ARTnews is ambitious and we are realising our complete vision.

It is our aim to bring more magic to people, everywhere, in the form of accessiblity to and management of the Australian arts. This vision entails:

• lifting the burden of mundane tasks from arts administrators,
• providing a successful venue where gallery and arts promoters can publicize their genre,
• giving control of the arts back to arts practitioners and promoters,
• providing a system people can use to find the kind of magic they want regardless of their knowledge about the arts and
• popularising the arts

all the while expanding people's knowledge horizon.

• Proofing all gallery locations in Sydney (about 3/4 of the way through).

• Printing the A3, 4 colour, Sydney Arts Map with Web Star, recommended to us by Craig Denousky at the Sydney Opera House's Studio Theatre.

• Expanding the power of our search engine so that it presents results that take ARTnews users directly to client's web sites.

• Developing a disclaimer for our gallery clients to click through before access and publishing from their dedicated ARTnews console.

• It is established that the ARTnews visitor looked at an average of 17 pages in June 2003. We are working on meta text and formatting issues that will increase:
  • the number of visitors,
  • the number of pages they use and
  • the number of times they return.

• ARTnews currently features as the No. 1 item in google.com search results for, "art news Australia". It always appears on the front page of reults, in 4th or 5th position for, "gallery guide Australia", or one of our captial cities. We are working on the issues surrounding our success in other searches gernerated by other word combination in the major search engines results.

• We are also currently debugging the ARTnews php system as it stands. If you spot any flaws and use anything that works in an unexpected way, please let Jayne know by email at [email protected] or phone, +61 (0) 421 494 786.

• 2000 - 2 meetings of 28 ART Gallery Operators from the Inner West of Sydney were held at "In My Bedroom" Camperdown, NSW to pool ideas regarding the development of an Arts publication that features local content and products that would meet the common needs of the galleries.

• 2000 - Published the first map of Sydney Art Galleries with assistance from NAVA.

• 2000 - the first ARTnews newsletters were faxed around to Sydney's galleries with sponsorship from the Art on King: art suppliers, Kennard's Art Storage and Coburn Fine Arts Conservation. ( Click to view a copy of some of our promotional material used then.)

• 2000 - We document and display the first end of year tertiary shows for the benefit of our art gallery members.

• 2001 - artnews.com.au is launched as a simple site featuring an interactive flash copy of our first Sydney Arts Map. Please visit this original document by clicking here. We've come a long way.

• 2001 - ARTnews begins to supply Arts Media Data to the Galleries of Sydney and begins looking into expanding to Melbourne.

• 2001 - ARTnews continues to document and display tertiary and other publicly available, large group shows to show case talent and make works more readily appraisable to art gallery clients.

• 2002 - ARTnews expands to South Australia and Tasmania.

• 2002 - ARTnews begins preparation for the publication of our core fundraiser, the publication of the Sydney Arts Map. This map is geared up to include theatre and performance venues as well as art galleries and studios.

• 2002 - ARTnews includes hard coded media releases and pictures contributed by participating galleries in both Sydney and Melbourne.

• 2002 - ARTnews begins php development in order to realize the dream of an on-line Arts Publication that is contributed to directly on-line, via a console from which they can also access other resources provided by ARTnews.

• 2002 - ARTnews starts publishing art criticism and essays. For examples, click the following: Sydney Biennale 2002, Interview with Lea Lennon, Sandy Edwards: documentary photography, Painter Gary Gregg. Waterford decided that the priority texts to be published on ARTnews from this point are media release and other material of member origin. Essays will only be commissioned for ARTnews and published if the topic is generalist or entertaining to suppliment the variety of material in the ARTnews newsfeed as well as entice ARTnews users to return more often.

• 2003 - Galleries who supported ARTnews by paying for subscriptions in 2002 are rewarded for their effort with free templates published on the pages representing them on ARTnews: Examples include:

• 2003- the ARTnews console is launched. From this console members can publish, unmoderated and unimpeded, directly to ARTnews, media releases, catalogue essays, commissioned pieces of writing and artist's statements.

• 2003 - the ARTnews Search Engine is launched. This search facility currently searches and returns listed results from all of the data currently uploaded to ARTnews via the ARTnews console on our dynamic site. This facility is in the process of being expanded.

• 2003 - ARTnews expands to New Zealand and Regional Australia. We are thrilled to have the Gold Coast Regional Gallery, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Canberra Museum and Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery and the Adelaide Festival Centre support us in our first foray beyond Sydney and Melbourne.

• 2003 - The ARTnews console is expanded to include access to the arts media databases.

• Generating an opening event and time summary for each region.

• Automating the ARTnews user subscription service so that on the 1st of the month users are emailed a compilation of links to that months arts events around the nation. This will be a service that users will have to manage themselves, requiring no effort from ARTnews staff, placing no drain on our resources, with the exception of initial set up.

• Developing icons to represent the three publicly available ARTnews facilities: MY ARTnews access, Search and Email. This will make our site look even more pleasing.

• Developing a Forum for the arts community forum. This will feature threads that will be kept live for a specified time and free public membership for the purpose of posting opinions and information.

• Developing a disclaimer for the forum posting public to click through before their account goes live to protect ARTnews from any action against slanderous or defaming comments made by members on our forum.

• Over-haulling our arts media resources so that people can send documents to particular media persons directly from our console, cutting down the number of steps involved in getting out your media releases and invitations.

• E-com facilties.

• Business Management System: We would like to develop a stock management facility, accessed through the member console, that will allow members to manage their stock, uploading pictures of new arrivals, as they come in and enter inventory, so that stock is displayed on the member's web site, effortlessly, with the check of an online check box, and automatically removed from display when sold. It is our aim to make this system GST compatible.

• Investigating the provision of a mailing list management, invitation preparation and provision service.