Dulwich OnView: an art museum-based virtual community generated by the local community

Dulwich OnView (DOV) is a museum blog magazine run by the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery (DPG) for the surrounding community in south London. It includes articles concerning both the gallery and the local community, helping to promote DPG in the process, in a fast-moving informal way that complements the official DPG website. For example, a competition for online artworks has been undertaken using DOV in association with a temporary exhibition of works by the 20 th century British artist Paul Nash. This paper provides an overview of the progress of the blog, since its launch in January 2008, including statistical information. A redesign of the DOV blog has been undertaken in 2010, aimed at a better structuring of the increasing number of articles into categories and the integration between the more formal and static DPG website and the more informal and dynamic DOV website, with suitable interconnecting links. As part of the redesign process for the DOV website a usability review was conducted. DOV has also been part of a wider study, investigating a number of varied museum-based virtual communities in an art education context using the social science Community of Practice (CoP) framework.