Discovering the art in your blog

Over the past few weeks I’ve been to several museums and seen some amazing art. Wandering the galleries and reading about the artists’ journeys and innovation, I’ve thought again and again of blogging. We tend to think of our blogs as small spaces for quotidian stories, but there’s an opportunity to tell a wider story. Even by blogging we’re contributing to a larger movement that celebrates individual voices and personal viewpoints.

As print magazines and newspapers struggle, those of us in the online world have at our fingertips countless tools, widgets, plug-ins and platforms to reach a growing audience. We can speak directly to them about the things we think are important.

Through photoblogging, Instagramming and Pinning, we can create visual tableaux that imparts all kinds of ideas. In a way we do it without even thinking. We pin an image that appeals to us and it becomes part of a bigger whole that tells the story of our likes and dislikes and obsessions. With every written post, we’re adding to a log of the issues and emotions we deem important.

The theme could be “celebration of the home sphere”. Or “juxtaposition of the natural versus manmade world”. Or a comment on “childhood today”.

Perhaps it’s time to take it one step further. Consider your blog and your social media outlets a curated space. You control it completely. Like the artists featured in the hallowed halls of our museums, we can comment on modern life. We can effect change (so many people are doing this already, using their social influence to raise awareness of good causes).

As bloggers and part of this community, we’re members of a “school”, as were the individuals who were part of Modernism or Impressionism. And we don’t have to wait until the establishment recognises us. We speak directly to our audiences.

We may not know exactly what it is we’re making right now, while we’re doing it. But in the coming weeks, think about not just the beauty of what you’re writing, photographing and sharing, but also the messages you’re sending out by doing it.

In the coming weeks we’ll be announcing the shortlist for the BiB awards — one way we acknowledge excellence and innovation in our world. Yet all of us can raise our personal bar and set our sights higher. It may not be featured on the walls of the Royal Academy or Metropolitan Museum, but we can all challenge ourselves to make blogging art.

About Jennifer Howze

Jennifer Howze is the Creative Director and co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about family travel at Jenography.net, tweets at @JHowze and Instagrams at @JHowze. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• YouTube
|
• More Posts(343)