Culture Cloud Timeline

Stage 1 : 5th March - Friday 4th May 2012

Register and upload a picture of your 2D art work for example, Paintings, photos, collage (must be in JPG, TIFF or PDF format with a minimum resoultion of 500p)

Stage 2 : 4th June -5th July

Registration closes and the featured cruator (a curator picked by NAE) picks the best 60 entrys. The top 60 are then displayed on the Artfinder site and voting takes place using Facebook 'likes'.

Stage 3 : 6th July - 27th July

The public then pick the top 30. These works are then displayed at an exclusive exhibition at the New Art Exchange (winners recieve £50 towards delivery costs). The artists can also sell prints of the works online via BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Stage 4 : 18th July - 25th August

Voting takes place during the exhibition. Two winners are picked, one by the public, one by the featured curator. Each winner recieves £1000 cash and a custom iPad.

About Culture Cloud

CULTURE CLOUD is a digital space for artists to upload their art work onto a web portal where a team of recognised national and international curators and audiences will vote for the works they like. The most popular and intriguing will be exhibited at New Art Exchange in August 2012 in a unique exhibition which will see two of the finalists crowned the winners of CULTURE CLOUD.

CULTURE CLOUD is a new pioneering digital project headed by New Art Exchange, supported by a national network of galleries and visual arts organisations. The initiative explores new ways of curating exhibitions, engaging artists and audiences using digital technology.

CULTURE CLOUD is one of eight experimental projects selected to benefit from the new NESTA digital fund for arts and culture. The fund aims to support arts and cultural organisations to work with those with digital expertise to understand the potential offered by new technologies for arts and culture.

CULTURE CLOUD offers a unique experience to arts audiences. For the first time the audience will play an active role in the curatorial process using the Facebook ‘liking’ system to rate work via the CULTURE CLOUD website, thus transforming how public gallery spaces work with local communities and audiences in curating public gallery spaces.

The overall winners of CULTURE CLOUD will receive a cash prize of up to £2000, a personal iPad app and the possibility of a solo show at New Art Exchange in the future.

CULTURE CLOUD, 2012 is a real time experiment supported by NESTA, Arts Council England and Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Following the launch of the £0.5 million NESTA Fund in June 2011, 495 projects applied for a total of £28.5 million worth of funding. Eight projects were finally selected to receive funding including London Symphony Orchestra, Imperial War Museum, The Sage Gateshead and New Art Exchange.

New Art Exchange have partnered with a number of galleries and visual arts organizations nationally who will support the project including championing a number of artists in the application process. Project partners include: FACT, Asian Triennial Manchester, Next Level Project, Arts Admin, Format Festival/Derby Quad, Primary, Midlands Art Centre (MAC) and Cornerhouse. The academic research partner is Birmingham City University.