As my 2 year old says whenever she enters a room: I’m back.

2025 was basically my ‘can I survive being a freelancer year’ so I’m trying to come at 2026 a bit more intentionally:

• Chatting more with interesting people doing interesting things (if you fancy a chat let me know, even if you don’t think you’re interesting (because you probably are))

• Focusing more on the bread and butter. What are the best formats arts and culture organisations can use? How can we characterise and learn from different approaches? How do you structure posts on different platforms?

• Digging into what our sector actually needs when it comes to content. Few organisations can afford a content person or a team, and when they do they usually wear many other hats. I’m finding that a lot of places think they need a strategy, when in fact they just need a kick up the arse and some inspiration to just make things rather than think about making things. So maybe I’ll make an agency called the Boot Up the Jacksy.

Anyway, hope you had a good break.

Content of this week

• This meme about digitisation (!) is sitting on 4.4K Likes. The old adage that your community is out there somewhere and you just need to reach them is true. Students, academics, historians and museum/archive workers exist on social media.

• On that note, 100k+ Likes for this music video about Norman architecture.

• Millennial nostalgia has truly arrived, and Manchester Museum did a clever play on being in your MCR phase (i.e. Manchester/My Chemical Romance).

• This is just a straight, clean, classic mythbuster video about why doorways were so low in the olden times.

• You can’t beat ‘The purpose of this is to try and make you vomit’ as an opener. Most of the V&A’s social videos are too produced for most places to emulate, but you can still emulate the structure.

The bullet point bit

• One thing I/we have to deal with is inertia which is driven by the overwhelming amount of content we consume. When you see other people doing so well with content and you don’t know how/where to start you forget that you’re just witnessing the combined output of some of the best creators (who had to start somewhere). i.e. this Bluesky post.

• The only other stuff I’ve read so far this year is a few articles about how the USA is going to hell in a handbasket, and I don’t think you want to read those.

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I finally stopped playing Europa Universalis IV and picked up books again, smashing through three volumes of Dungeon Crawler Carl (HIGHLY recommend), Dark Matter (meh) and a decent book about life during the Commonwealth of England (also recommend).

I also just started playing Death Stranding 2, where you deliver packages and connect up a world where people have been driven underground due to a paranormal plague (weirdly, the first game came out before COVID). It’s a game that comes closest to art imo, and it’s been a long time since I simply sat back in awe at what we can achieve with graphics (particularly this level).

I’m also listening a lot to this band called Angine de Poitrine, who dress up in stupid Dada-esque costumes because I’m a wanker.

🐕 Frank

It’s my sister’s cat