Episode 9: Amrita Chandra of Tinku Gallery

Community Divas

Welcome to episode nine!
Run time: 16:02
Community Divas on iTunes
A podcast about communities and social media tools
In this episode:
- Eden interviews Amrita Chandra of tinku gallery
- We talk about community building events
- Have a bit of a community calendar
Amrita Chandra is the Founder of tinku gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Toronto, representing emerging and mid-career artists from across Canada and the U.S.Her website is http://www.tinkugallery.com/ and she blogs at http://tinkutales.blogspot.com/.
00:01 Intro by Jay Moonah
00:09 Eden Spodek and Connie Crosby
00:15 Summary of today’s episode
00:36 Eden welcomes Amrita Chandra.
00:44 Where did the idea of tinku gallery in Toronto came from?
01:31 Why is community building important to the success of an art gallery?
02:19 Building relationships with customers and artists. Amrita talks about the blog she created to start.
03:08 Other online tools she is using: Twitter and Facebook. She has found that Twitter and the blog have been the best tools for building
community.
04:00 On Facebook she started with ads and a page.
04:45 How long did it take to build awareness for the gallery?
05:22 Word of mouth has been important to her.
05:35 Comparing on-line and off-line community building, she has found them to be similar. With on-line she has been able to reach people further afield geographically.
06:24 She has not seen a lot of commercial art galleries doing this kind of community building yet.
06:57 She has learned from the past that you need to be yourself, you need to be authentic. You also need to be a very good listener. People who are listened to and given a voice tend to have the most engagement.
07:53 Her plans for the future: using the gallery to still make art accessible to those who would like to purchase it; holding more salon type events at the gallery in which people can talk, making it a focal point for the neighbourhood.
08:48 Eden winds up the interview
08:59 Eden and Connie discuss using face-to-face events to reinforce online communities. Eden uses HoHoTO, a party created by the mesh guys which is also being used as a fundraiser for the Daily Bread Foodbank, as an example (see the HoHoTO Facebook page). Eden mentions Viigo as one office using it as their annual seasonal party. Connie talks about a question that came up at Sustainability Camp, whether on-line social networking tools can replace in-person interaction.
14:13 Community calendar
15:07 We would like to hear how you are keeping connected between events.
15:17 Eden winds up the episode.
Community calendar:

1. HoHoTo - Toronto - Dec. 15 , The Mod Club 7 p.m.
2. Podcamp Halifax - http://podcamphalifax.ca/ - January 25, 2009
3. Podcamp Toronto - http://podcamptoronto.org/ - February 21 & 22, 2009
4. Mesh conference Apr 7 &8 - http://www.meshconference.com - April 7 & 8, 2009.

Our cool theme music “Get Out of My Face” is by Uncle Seth and is from the Podsafe Music Network.
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