Leading a Healthy Digital Life

Episode Transcript:

Haley Hnatuk  00:00

If your online community or the people who are surrounding your work online, whether that is on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or whatever platform you're using, are making you feel negatively about your work. giving yourself the ability to step away and to take time and to rest from posting is also a really, really valid and important part of the artistic process.

Isotta Page  00:28

This is Art Is… a podcast for artists, where we brainstorm the future of the art world and the creative industries.

Haley Hnatuk  00:37

I'm Hayley natak. And I work at fast mail as a content marketing coordinator, which means I really create and curate all of fast mails, blog content, their newsletter content and social media content. I'm also the producer of their podcast, digital citizen, which is an apple top tech podcast that focuses on how individuals can live healthier digital lives. Additionally, I work as an editor and assistant producer on the feature length, documentary and love in memory, which follows a mother's move into community activism in the wake of her son's murder as she assembles personal and collective memories to poetically reframe her loss within Allentown, Pennsylvania is haunting legacy of systemic violence, really, all of the work that I do is focused around and committed to using digital technology as a way of connecting people and as a way of helping people tell their stories. So I joined the and love and memory team in 2019. So pre pandemic, I was a senior in college, and I got brought onto the team as an intern, and I was helping them assemble a grant cut because we were looking to start getting some more funding for the project. And since then, I've had the ability to join the team in a more expansive capacity. In 2020, I had the opportunity to attend Skidmore Storyteller's Institute in Saratoga Springs, New York with the team. And while I was there, we really thought heavily about the institute's theme, which was how to create with people but also like the discontents of creating with people and how it can be hard and difficult work to do, collaboratively. And after coming out of the institute, I joined the team, as a editor, and as an assistant producer, and have been working with them for the last almost three years now in that capacity.

Isotta Page  02:41

Cool. So when you're thinking about such a salient and important project, like in love and memory, how are you hoping to bring people in and create community around that project

Haley Hnatuk  02:56

for us, it really started off as reaching out to friends reaching out to family, reaching out to our local community and tapping into the people that we have in our immediate in person offline network, and getting them to follow along with our story and our journey. And since then, we've kind of seen it echo outward. And we've seen our communities expand outside of Allentown into Philadelphia into other neighboring states into communities entirely across the globe and across the country from us. And that's really our goal. Our goal is to sort of design this marketing strategy that's focused around raising awareness for the core themes that our film is exploring of gun violence and gentrification and continue to expand our audience outward as we get closer to distributing our film.

Isotta Page  03:55

As you create this kind of marketing strategy. I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on how you navigate such a poignant and sensitive topic, online, and any thoughts you have on creating digestible, shareable media around such a film, because so many times I feel that it's very surface level, some marketing efforts. And for a creative feature length film, I can imagine it would be very challenging to be able to communicate the depth and impact of the project on a platform like Instagram or Twitter. So how are you thinking about creating that kind of content? Yeah,

Haley Hnatuk  04:43

I mean, one thing that we do throughout everything is center, shallots voice Shaolin is the mother that our film is following who lost her son Paris. And, you know, Shaolin is one of the CO directors, co producers, the lead protagonist Have our film and a lot of these posts like we post on Paris's Angel Versary. We post on Paris's birthday, and we post on these hard days. And it's really working with Shallan. To create a post that she feels really positively about curating images that she feels positive about, that she wants to live alongside the film and live alongside the stories that we're telling online. And also, you know, centering her voice. So if Shallan has something that she wants to say, about Paris, on his birthday, co writing a post with her, like working on the post with her and getting the message out that she wants to tell is really, really important to us.

Isotta Page  05:46

It's really interesting to see that human recentering online and bringing back personal stories and personal voices through what can be sometimes interpreted as like an echo chamber or like empty platform, it's really cool to be able to hear that you guys have been working so hard on that. And I'm sure you're setting an amazing example for so many other creatives. So in terms of the scope of the project and your goals around the purpose of the film, which you mentioned, we're raising awareness on gun violence and gentrification. How do you recommend other creatives that are perhaps working on a mission driven project like that go about creating community and sharing their work online or offline?

Haley Hnatuk  06:32

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a really big question. And I think that there's no one size fits all approach. I think we are still in the process of imagining what our engagement strategy is online and tweaking things that we do like what feels good to us, what doesn't feel good to us what is working, what isn't working like all of those things. And I think we're hoping to arrive at a final strategy ahead of distribution of our film, so that we can hit the ground running when we get there and implement a strategy that we're really, really positive about. But right now, our focus is more centered around just building community around our film, and building and growing an audience of people who want to stay engaged with our project, while we're sort of still in the stages of post production.

Isotta Page  07:27

Yeah, and I mean, it's always quite hard as well, like while you're in that creative phase to think about how to market or communicate around that project. And so it's very challenging, like, I just finished a large scale project. And during the entire duration of it, I didn't think about sharing it at all. And now I'm kind of trying to backtrack a bit and develop a strategy with which to present that work to the world. But it's really hard. So are there any best practices that you could share with us on how to think about taking like a personal piece of work and sharing it? I know that there's some examples online, which are good, but I've always kind of struggled with that more like creative marketing side around art making. And I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Haley Hnatuk  08:16

Yeah, I would say that this probably cheesy, or maybe a little bit cliche, but setting a core goal cannot be undervalued, going in early. And saying like, this is my goal for sharing about this work. This is what I want to achieve by sharing this really helps prevent posting about things that are maybe confusing or feel disconnected or just don't really drive whatever your goal was, because you're not posting with that goal in mind. So I think for us within Levin memory, our core goal that we started off with was putting our local community first, and sharing resources that can help people in our local community sharing like Scribe is somebody who has funded our film, and they've done some awesome workshops and film screenings recently around the topic of gun violence. And we've been sharing those opportunities out with our community on Facebook, because we want people who are local to be able to connect with local opportunities so that they can engage with these topics more expansively. So I think just setting a core goal for what you want your engagement online to elicit.

