ABSTRACT
The rapid formation of a core team to manage the Biennale following the early meetings with the Kerala Ministry of Culture in June 2010 tells a story of the conditions within which the Biennale was formed. In August 2010 there followed the formation of the Kochi Biennale Foundation and the agreement of an executive team in December 2010. In February 2011 the imperative was to launch a Biennale presence with what was then a rudimentary website designed for awareness, and then later to communicate the core mission and objectives that were still then being defi ned. International communications agency, Brunswick Arts, that specializes in promoting and managing the reputation and interests of arts, cultural and charitable organizations was engaged to advise the Biennale team on approach and strategy at the start, but due to initial fi nancial constraints the Biennale team was unable to continue with this professional input and relied on their own network of ad hoc support. Patel talks of the decision to use ‘compelling’ images the team had taken of the variety of sites and venues they had gained permission to use across the city of Kochi. The aim was to visualize the potential of the Biennale, with the website initially utilized as a holding space and a
tool to establish the project while also promoting the idea of the project to bring stakeholders on board. As part of the wider emerging discussions around a communication strategy of the Biennale, Patel talks of the determination of the Biennale team to embed social media in the website as a more fi nancially viable and more open form of communication compared with using traditional print or email that only reaches a closed group of individuals.
