App Development

An opportunity for Perthshire Open Studios…

Today we were on a call with ArtUK to join Bloomberg Connects, the philanthropic arm of Bloomberg to potentially join their mobile app which aims to reduce the barriers to finding and loving art and culture anytime, anywhere. 

They already have thousands of museums, galleries, sculpture parks and gardens on the app including the Guggenheim in New York, Museum of Modern Art, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Perth museum to mention a few. (We were initially introduced to this idea by Perth and Kinross council.)

The app is collection of guides and content to enhance visitor experiences. It has been designed from an accessibility first approach, meaning it has features like voice over, captions and audio transcripts, image zoom, and font size adjustment. It also includes a degree of flexibility for us to show our work well, in new ways. It has built in Google Maps and Multilingual Support.

The app is free for us to use and for the public to download!

The advantages of Perthshire Open Studios (as a group) taking this opportunity are:

• We have no costs to join this programme.

• No cost to the public to learn about us.

• No ongoing development or support costs.

• We would be helping to build a stronger art and culture community.

• Bloomberg offer wide technical and editorial support to us.

• Bloomberg provide resources to market the app, from printed QR codes to bookmarks and posters.

• Bloomberg perform all app updates and data useage and security protections.

• We would join about 13 UK groups going through this process at the same time.

• Ongoing 24/7 support, even after launch.

As you can see they provide a lot of resources and support for free. We would not be able to achieve this level of support and functionality if we went down the route of developing our own mobile app ourselves.

The disadvantages are:

• For a project this size, they estimated a team of ten working on this content 10 hours per week for 13 weeks. (Our technical team have offered to cover most of this work for the content management system launch)

• You would be required to write and record audio / visual content for your studio that meets the requirements of Bloomberg. (Again we have been offered help in making this happen) 

• The deadlines are and will be tight.

• You may need better photography of your artworks. (Bloomberg have the final say in the content that is published so we may need to reach that barrier to entry. That covers all forms of media from writing to audio, video and map publishing requirements.)

The only way we can do this is from a positive response from our members.

So over to you