Isotta Page  09:34

And when you say setting a core goal, if you're maybe working in not a film field, say like you're a painter, and you want to share your paintings with the world. Would you recommend thinking about perhaps one of the themes behind your work could illustrate your goal or maybe a certain story behind the work that you'd like to share or a target audience that you're hoping sees the work with those all inform that goal. Because often, I feel that when you're working alone, and you don't have someone or a team to craft these kinds of strategic thoughts around, it's very challenging to do. So how do you think about that?

Haley Hnatuk  10:18

I think core goals can be hyper personal. So maybe one person's core goal of a social media campaign is just for more people to know that they paint because I, you know, have a lot of people in my life who have Etsy stores, they make earrings, they do paintings, they're small, independent artists, and they don't widely share with their communities on social media about the fact that they have these ventures outside of what people can see. So for some people, it might just be I want to do a series of for posts that talk about the fact that I paint so that people know that I do that. Or it could be maybe you are doing a run of earrings, and you want people to buy them, it could just be I want people to know about this earring sale that I'm having, I want to do a slate of five posts about that. And also goals don't have to be tailored to yourself, it could be tailored more to the theme that you're working on, like you said, so maybe you did a series of three paintings about gun violence, or people who had survived gun violence. And you want to share them with people alongside resources to local community organizations that are working to combat gun violence, or to help youth who have been affected by gun violence, you can also say that your core goals of your campaign are to raise awareness for those local initiatives and programs. So I think it's really unique to whatever you feel the core goal of what you're working on is,

Isotta Page  12:02

that's a really great suggestion in terms of finding parallel initiatives or programs or projects related to your work and being able to use that as a context funnel. Because so often, I think artists feel that they're working in isolation. But when you just look slightly beyond the scope of your work, you can see how it relates to the world around you. And it's a great way of bringing other people into that work, which is often so hard to do, if you're not comfortable talking about your work or you know, recording a video or a podcast about it directly, which is very hard to do. So that's, that's really helpful. I really appreciate that. So now that we're talking about these ideas of community and creating that group, or enthusiasm around a project, I think it's also really important to note that community doesn't actually mean like millions of people, it can just mean like a five or six people or 20 people or something, who you engage with on a recurring basis to share about your practice or about a project. And I think it's really amazing that you guys, despite pursuing an online strategy are hyper focused on your local community. Because despite COVID, opening up our parameters to the rest of the world, and connecting us online, more so than ever, it's amazing to be able to see that technology can also highly connect us to our local environment. And I think that's really cool. So when you think about community, how do you define that in more of like a realistic way, because often I feel with Instagram, we get so caught up on how many likes a post has or how many followers a post has. But in reality, if your post only had two or three likes, you could feel demoralized. But if two or three people actually came up to you and said how much they liked your work, it would be so impactful. So returning to this human basis on a smaller scale, I think is just so crucial to maintaining enthusiasm and optimism around sharing your work. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on community size and scale and your approaches around that. Yeah,

Haley Hnatuk  14:09

I mean, I feel like you said it really well. When you said getting two likes on an Instagram post might feel demoralizing, but like having two people come up to you in real life. That is indescribable, like the feeling of somebody coming up to you in the real world and saying, like, I engaged with your work in a meaningful way or whatever it is that they're saying. So I would say it is important in many ways in the online world that we live in to set boundaries when you have to and if your online community or the people who are surrounding your work online, whether that is on Twitter, or Instagram or Facebook or whatever platform you're using are making you feel negatively about your work giving yourself the ability to step away and to take time and To rest from posting is also a really, really valid and important part of the artistic process. Last month, Drew and challen, were in person at Skidmore. Again, doing another fellowship. And while they were there, we made the decision that we didn't want to post during their residency that we wanted to wait until after the residency was over and do a series of more retrospective posts, so that when they were there, they could really focus on being present. And in the moment, and I think that sometimes that can get undervalued. Sometimes people can be so focused on posting that story post or posting that feed post of you like right there at the table in the moment and be like, Look where I am. But sometimes it is important to take a step away and let yourself be present and not let yourself get caught up in the likes or the replies or the follows if that's something that is impacting you negatively, in terms of what community means to me, I think that community can mean so many different things. But it really just has to do with having people who continue to show up for you, and continue to show up for your work and engage with it in any way that they feel compelled to engage with it. And sometimes those are things that you don't see maybe that's somebody walking over to their friend and saying, Look at this post from Haley about this thing that she's doing. Instagram doesn't tell you about word of mouth of your Instagram posts, but like that is just as powerful if not more powerful than actually like getting a like on your feed. So in loving memory is currently in post production. So we do not have any distribution dates settled yet. We're currently actually working on sort of developing our distribution strategy and Film Festival planning strategy and all of that stuff right now. But if you want to hear more about our film, we are on Facebook, and we are on Instagram and we're on Twitter and it's just at in love in memory and on Twitter. It's at in love in memory film.

Isotta Page  17:15

Thank you for listening to art is a podcast for artists. Please leave art is a podcast for artists a rating and review on Apple podcasts. It really helps others find us. Also I would love it if you took a moment to reflect on who in your life might also benefit from listening to this podcast. When you do please share artists or podcasts for artists with them. So we can continue to grow the show organically and brainstorm the future of the art world together. You can also support the work I do by subscribing wherever you listen, and by donating to the podcast. The link to do so is in the episode description. Okay, that's it for now. Thanks so much and see you next Wednesday.