Case Study 4 - The Aldeburgh Beach Lookout, Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

The Aldeburgh Beach Lookout is a gallery and art house situated, much like The Old Lookout, right on the beach at Aldeburgh. This town, similarly to Broadstairs, is a popular seaside destination, with its roots in the fishing trade. Now, the old lookout tower functions as a gallery/exhibition space, offering artists week long residencies and the opportunity to sell work in the shop next door. Now, it is quite clear that both the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout and The Old Lookout both function in very similar ways. To save both myself and any readers of this post confusion I'll be referring to the former as the ABL Gallery, and its Broadstairs counterpart as the OL Gallery. Mm. Lots of lookouts.

The ABL Gallery, image from http://www.aldeburghbeachlookout.com/home

Clearly, the basis of both of these galleries is very similar, except that the ABL has a bit more of an emphasis on selling work that the artists in residence make. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to compare the online presence of this gallery with that of the OL - given that the running of both seems to be almost the same will the online marketing be as well? The only slight difference between the way the artists work in these two galleries is that with the OL, artists come to the exhibition space with work that has already been made, whereas at the ABL, the artist uses their residency to make new work, culminating in an exhibition at the end of the week. Also, after the artist has left the gallery, their work is still kept for sale in the Art House next door. The director of the gallery also runs an informal Art Club from this location, where members of the public and practicing artists are encouraged to come along and talk art over lunches, dinners and glasses of wine on the beach. Memberships have to be bought, the sales of which alongside those of art pieces appear to make the gallery self-financing.

In terms of the online presence of this gallery, it is no surprise to learn that they have their own website at http://www.aldeburghbeachlookout.com/. Here, visitors can access information about the concept of the gallery, contact details, the names of the artists who have conducted residencies there in the past and the current artist in residence, alongside links to mentions on external sites and a pdf of the gallery's brochure.

The website they have is relatively clean and simple looking, but with almost all of the information that potential visitors would need to know. However, what isn't obvious to me is the opening times. For me this is one of the most important details, and should be easy to find on the website. However, it does provide lots of information about the concept of the gallery, the kinds of things they show and links to photos of events and exhibitions. Something I think really works is placing links to PDFs of leaflets/articles about the gallery for people to easily access. Again similarly to the OL Gallery, there are links to videos on Vimeo and Youtube that show both individual exhibitions and the gallery more generally. I notice that they don't have their own account on either of these networking sites to unify all these different videos together, which is something that I feel is slightly lacking. It is nice that the short films are available for the public to watch, to get more of an idea of what to expect at the gallery, but I do think they should all be in one location online. This may increase the chance of members of the public accidentally stumbling across them and knowing where to find out more information about the gallery.

Aldeburghbeachlookout from FOMEproductions on Vimeo.
Personally, I think the short films about The Old Lookout are a really strong way of giving the public all the information they need about what to expect from the gallery in an interesting and visually strong way. This also goes for the various videos about the ABL gallery, but I do feel it would be more helpful if they were all together, on one channel or account.


Also available on the gallery's main website is a link to their Facebook page, which as far as I can see is the only social networking site they actively use. This page looks to be kept regularly updated with images from exhibitions and events, links to the artists in residence' personal websites and articles about the gallery in local press.

For me, one of the best aspects of the gallery's Facebook page is the opportunity to post up images form each artist's week in residence. There is a separate album for each event, which not only allows potential visitors to see what kinds of things go on, but also acts as an archive of each exhibition, documenting it and allowing it to be shared around and have a life even after the art has been taken off the walls or the play has ended. The images tend to feature each artist with a piece of their work, which I think is a really nice way to preserve each event. Also, importantly, the images of lots of gatherings on the beach and smiling artists with their work gives a much more informal impression of the ABL gallery, which contrasts to the look of the main website. The tone of the written posts is informative, but relaxed, which again lends itself to a feeling of friendliness from this page.

Alongside giving a bit more of a relaxed look at what goes on at this gallery, the essential information is also shown at the top of the Facebook page, which I feel is very important. Again, they do lack the opening times, but contact details and the location of the gallery are there. I also think that having links to articles written about the gallery is a strong advantage in terms of marketing. Having said this, the number of 'likes' the page has indicates that there may not be a huge audience for the kind of online publicity that the gallery is using here.

Overall, I feel that this gallery's online presence is good in terms of their representation on Facebook, but the tone and general feel of their different sites is not consistent. Their main website is informative, but doesn't necessarily capture the relaxed, informal feeling that their Facebook page does. However, I do feel that all the links to different pages and articles from their main site are helpful, and demonstrate that the gallery is quite well established in Suffolk. The videos that are linked here are also helpful in giving more of a general impression of the types of the events the gallery hosts. The similarities between the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout and The Old Lookout Gallery at Broadstairs are extensive. I do feel like the ABL's Facebook page is stronger that the OL's, but on the other hand, the OL's representation on Twitter is strong instead. Given that both of these galleries have similar groundings and operate in almost the same way, it is interesting to see the different ways they have chosen to advertise themselves. Both have strong overview videos, which is not something that I have come across very often in other galleries, but I feel remains one of the best ways to get the general feeling and attitude of the place across to viewers and potential visitors.

And on a personal note, I had no idea that there was any other gallery which was even slightly similar to the Old Lookout, so discovering that there is somewhere else like us that really works is a very happy revelation.