Want to Celebrate Arts in St. Charles? There’s an App for That
The St. Charles Arts Council has a pretty cool event going on this weekend. It’s called “All the Arts, All Over Town,” and the idea is pretty much what the title says.
From Sept. 11-14, 2014, venues all over town will feature programming and display works of art. Participants and media include art galleries, film, music, spoken word performances, dance and live theater.
Here’s a list of events, titles and locations, in PDF form.
But these days, modern artists need a way to reach their digital audience. Enter Milan Shah, whose medium of choice is film but who also does a little more than dabbling with electronic media.
“To solve this modern problem, I built an app for the Arts in St. Charles, under heavy collaboration with the St. Charles Arts Council and half a dozen arts partners,” said Shah, who previously built apps for Elgin’s Fourth of July parade and Elgin’s Fringe Festival.
Shah says the Arts in St. Charles app has been created in order to reach out to a tech-savvy generation. The app presently is available only for Android devices; the Apple app has not yet been approved.
“The Arts in St. Charles app is looking to the generation of digital natives who are incredibly comfortable using ‘appified’ information,” he said. “The app takes what used to be in a dozen different areas and combines maps, calendar, extensive artist bios and samples of their work in one cohesive digital space.”
Visual, performing artists and film performances are listed along with an “Add to Calendar” button so that the app serves as an offline brochure, map of events, calendar and link to artist websites.
Another cool feature is that iBeacon sensors, introduced by Apple, are located around St. Charles in order to show notifications to what else is around. Simply pointing your modern Low Energy Bluetooth enabled phone to a participating location will show other performances around the area, Shah said.
The St. Charles Arts Council and Arts Partners have collaborated with a long-term vision to create a cohesive digital platform which will encourage viewers to be aware of, attend and support arts all around town. After this weekend, the Arts in St. Charles app will continue to list wide ranging artistic activities throughout St. Charles, Shah said.
Here’s a link and a full URL to access the Arts in St. Charles app:
https://play.google.com/store/
