Speaker Profile

Jim Richardson is the founder of British design group Sumo, a leading creative agency with an international reputation for promoting the arts through innovative marketing campaigns.

His work includes Ask a Curator a worldwide question and answer session with 350 museums through the social network Twitter, a crowdsourced and crowdcurated exhibition called Democracy and Yorkshire's Favourite Painting, a campaign which asked the public to share stories about why they love art.

Jim regularly speaks at interntational conferences about digital marketing and social media for the arts and cultural sectors, sharing best practices at events around the world.

He has contributed to publications including The Art Newspaper, Arts Professional, Museums Journal, Museum Practice, Museum ID and Heritage 365 magazine.

Jim is also the founder and Chair of the international museum conference MuseumNext curating a programme centered around how museums can benefit from new technology and the latest web trends.

Past Speaking Engagements

Over the past two years Jim has spoken at more than twenty conferences in six countries for organisations including:



2011

Gulf Art and Cultural Leaders Summit
Doha, Qatar. November 2011



Jim Richardson gave the opening keynote on 'Rethinking the Museum for the Digital Age', presenting the experience of three visitors in a museum using the latest technology

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


MuseumNext
Edinburgh, Scotland. May 2011



MuseumNext is Europe's big conference on the digital and social media for museums, bringing together 250 delegates from 23 countries.

Jim Richardson spoke about turning museum audiences in to advocates, stating that cultural institutions need to rethink how they are approaching social media, moving from the perspective of ’what do we want to say?’ to ‘how do we get people to talk about us?’.

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


Curso de redes sociales para museos y planetarios
Madrid, Spain. May 2011



This one day conference for Science Centres and Planetaria looked to introduce social media to institutions from across Spain.

Jim Richardson gave a 45 minute keynote using six themes to describe social media success.

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


Midlands Federation of Museums and Art Galleries
What can social media do for you?
West Bromwich, England. May 2011



This one day conference organised by Midlands Federation of Museums and Art Galleries asked 'what can social media do for you?' and brought together a panel of experts to talk about social media technology.

Jim Richardson spoke about turning museum audiences in to advocates, stating that cultural institutions need to rethink how they are approaching social media, moving from the perspective of ’what do we want to say?’ to ‘how do we get people to talk about us?’.

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


Museums Association Social Media Day
Manchester, England. March 2011



Jim Richardson gave a presentation which discussed the power of word of mouth recommendation, and outlined six ways that social media could be used to encourage museum audiences to spread the word about positive experiences.

Jim summed up the presentation by saying 'I think that museums need to rethink how they are approaching social media, moving from the perspective of ’what do we want to say’ to ‘how do we get people to talk about us’.'

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


British Council Digital Creative Conference
Tokyo, Japan. February 2011



The rapid spread of digital technologies is enriching our lives daily . It is also changing the nature of creativity and communication, and this is creating changes both in the means of expression used by artists, and in the relationships between arts institutions and their audiences.

Jim Richardson gave a presentation about arts marketing trends from the UK, introducing Japanese arts organisations to how theatres and museums are using social media to reach out to new audiences.

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


Join to create! : Crowdsourcing in exhibition symposium
Amsterdam, Netherlands. January 2011



The symposium looked at the latest developments in involving the public in putting together an exhibition. How can the public influence the content of an exhibition? Has this already been done?

Jim Richardson presented the keynote a 'Manifesto for the MuseumNext' in which he talked through nine points which he believes are important to the way in which museums and galleries use technology to create more engaging experiences.

View Jim's slides on Slideshare

2010

Conference INNL – Innovation and oral history
Amsterdam, Netherlands. November 2010



'Conference INNL' is the annual conference on digital innovation in the museum sector organised by the Nationaal Historisch Museum (Natural History Museum of the Netherlands).

The conference theme for 2010 was 'oral history', this was discussed by speakers from Europe and the United States.

Jim Richardson gave a presentation on 'What social media can do for oral history' in which he highlighted outstanding use of technology from crowdsourcing to the latest smart-phone apps.

Other speakers at the event included Shipherd Reed, project co-ordinator of Miners' Story project at the University of Arizona, Maarten Jansen, the Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Erik Schilp, CEO of the Nationaal Historisch Museum and Alex Henry, project co-ordinator of cultureShock at Tyne & Wear Museums and Archives.

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


DNA Italia : Surfing & Walking Conference
Turin, Italy, October 2010



'Surfing and walking: museums and the 2.0 challenges' is a major international conference on the cultural heritage calendar, it brings together experts across a broad range of activities from tourism to preservation.

The conference aims at fostering the exchange and the sharing of practices, experiences and evaluations on the new opportunities that new technologies and the Internet offer to museums in terms of access, interpretation, communication and listening.

Jim Richardson made a presentation on digital marketing for museums, showcasing how his team at Sumo have created active communities around art and heritage through the internet.

