasting highlighter box-style backgrounds to differentiate the graphic from the typeface and design styles of other Fusion-branded materials.
Top: the final graphic; middle & bottom L-R: preliminary designs experimenting with choice of image, map overlay, size, number and placement of the dots
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Once the design was complete, I crafted three social media-friendly posts that each told the Meanwhile in Oxfordshire story from a different angle. Each post employed energetic, enthusiastic copy (and emojis) to express Fusion’s excitement at being involved, and tagged the project partners. The posts were bookended with an introduction to the scheme and a call to action for people to express interest, ask questions and find out more. To simplify the contact process, individuals interested in working with Fusion in particular were directed to a bespoke needs assessment questionnaire via the organisation’s Linktree page.
"We are delighted to be helping reactivate urban spaces, bringing our core focus on creativity, people, communities and social justice to the heart of the project"
"Not only will Meanwhile in Oxfordshire add vibrancy to our amazing city, but it will also support the incredibly important cultural sector, which contributed £34.6bn to the UK economy in 2019"
"We cannot wait to start reclaiming these spaces in a way that brings people together, celebrates diversity and allows us to make, share and experience the arts collectively"
The first post delved into the economic benefits of the project, from the 300 jobs and 35 traineeships it would create, the construction work for local businesses to the financial support for individuals occupying the spaces and the much needed injection of investment into the economy-boosting cultural sector.
Post two explored how Fusion would maximise the social and cultural benefits of the project by using the spaces to support local creatives, bring people together, celebrate diversity and collectively make, share and experience the arts and culture.
Post three platformed the partner organisations first and foremost, and explained the unique qualities that Fusion would be bringing to the table, referencing an example from their track record of supporting artists through the productive use of meanwhile spaces.
By articulating the campaign in this way, there was something help sell the project - and Fusion’s involvement in it - to all segments of their audience, from casual followers, to enterprising local artists, to landlords of dormant units, to current and prospective funders.
This triadic format allowed me to then tailor the launch message across other communications platforms. On Twitter, I took a similar multi-part approach but used core messages from each post, adapting this into a short chain of tweets.
I was aware that a large portion of Fusion’s email subscribers are also practising artists and/or community group members, so when producing the mailout, I centred the messaging on the opportunities for support and collaboration presented by this project and added a large “apply now” button at the end of the mailout to catalyse action.
On the other hand, Fusion’s website is popular with funders, who tend to use it to gain an all-round picture of the organisation. I therefore used copy that picked up on the social and economic benefits of the scheme, the value of Fusion’s involvement and the organisation's meanwhile-use expertise.
Fusion's Facebook page tends to get the most engagement from casual local followers, so I shortened the launch announcement into one post, accompanied by an animated square version of the original banner graphic.
By launching Meanwhile in Oxfordshire with an emphasis on its social, collaborative scope and an introduction to each project partner, I set the stage for a number of social media collaborations that promoted further anticipation and buzz for the forthcoming initiative, holistically benefitting those involved. The circle graphic style that I developed for the launch helped inform the yellow circular “95” logo that would brand 95 Gloucester Green, one of Fusion’s most prominent Meanwhile spaces.
Results
The Instagram posts received 151 likes and 11 comments, an engagement rate of 6.2% - more than double the industry standard of 1 - 3%. 100% of the comments were supportive of the initiative and had a positive sentiment.
There were 172 visits to the project page on Fusion’s website and over 50 individual enquiries were submitted via the application form in the subsequent month. The project launch has heralded the start of an exciting phase of growth for Fusion Arts in which they are utilising prominent city centre meanwhile-use spaces to deliver a number of inspiring exhibitions, performances and workshops in collaboration with various local, national and international artists (or a mixture of all three!).
