A few weeks ago, Morgan and Ivy sat down with Nora Gomez, manager of external relations for the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, to talk about the new Art & Writing Tumblr. It was such an exciting conversation that we asked Nora to share some thoughts on OOM about why the Alliance chose Tumblr, what it means for the art world, and how it’s being used. Enjoy!

With all of the new media sites around, it can be hard to choose which ones to join. Making it even more difficult is the fact that sometimes they just don’t take off (RIP Google Buzz). When jumping in to something new to dedicate your time and energy to, you want to make sure it’s worth it and that it suits you. That’s how the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers ended up on Tumblr.

Tumblr, much like Twitter, is a micro-blogging platform. What makes it different is that the emphasis is more on images. The Alliance is active on Facebook and Twitter, but because Tumblr is so image-heavy, we knew we had to give it a go. The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have a really great legacy of past winners, including Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, John Baldessari, Richard Avedon and Joyce Carol Oates – as well as amazing, more recent winners like Zac Posen, Abdi Farah, Myla Goldberg and Ned Vizzini. Because of our wonderful alumni, and since Tumblr is a treasure trove of images, we wanted to make it easy to find pictures and artwork featuring these amazing individuals. [And we think we did – just type in “Robert Indiana” in the search field, for example, and hundreds of fantastic images will come up!]

Showcasing the amazing Art & Writing artwork is easy to do on Tumblr, because the platform is clean, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to use. The Alliance even has our account set up to auto-feed our blog posts, and we our content is a mix of information from us and from other Tumblrs. This week, for example, we found Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of Truman Capote — a portrait of one Scholastic Awards winner by another! – and we just had to reblog it and then share it on Facebook! And speaking of Warhol, the most popular post we’ve had on Tumblr is an image of him wearing his Gold Key pin from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. It’s been reblogged and liked over 140 times!

There’s much, much more to the Alliance than our roster of legacy winners, of course. This time of year is particularly exciting as students across the U.S. learn about their awards, so Tumblr has been a way for us to see what this year’s Art & Writing winners are saying and sharing. It makes us smile when we log in to see someone posting, “AHHHH I WON TWO SCHOLASTIC AWARD GOLD KEYS FOR POETRY ☺”. Like all of the social media sites out there, it’s not all about you and what you have to say, it’s about sharing and becoming part of a community.

If you’re on Tumblr, be sure to check out the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers!