Culture24, originally the 24 Hour Museum, is a British charity which publishes websites, ''Culture24'', ''Museum Crush'' and ''Show Me'', about visual culture and heritage in the United Kingdom, as well as supplying data and support services to other cultural websites including Engaging Places. It operates independently, and receives government funding.

Organisation

Culture24 is based in

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

, southern England, and has ten employees. The Culture24 Director is Jane Finnis, who contributed a chapter to ''Learning to Live: Museums, young people and education'' and in March 2010 was named as one of 50 "Women to Watch" in the United Kingdom cultural and creative sectors by the Cultural Leadership Programme. Past Culture24 chairman include John Newbigin, who was named as one of

Wired Magazine ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online magazine, online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquar ...

's top 100 people shaping the digital world in May 2010. The charity was founded in 2001 as the ''24 Hour Museum'', when the website of the same name became an independent company. The organisation changed its name to ''Culture24'' in November 2007, and the website followed suit on 11 February 2009. Culture24 is a registered charity and is funded by the

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through

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three s ...

(ACE).

Purpose

The (now defunct)

Museums, Libraries and Archives Council The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) was until May 2012 a non-departmental public body and registered charity in England with a remit to promote improvement and innovation in the area of museums, libraries and archives. Its function ...

was working with Culture24 as one of its partners in furthering the council's digital agenda, specifically helping to deliver: Culture24 also administered

Museums at Night (UK) Museums at Night was a twice-yearly festival of late openings, sleepovers and special events taking place in museums, galleries, libraries, archive and heritage sites in the United Kingdom. It was affiliated with the European Night of Museums prog ...

between 2010 and 2019, the annual weekend of late openings at museums, galleries and heritage sites.

Websites

The main ''Culture24'' website is a guide to museums, public galleries, libraries, archives, heritage sites and science centres. It has a database of over 5,000 cultural institutions, who are able to update the information about their activities. It features daily arts, museum, history and heritage news, and exhibition reviews. News stories are available as

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

newsfeed In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, po ...

. Culture24 also runs a site for children, ''Show Me'', which has online activities related to UK museums and galleries, including interactive games, quizzes and competitions. A section of the site contains guidance for parents and teachers about using online resources from museums and galleries. In 2009, Culture24 was runner-up in the Nominet Trust Best Practice Challenge. The Culture24 suite of websites won the 2010 "best of the web" award (long lived category) at the Museums and the Web Conference. Culture24 is also listed as one of the

Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unite ...

's top 100 essential websites, and one of the

Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

' top 10 museum websites.

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Culture24 company website

Museum Crush website

Show Me children's website
Organizations established in 2001 Organisations based in Brighton and Hove Virtual museums *Culture24 Charities based in East Sussex Museum organizations