Other speakers at the event included Shelley Bernstein from the Brooklyn Museum, Tamara Sztyma-Knasiecka from the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Luca Melchionna from Modern and Contemporary Art Museum Trento and Carlotta Margarone from Palazzo Madama.


MuseumNext
London, England, March 2010



MuseumNext is an international museum conference about technology and the changing expectations of museum audiences.

As the conference chair Jim Richardson opened the event with an overview of the digital landscape in the cultural sector and concluded proceedings with a round up of what had been presented throughout the day.

Other speakers at the event included Georgina Bath Goodlander from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Victor Samra from MoMA, Elyse Topalian from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jan Willem Sieburgh from the Rijksmuseum and John Stack from TATE.


Bits 2 Blogs
Middlesbrough, England, February 2010

Bits 2 Blogs aims to promote and share best practice in e-learning within the heritage sector, and to demonstrate how established and emerging digital technologies can be used to develop excellent, innovative learning resources that engage audiences and broaden the appeal of our venues.

Jim Richardson delivered two sessions at this conference. The first of these presentations looked at mobile technology and debated how cultural organisations could utalise smart-phones and iPhone applications.

The second presentation discussed the way in which museums could use crowd-sourcing to empower their audiences and add value to their collections.

Other speakers at this event included American museum consultant Nina Simon and Mike Ellis from Eduserv.


UKOLN: Introduction to Web 2.0 and the Social Web
Newcastle, England, February 2010

One of a series of educational workshops for those working in museums, libraries and archives. These aimed to give attendees insights in to how web 2.0 could help their organisations.

Jim Richardson gave a thirty minute presentation on crowdsourcing at the Newcastle UKOLN event, talking about the development of Democracy a crowdsourced exhibition which he produced in 2009.

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


2009

Museums Association Social Media Day
London, England, December 2009

This one day conference was organised by the Museums Association, the membership organisation for people working in museums, galleries and heritage.

The event looked at how social media can be used to promote a museum, its collections, exhibitions and events to bring in new audiences , both online and to the museum.

Jim Richardson gave the opening keynote in which he discussed how the expectations of museum audiences are snow-balling because of changes in technology, and presented case studies to show how institutions around the world are reacting with exciting new social media projects.

Other speakers at this event included John Stack from TATE, Tony Butler from the Museum of East Anglian Life and Ian Thilthorpe and John Coburn from Tyne and Wear Museums and Archives.

View Jim's slides on Slideshare


Arts Marketing Association - Digital Day
London, England, November 2009

The annual conference on digital marketing from the Arts Marketing Association brings together a broad range of arts organisations to debate how technology can help them to grow their audiences.

Jim Richardson presented a keynote in which he described the five steps that he believes an arts organisation should take to start to use social media.

Other speakers at the event included John McGrath, Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales, Toby Coffey from the National Theatre and David Stark from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.


Kom je Ook?
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 2009



Kom je Ook? is a major conference series held in Amsterdam, it looks at participation and innovation in culture and heritage.

Jim Richardson delivered a keynote presentation about the changing expectations of museum audiences and illustrated the different ways in which institutions can connect with their visitors using social media.

Other speakers at the event included Fiona Romeo from the National Maritime Museum.


Communicating the Museum 2009
Malaga, Spain, June 2009



Communicating the Museum is an international conference organised every year for arts and cultural centres, museums and galleries, linking communication professionals coming from 500 organisations from 40 countries worldwide.

Jim Richardson spoke at the conference about how museum branding works within social media spaces such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and You Tube, illustrating my points with case studies from institutions around the world.

Other speakers at the conference included Shelley Bernstein from the Brooklyn Museum, Elyse Topalian from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Chris Denton from Barbican.

View Jim's slides on SlideShare


Bits 2 Blogs
Middlesbrough, England, February 2009

Bits 2 Blogs aims to promote and share best practice in e-learning within the heritage sector, and to demonstrate how established and emerging digital technologies can be used to develop excellent, innovative learning resources that engage audiences and broaden the appeal of our venues.

Jim Richardson delivered a keynote which gave a broad overview of social media and how cultural organisations are using this technology to create more engaging relationships with their audiences.


2008

Museums and Heritage Show
London, England, May 2008

Jim Richardson spoke about how museums can use marketing to reach young adults, he illustrated this with case studies from the UK, Netherlands and USA.


2007

Museums and Heritage Show
London, England, May 2007

Jim Richardson delivered a presentation which outlined the importance of branding to museums and heritage organisations, and described the branding process.


Heritage365 Marketing Conference
London, England, May 2007

Jim Richardson spoke about marketing the museum to young people, illustrating this with a number of case studies from institutions around the world.


Arts Marketing Conference
London, England, February 2007

Jim Richardson spoke about arts marketing and how technology is changing the role of the marketing manager in an arts organisation.

Arts Marketing Speaker