John Doe to help Tate bring art to under-25s

By John Owens, prweek.com, Tuesday, 05 February 2013 09:52AM

The Tate group of galleries has brought in agency help for a UK-wide campaign to engage with under-25s.

John Doe will help the Tate promote Circuit, a new national programme aimed at giving those aged 15 to 25 a chance to experience art.

The £5m Circuit programme was announced in December and is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

John Doe was given the work after a non-competitive pitch and will generate marketing and media content to raise awareness of a three-day festival launching the initiative.

Named Circuit: Tate Modern ‘Hyperlink’, it will be held in The Tanks at London’s Tate Modern at the end of April. The agency’s project brief will extend until then.

John Doe founder Rana Reeves said: ‘We have an exciting content idea that will use YouTube and digital channels to reinterpret the Circuit activity.’

Tate’s appointment of John Doe follows the agency’s previous work supporting the Chris Ofili exhibition to the same audience.

John Doe account manager Woody Anderson will lead the work and report to Claire Eva, head of marketing and audiences at Tate.

Eva said that a big draw in John Doe’s proposal was the ‘simplicity of the digital content idea they have developed and the collaborative approach they are taking’.

It will be rolled out across the country through galleries in the Plus Tate network, with the aim of reaching 80,000 young people.

A record 5.3 million people visited Tate Modern last year, up 9.5 per cent on 2011, according to the gallery.

Tate Britain was visited by around 1.5 million people, up 4.3 per cent.

This article was first published on prweek.com