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About

About this website

11th October 2017

This website or blog is the archive of the former online magazine called Arts in Leicester.

It holds the articles that were published in the magazine. It provides an archived source of those articles. It will take some time before all the articles have been published to this website.

No new content will be posted on this site.

Announcements, news or information will be posted as posts.

This site has started on 10th October 2017 by me Trevor Glyn Locke. I can be contacted via my page on Facebook.

10 things to know about Arts in Leicester magazine

  • Arts in Leicester was an online magazine. We did not publish any paper-based version.
  • The magazine had over 600 pages live on the Internet.
  • Over 23,000 people used to visit this site every month.
  • The magazine was run by volunteers. There were no paid staff.
  • We did not have offices. All volunteers worked from home.
  • We covered mainly Leicester and Leicestershire.
  • We also covered other counties in the East Midlands, when we could.
  • This magazine was published by ArtsIn Productions Ltd, Leicester’s leading social enterprise for the arts. At the time it was last online.
  • Arts in Leicestershire was founded in 2005.
  • Trevor Locke registered the domain name artsinleicester.co.uk and associated domain names.

Arts in Leicestershire was a magazine that set out to cover the whole spectrum of arts, culture, heritage and entertainment in Leicester and the county of Leicestershire.

A new website was launched in 2013, called Music in Leicester. This took over the music content from Arts in Leicester. Music in Leicester is still online. (see below)

Readership

ArtsIn Magazine was widely read by people both from the local area and from around the UK. On average, about 20,000 to 27,000 people read the magazine every month at the height of its popularity.

We also posted frequently on our social media outlets – such as Facebook and Twitter. Each outlet has its own body of subscribers, friends and followers, bringing our total following into a figure in excess of 30,000 per month.

Music in Leicester magazine

In 2013 the music content of Arts in Leicester was migrated to a new website called Music in Leicester.

Launch of Music in Leicester magazine held at Exchange Bar (3/6/13) A small group of people were invited to attend this event. In the end very few of them turned up. In the early days of the MIL website, it used the domain name artsinleicester.co.uk; eventually, that was switched to musicinleicester.co.uk.  Stayfree provided the hosting for the new site. WordPress software was chosen as the content management system. The existing arts magazine continued to run using the other domain name artsinleicestershire.co.uk People continued to refer to it/us as Arts in Leicester for a long time afterwards. I had planned to have a full live show at the Exchange bar on 3rd June with performances by Jonezy, White Giant band, Rhett Barrow and Dan McGarry. It all fell through. [Trevor Locke, personal timeline.]

Closure

Editorial

by Trevor Locke

5th September 2016

[Announcement that I will close Arts in Leicester magazine]

[From my blog writertrevorlocke]

Arts in Leicestershire to close

After eleven years, Arts in Leicester is to close. The website will cease  at the end of this year (2016). The main reason for this is that I want to concentrate my efforts on Music in Leicester magazine. I have enjoyed running the Arts magazine very much but it clashes with other things I want to do – such as writing books. Recruiting writers and people to help run the Arts magazine has not been successful. The music magazine has attracted more interest from volunteers. Now that Leicester has an alternative out let – in the shape of Great Central – the new magazine about culture and the arts – there is less need for what we do.

I will continue to publish Arts in Leicester up to December but I will pull then the plug and our website will be no more. Some of the articles current on the site will be transferred to other outlets and the whole thing will be archived off and stored away.

Leicester has always been a great city for the arts and culture and over the years I have been writing about it, the city has never failed to produce an endless supply of events, shows, festivals and new things of interest.

Editor