Tate Online, the UK’s number one arts website, has won another award, this time at the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards ceremony held on Thursday 19 February in London.
Exclusively sponsored by BT, Tate Online beat off stiff competition from the BBC and Channel 4 to win the Best Online Factual award – an award which is intended to recognise the best use of the internet to deliver factual information. Tate Online was also shortlisted in the Best Interactive Arts category for the artist Susan Collins’s Tate in Space initiative, created for the Net Art programme of specially-commissioned works for the website.
The BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards, which are currently in their sixth year, recognise and reward talent across a broad spectrum of the new media industry. Tate Online was also praised in last year’s awards, when it won in the newly created category Accessibility, thanks to an initiative to make the site’s content available to blind and partially sighted people.
The financial and technical support provided by BT’s sponsorship has enabled Tate Online to establish a dedicated digital programmes team to develop content and continue to make the website more accessible to its visitors.
User figures for the site have tripled since BT’s sponsorship began in 2001. Thanks to BT hosting and its provision of online broadcasting to the site, which currently displays over 65,000 images of art from the Tate Collection, BT and Tate Online have been successful in their aim to make art more widely accessible.
Will Gompertz, Tate’s Director of Communications, said: ‘None of this would have been possible without BT’s support – financial, technical and, just as importantly, emotional. BT’s continued enthusiasm for and engagement with Tate Online is greatly appreciated by all at Tate.’
Paul Leonard, Head of Sponsorship, BT, added:
To win a BAFTA Interactive Award is a prestigious accolade for Tate Online and BT and it is a great reflection of the commitment and creativity from the Tate and BT teams who are actively involved in making this partnership an outstanding success.
We are of course delighted to have won the Best Online Factual award as it demonstrates that in the process of fulfilling our aim to make art accessible to all, BT and Tate Online have developed the site to be a powerful arts educational vehicle. I’m excited to be involved with such a successful collaboration and look forward to strengthening BT’s relationship with Tate further throughout 2004 and beyond.
Tate Online received two BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards as well as the London Tourism Award for best website in 2002.