The National Gallery is a digital archive of compositions accessible to all through a free, searchable website—a living archive of thousands of examples of writing from across the United States.
- Writers will include with their composition information about themselves and the reasons they selected and submitted it to the Gallery.
- All sorts of compositions will be accepted, including (but not limited to) electronic presentations, blog posts, documentary clips, poetry readings, “how to” directions, short stories, memos, audio and video clips.
The National Gallery features three types of display spaces all curated and collected in a variety of galleries:
What is a Local Gallery?
All sorts of groups may become Local Partner Galleries: clubs, businesses, classes, church groups, families, fire house crews, Girl Scout troops, libraries, Boys’ Clubs, Rotary Clubs, Condo Associations, VFW Posts, etc.
There are three reasons to organize a Local Partner Gallery: celebrate writing, have fun, and build camaraderie.
If you’d like to recruit local galleries in your area you can contact groups and invite them to organize and you can volunteer to make a presentation to those groups on why and how to set up a local gallery.
- If the groups are already formally organized groups (e.g. a Boy Scout Troop), you can contact the president or group leader to invite them to organize.
- If the groups are not formally organized (e.g., staff and customers of a local business), look for a leader to get things going. That leader would have these attributes: interested in the project, well-organized, energetic, socially committed, might have a role like newsletter editor.
- You may also want to look for helpers in organizing a local group like local librarians or teachers.
- Think about contacting Americorps, sports organizations, Key Clubs, student clubs and NCTE student affiliates, high tech companies, film Schools or media projects, screen writers guild, Best Buy, Target.
Getting Started
The first thing a prospective local gallery will want to do is hold an organizational meeting. Some members of the local gallery will need to assume certain roles: curator/writing assistant, October 20th event planner, publicity, fun and camaraderie organizer. At the this first meeting, they’ll want to:
- Set a name, theme, and brief description of their Gallery.
- Set a timeline for what they want to accomplish.
- Think about creating a blog or email list or phone tree to communicate among the organizers and members.
Curator Duties and Tools
- Name a curator and maybe assistant curator(s).
- Decide who will apply for the local gallery and when.
If there is/are an assistant curator(s), the curators will want to to discuss how they’ll handle distribution of submissions/load balancing. The curators will need to develop guidelines for reviewing submissions. See
NCTE’s guidelines as a model.
- Check out the information for curators as the gallery develops.
