PROVIDENCE – The R.I. State Council on the Arts has established a presence on the social-networking Web sites Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter, as a way to communicate more effectively with a broad segment of the Rhode Island community.
“We found that a significant number of artists have Facebook or MySpace pages, and keep track of what’s going on via the Internet,” said Randall Rosenbaum, RISCA’s executive director. “It only made sense for us to develop a presence on these sites, and use them as one of a number of ways we communicate with people about our programs and services.”
RISCA uses Facebook, for example, to share information about upcoming events and to showcase links from other Facebook users in Rhode Island. The council’s YouTube site features video from a recent conversation between U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
MySpace, according to Rosenbaum, will grow into a place for online “conversations” about important issues. A new listing seeks comment from Arts Council grant recipients about the impact RISCA grants have had on their careers.
“We did a search on MySpace and found a number of artists who report having received one or more RISCA grants,” said Rosenbaum. “So we thought this was a good opportunity to talk to our grantees in a different sort of way.”
Twitter is what is known as a “microblog,” designed to provide its members with quick updates containing one or two lines of information. The State Council on the Arts uses Twitter as an outlet for information from the council’s popular blog, www.arts.ri.gov/blog, allowing fast-breaking arts information to be communicated to subscribers via the Web and smartphones.
The RISCA Twitter page is at twitter.com/risca1967. On YouTube, the arts council can be found at www.youtube.com/risca1967.
RISCA’s MySpace page is at groups.myspace.com/risca. And Facebook members only (the site is free to join) can view the council’s site at www.arts.ri.gov/facebook.
The R.I. State Council on the Arts is a state agency, supported by state appropriations from the R.I. General Assembly and federal grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. RISCA provides grants, technical assistance and staff support to arts organizations and artists, schools, community centers, social service organizations and local governments to bring the arts into the lives of Rhode Islanders. For more information, visit www.arts.ri.gov.
