GLAMi nomination: Let’s YouTube: Changing Channels

Let’s YouTube: Changing Channels
How can a temporary exhibition about a dynamic subject as YouTube stay dynamic and engaging for a diverse audience?

YouTube has initiated a sea change in the global media landscape. When the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision opened it’s doors in 2006 it didn’t even exist, but now the platform plays a core role in both the online and offline lives of many. Ample reason to dedicate a temporary exhibition to YouTube: Let’s YouTube!

Although YouTube is everywhere, there has never been a physical exhibition about it. Let’s YouTube is an interactive experience in which visitors will discover YouTube’s impact on their daily lives. Visitors are challenged to test their skills and knowledge at five interactive tables. Goal is to earn as many credits as possible, which can be coined in the YouTube Rooms of the exhibition. Besides this gamification-element, visitors will both get to look ‘behind the scenes’ of the platform itself, and experience the creator’s side.

The exhibition is a shift for the Institute in multiple ways.
Firstly it’s in the process of widening its archival focus from media to multimedia, venturing from the core collection of radio and tv out to games and internet culture.
Secondly the exhibition is a big step from a ‘classic’ exhibition towards a monthly changing exhibition and public programming. The public programming is aimed at capturing – and interacting with – the many social influencers and it’s fanbase. Where previously the main focus was on communicating the exhibition to one primary target group and developing peripheral programming during the entire duration of the exhibition, now there is a constant need created in the visitor to visit the varied programming and monthly changing exhibition.

Besides a place where you can meet your favourite YouTuber, the programming – in which we collaborate with a variety of (commercial) partners every month – positions Sound and Vision as a space for debate and creation around changing themes.

Let’s YouTube is an interactive experience in which visitors will discover YouTube’s impact on their daily lives. Visitors are challenged to test their skills and knowledge at five interactive tables. Goal is to earn as many credits as possible, which can be coined in the YouTube Rooms of the exhibition. Besides this gamification-element, visitors will both get to look ‘behind the scenes’ of the platform itself, and experience the creator’s side. The main target group for the exhibition is children (age 8-14) and their parents.