Circulation Efforts
In preparation for our pop-up museum, I helped to draft the email that would then be sent to the WRD faculty and student emails, hung up posters around campus, discussed the museum and showed the poster in class, and posted it on my personal social media.
In preparation for our pop-up museum, I helped to draft the email that would then be sent to the WRD faculty and student emails, hung up posters around campus, discussed the museum and showed the poster in class, and posted it on my personal social media.
I created the email in the same tone that I typically use in the emails that I have sent during my on-campus jobs as the audience was going to consist of both faculty and staff. I wanted to be sure that it included all of the necessary information for the museum, but not also too much information that it is overwhelming and does not hold the attention of the viewers. Since this was going to come from the WRD email account, it already had a better chance of being clicked on than if it just came from my email account. I incorporated one of the short descriptions that my classmates created to provide a snapshot of what the event is. This approach was catered more towards students involved in the WRD department and faculty members that way they can get a glimpse into what the seniors in the department have learned during their time in the program.
I hung up the posters, albeit reluctantly, in the Student Center. I spend most of my time on the third floor so that is where I hung my posters. I chose to do this also because I anticipated my classmates hanging their posters up on the other floors since they are more highly trafficked by the general student population. As seen in my first feature writing, I do not anticipate these posters having much of an impact on the turnout of the event as they are frequently ignored. I also noticed that the posters were taken down a few days after I put them up, despite them being approved by the Office of Student Involvement. Hopefully, these posters caught the eye of some students who would not typically find themselves in the WRD department.
I am enrolled in two other in-person WRD courses so I made sure to advertise the event to my peers in those classes. I had already begun to talk about the project with some of my peers in my graduate class, however, most of them work during the day so I do not anticipate them being able to attend. My other class is an experiential learning course and has mainly non-major students enrolled. These students did not seem outwardly keen on the idea of attending but were polite nonetheless. So even though I tried personally advertising the museum via word of mouth, I do not anticipate a high turnout rate from this approach.
The day before the pop-up museum I posted the flyer on my personal social media. I posted it first to my Instagram story where I discussed how much time I spent on the project for it. It had been an incredibly draining day and the project took much longer than I had anticipated so I attempted to almost guilt my followers into showing up just because they feel bad for me — we’ll see if it works. I then saved the same image that I posted on Instagram and shared it on my twitter and snapchat. Twitter, most of my followers/people I interact with do not go to DePaul and do not live in Chicago so I do not anticipate them showing up although it would be a great surprise to boost my spirits during finals. Snapchat, well nobody really uses that anymore but I figured why not post it just in case it brings someone in.
All in all, I tried to get the word out about this event but am still not incredibly hopeful for a large turnout as there are many factors working against us. DePaul being a predominantly commuter school has a hard time with event turnouts no matter what they are, people tend to view the WRD department as the first-year writing department and they usually do not have the best opinions based on that, and it is finals week so people do not have much spare time and if they do they are likely renting a napping space at The Ray.
