Your Gallery at the Saatchi Gallery

Most of you reaching this post won't know this, but I was contracted at the Saatchi Gallery in March 2006 to initally provide holiday cover but, having enjoyed working hard I went on to manage and launch the 'Your Gallery' websites which has attracted some good press recently. 'Your Gallery' was the start of a new era for the Saatchi Gallery, on its move into the social Web2.0 arena.

Working closely to, and taking direct instructions from, Charles Saatchi, I project managed 'Your Gallery' - a place for all artists (whether good or bad, professional or not) to create their own page on the saatchigallery.com website - for free. This was evolutionary for the online art world because firstly, although the web already provides web portals for fee-paying artists to exhibit their work, not only is Saatchi's Your Gallery is free but it also provides the launching block and prestige having a page on the Saatchi Gallery website provides. Hence its success.

The Your Gallery website
No restrictions on Who uploads work (see below) and no work is vetted before publication on the website to see if suitable or not. A funny thing is the un-answered question of whether Charles will see your work. Well, with Charles who takes pride and an interest in anything he has dealing with - he may actually see your work when he takes, perhaps, his daily stroll through his website.

The site doesn't charge or take a commission on any work sold, but as Charles has said in an interview in the Guardian on September 6th, 2006, he doesn't purchase any of the art on Your Gallery. Even if you weren’t an artist, you could make an attempt at dabbling in a bit of art, take a photo of it to upload it. You may be a natural and get a call from someone wanting ti buy it?

Open to anyone
The site is indeed open to everyone. Taken away - as per Charles' instructions - are the usual, at least, email verification before work is published. This simple barrier is what I, and the web team who coded the site, recommended to be typical as a simple precaution to protecting the gallery and Charles himself from abuse on the website. But Charles' way is different. On one hand is his self-admitted lack of IT knowledge which gives him a feel for how things should be done in the non-IT world. On the other hand is his vision on how he sees his ideas. We should trust him a little - as the Your Gallery project is progressing really well, having attracted more than 10,000 new artists since May 2006, and in a special collaboration with the Guardian newspaper, the best 30 Your Gallery artists will be in a exhibition in October 2006.

Was it a hard project to launch? Extremely.
Although the technical side is simple - a basic PHP / MySQL web application facilitating a members area - the hard bit was satisfying a powerful man like Charles in the delivery of an IT project which wasn't the norm - although technically this made it easier, the risk of abuse was increased. But, like I said above, Charles' vision is to be trusted a little in what he wants to do.

More Web2.0
The Your Gallery project was extended with further applications, which I also project managed and launched. These are

• Blog On - a blog site,
  
• an online meeting/dating place called Meet other people who like art
• along with a chat room to talk all about it.
  

In summary
The Saatchi Gallery website is an interesting place to visit while the build of the new Saatchi Gallery opens on Kings Road, London SW1 next year. Lots of interesting things are to come.