Victorian Wolverhampton is a new blog started by Joanne Penn at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. It coincides with the redisplays of Wolverhampton’s collection of Victorian art and objects at both the city’s gallery, and out of town museum, Bantock House. I interviewed first time blogger Joanne Penn to find out how she is getting on.
Can you tell us a little bit about Victorian Wolverhampton?
Victorian Wolverhampton celebrates the opening of The Victorian Galleries here at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Bantock House. Everyone here is really excited about the displays finaly opening after so much hard work that has gone into the project, and I thought that to engage the community with the displays, we would need a website which can give them a behind-the-scenes look at what is going on. It’s not all just from me! There is a community panel who are researching stories and information.
What was your first reaction to being given the task of setting up a blog?
I was terrified but really excited all at the same time. I have never done anything like this before, I don’t even have a Facebook or Myspace! I also don’t get on too well with computers, but I love researching and learning especially about local things. I’m not from Wolverhampton either so it has been quite a lot of work as I didn’t know very much about the city at all. I didn’t really know where to start, I had to have a crash course in blogging!
What difficulties have you faced when creating the blog and fitting it around the existing website?
I’ve had to be really careful with what images I have chosen to go on the blog, the images from the collections all have to be credited. Also, all of the information has been subjected to some scrupulous examining by the staff working on the displays, which is a bit daunting. Other difficulties have been technical, as this is my first encounter with blogging, I am really learning as I go along however, I do think that I have picked it up really well, the blog is only 4 weeks old!
What have you found most surprising or exciting?
I think the most exciting thing was when after working on it for about 2 weeks, it was then published! I was so happy when I looked at the statistics and found that people had actually been looking at this blog that I have worked really hard on. I knew that blogs are the way forward and that they really do reach a wide variety of people, but it’s great to know that people are actually looking for it or stumbling across it and learning something new. It hasn’t had any comments yet, but I am looking forward to feedback from the community about it. What has been surprising is how easy it is once I knew what I was doing, sometimes I have made mistakes, but I’m learning from them and getting quicker at posting items and working on the pages.
What advice can you give for people wanting to start their own blog?
I would say think very carefully about what you want people to get out of your blog. It’s great that it is a space for you to share things that interest you but why are you sharing it? Also, you have to think about the tone of your blog. They tend to be more chatty than websites, and snappy to so that you engage people and make them want to read more. When I first started working on the blog, I think I took too much of an formal tone, I’ve tried to relax this now and be more myself which is very important but then you don’t want to alienate people either- so it’s about trying to get that balance.
