About Artsin Magazine

News:

The Artsin office is located in Leicester's Cultural Quarter between Curve and Phoenix Square. This magazine is run by Artsin Productions Ltd , Leicester's newest social enterprise.

See the Artsin Productions web site

The Artsin Brand

artsin logo

Artsin is our brand name for the services we provide to the arts, entertainment and leisure sector in Leicester city and Leicestershire county.

The brand name is Artsin. This is a short form term similar to Tescos, for example. The brand name identities all aspects of our activities in both the magazine and the company.

Our business falls into three main areas:

Artsin Leicester/shire Magazine

Marketing and advertising

Services to artists and bands

Our new social enterprise company is called

Artsin Productions Ltd

launched on 1st October 2011.

Find out more on the new company web site.

Arts in Leicestershire Magazine

Editor: Trevor Locke

Publisher: Artsin Productions Ltd.

Gig reviews Editor: Kevin Gaughan

Drama Critic: Karen McCandless

Poetry and literature correspondent: Monica Mistry

Films reviewer: Nicola Gee

Gigs and events organiser: Matt Fraine

Reporters (as at 11th November):

Russ Brooks (architecture and writers), Will Morris (rock music), Reshma Karia (shows and popular music), Sophie Hunt (visual arts), and others (including occasional contributors)

We are still looking for more volunteers

Photographers: Harjinder Ohbi, Trevor Sewell, Will Poulton, Kyo Murtagh and others

Founded: February 2005

History of the Arts in Leicestershire web site

Team Profiles

Trevor Locke

Trevor Locke is Editor of Arts in Leicestershire. Apart from being a web designer with over 15 years experience, Trevor has worked as a full-time journalist and magazine editor and began his career as a reporter for Reuters, when its headquarters was in Fleet Street. He has, during his career, written a large body of articles and one fairly large book. See Tevor Locke on LinkedIn.

The cost of maintaining the magazine is met from small amounts of money coming in from online advertising or donated by well-wishers. To grow and develop the magazine, we need to increase income, in order to invest in new facilities and develop better content.

If you would to support this magazine, please consider our advertising offer.

Artsin Magazine is widely read by people both from the local area and from around the UK. On average, about 17,000 to 19,000 people read the magazine every month. We also post frequently on our social media outlets - listed on the right. Each outlet has its own body of subscribers, friends and followers, bring our total fan base into a figure in excess of 30,000 per month.

Information for artists, venues and promoters

In order for us to cover live music, we need to get in to gigs and other events free, as would most serious music journalists, newspaper reporters or anyone else from the media.

Given that we have to go to several events each week, it would cost us more than we could afford if we had to buy a ticket every time we wanted to cover a show or a band.

We therefore ask venues and promoters to treat us just like any other member of the press and give us free entry to shows.

We do not charge venues or promoters to publicise their gigs on our listings, so we trust that we will not be asked to pay for admission if we ask to cover a show we have previously publicised.

We do NOT send reporters to a show without asking first. No official reporter from Artsin will simply turn up at a gig and ask to be let in, without prior contact from the magazine. Regular reporters also carry official ID cards.

Gigs list policy

When we started our gigs list, we planned to cover all gigs at all venues. After several months of attempting this, we found we were unable to cover everything because, In Leicester/shire, there is just too much going on.

We spend several hours per week updating the gigs list and it changes pretty much on a daily basis. The gigs list alone is often equivalent to over 28 pages of A4 and is our most frequently read page.

We have abandoned our Guides Guide page. Instead, if we put a gig into our listings, readers can assume we think its worth going to. If we thinks it going to be a really good event (in terms of the acts taking part) then we will amplify the entry.

Arts in Leicestershire is a free webzine - an online magazine. Possibly it is an Electronic Journal.There is no paper based equivalent. Arts in Leicestershire is an independently produced online publication. It is not in any way associated with a third party organisation (e.g. it is not part of any local authority, The Arts Council, etc.) and receives no funding for its core activities. It is confined to the City of Leicester and County of Leicestershire, though readers can and do come from anywhere in the UK.

Mission statement

The goal of Artsin Leicestershire is to provide, for the benefit of the general public, the best quality online magazine, that has constantly updated information, news and articles on all aspects of the arts, including

Music of all kinds, particularly live music
The visual arts, including painting, art photography and digital and creative graphic design
The written word: novels, poetry, creative writing, authors
Performing arts including theatre, drama, plays and dance
Entertainment, comedy, shows, gigs, concerts, festivals

The magazine style is intended to provide readers with a regular coverage of the subject matter through the publication of news, feature articles, reviews, reports and topical issues. This product is primarily a magazine and only technically a website. It is intended to be a product of journalism rather than web authorship.

Artsin Magazine wants to be a prime example of digital publishing. We see publishing as becoming increasingly digital and decreasingly about pieces of paper. Sales of newspapers and magazines are dropping; visits to online outlets are soaring. It's what the future of publishing is about. We want to lead the way in online journalism.

What Arts in Leicestershire is

Arts in Leicestershire is a magazine which sets out to cover the whole spectrum of arts and entertainment in Leicester and the county of Leicestershire.

Our brand name is Artsin. This is how we brand our online presence and our off-line activities.

artsinleicestershire.co.uk, in our view, is a magazine and not a web site. We have completed the transition from web site to magazine in 2011 and now feel satisfied to call it a 'magazine' that is published digitally.

Technically, it is a webzine (i.e. an online magazine) or possibly an online newspaper. Yes, of course it is a web site but would you call a newspaper, such as The Leicester Mercury, a collection of sheets of paper, or refer to it as 'newsprint'? It's not everyday speech to refer to printed material as pieces of paper; why then call a magazine a web site if it is published only online? It's about concept.

There are not now nor have there ever been, printed versins of the magazine.

We want to contribute to the changing technology of publishing in which commonly understood products like 'magazines' or 'newspapers' are generally understood to be published on paper and/or on the Internet. More and more publishing is going digital and many periodicals that started life on paper are now on the Internet, either as online version of continuing paper-based products or, as in our case, as products for which there is no paper equivalent.

Artsin was launched (as a website) on Sunday 4th September 2005. Designed and developed by local web designers, the site has grown into a comprehensive portal for anything to do with the arts and entertainment in the city and county.

You can read about the development of Artsin and see some examples of early versions of the site on our archives page.

After a couple of years, it was decided to turn it into a magazine and to adopt a style that, in our view, was consistent with its equivalent in the world of paper-based publishing but re-engineering that style to suit the requirements and opportunities of the web.

Ours is an independent venture; it is not funded by public grants. It attempts to cover its costs through commercial advertising. Independence allows us freedom of expression and the capability of providing a varied mixture of material for the benefit of our readers.

Music of all kinds, pictorial arts, theatre, entertainments, comedy, shows, gigs, festivals ... there is so much that Leicester city and the county of Leicestershire has to offer. Our diverse and vibrant community is rich in talented musicians and artists, whose work makes this city such a great place to live.

The site requires many hours of dedicated content editing each week, with listings requiring updates every day. We don't run the site to make money and in fact it hardly covers it overhead costs. Some income is derived from advertising but hardly enough to cover the server fees, let alone the hours of time put in by the people who write the content.

Some businesses and organisations support the web site because they believe that it has potential and plays a valuable role in providing information about the arts in our local area. Local businesses can benefit from the advertising opportunities we provide.