The National Gallery in London is expanding its influencer network. Last year it launched the 200 Creators programme as part of its bicentenary celebrations, selecting 200 social media content creators to become affiliated with the museum. The content produced as part of the programme generated 42 million views and more than 2.2 million engagements across social media in 2024, according to a museum press statement.
The museum has now launched the next phase of its 200 Creators network. This year’s cohort will be on a smaller scale—it will take on 50 new content creators (applications open until 31 August), offering access to exhibition previews, workshops and events at the museum (but not full membership, which was part of the programme last year). The creators will also be offered out-of-hours gallery access to make content or enjoy the works without the crowds. The inaugural programme had 20 of its 200 influencers become “Creative Collaborators”, with a stipend of £4,000 each to support their content creation. This year, there will be four paid opportunities, which will be offered to four of the 50 chosen creators.
The suggested requirements for applicants have remained the same: at least 50,000 followers on YouTube; 100,000 followers on Instagram; or 50,000 followers and a million likes on TikTok. But Ellie Wyant, the National Gallery’s senior communications manager, urges those who are interested but do not fill these criteria, or who have followings on other platforms, to still apply. “We’re excited to find new people who we might not have come across before, or who might not have come across us,” Wyant says. “We’re looking for people across the UK again, and across all different pockets of the internet. Last year, we had such an amazing array of people specialising in art history, but also bakers, potters, comedians and tailors!” The 50 creators will be selected by an internal panel and announced at a launch event at the museum on 27 October.
The success of the 200 Creators programme has not gone unnoticed by other museums. “I get emails weekly from people at museums wanting to do something similar,” says Wyant, who has also spoken widely about the influencer programme at events and conferences. “It’s not one size fits all, and I don’t think even we could have done this if it hadn’t been for our 200th birthday. It takes a lot of people and funds—200 Creators was three to four years in the making. But it is amazing that it has become something that other museums want to be involved in, and that they can take inspiration from,” she adds.
Wyant is running workshops on working with influencers at the museums collaborating on the National Gallery’s Masterpiece Tour initiative. The two-year long tour will see the London museum send major works from the collection across the UK to collaborating museums, starting with Claude Monet’s The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil (1872) heading to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich next month.
The National Gallery is keeping in touch with the creators from the inaugural programme, who will now take on an alumni role. And the collaboration has also borne fruit for many of them. Adeche Atelier—the collective name of the creative couple Adwoa Botchey and Solomon Adebiyi, who paint works about African mythology and spirituality—have been approached for work as a direct result of their partnership with the museum. The duo say they were commissioned by the BBC and the Royal Academy of Arts to do a painting inspired by a new series on the Renaissance, and have also been approached by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, thanks to having taken part in the 200 Creators Network initiative. “It’s amazing that other institutions and museums have now been reaching out to us,” Adebiyi adds.
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