Basic Searching
	Advanced Searching
	The Results List
	Making Contact
	Viewing Media Items

Basic Searching

The basic search page (http://www.artscape.org.uk/search.php) can be used to perform a quick search for an artist or organisation by name, genre, region, target group or keywords. You can use any combination of these to find who you are looking for, but it is important to remember that the more criteria you enter the less likely you are to find an artist/organisation with an exact match; the search works by looking for records that match ALL the criteria you enter.

• Name: this searches for a match between what you enter and the name of a person or organisation. You can enter a full name, just a first name or surname, or part of a name. For example, entering 'pete' would find artists with the name 'pete' or 'peter' and organisations like 'peterborough arts'.
• Genre: you can use this drop-down list to select which the type of artform you are interested in. On this page, you can only specify one general artform per search - the advanced search allows you to be more specific as well as searching for more than one artform at a time.
• Region: allows you to specify the area where the artist/organisation is based. This does not necessarily reflect the limits of where they are prepared to work - details of this can be found in individual records.
• Target Group: this drop-down list allows you to specify a particular educational target group with whom the artist/organisation has appropriate experience.
• Keywords: if you want to search for a particular word that doesn't fall under one of the previous categories, this is the part of the form to use. This searches the summary information that the artist or organisation has entered, which may contain words or phrases not included elsewhere.

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Advanced Searching

The advanced search page (http://www.artscape.org.uk/advancedsearch.php) allows you to perform far more detailed searches in order to identify artists and organisations matching exact criteria. Like the basic search, this works by finding artists and organisations matching ALL of the criteria that you enter (n.b. with some of the criteria, such as 'target group' and 'cultural/community context', you can specify whether you want to find results that match any or all of your criteria).

To keep the page to a managable size, some of the criteria choices are hidden when you first arrive at this page. To see these and make selections within them, click on the 'click here to show choices' link. You should be aware that if you choose to hide the choices for a particular criteria, these will be excluded from the search.

This page can provide very accurate results, but care should be taken not to be too specific unless absolutely necessary; the more criteria that you enter, the less likely it is that you will find an exact match.

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The Results List

The results page is arrived at from both the search and advanced search pages. A summary of matching artists and organisations will be displayed, split into pages with a maximum of 10 records per page. You can use the 'back' and 'next' buttons on the top right of the list to move between pages where more than 10 results are found. Where available, the first few sentences of the summary for each record is displayed underneath the name. Clicking on the name takes you to the detail pages for that artist or organisation, where you can find out more about their work. To the right of the title there is a link which allows you to add that artist to your contact list.

You can also add all artists in the search results page to your contact list using the link at the top of the page; please note that this adds ALL the matching results to the contact list, not just those shown on the current page.

The 'amend search' link at the top of the results list takes you back to the basic search or advanced search page depending how you arrived at the results page.

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Making Contact

Making contact with artists and organisations is a two-step process. Firstly, you must add anyone you want to contact to your 'contact list' using the links that can be found next to the names on the results list or from the detail pages of one of these results. Secondly, you must visit the 'contact list' page. You can access this page only once you have added at least one name to the contact list. Links to this page can also be found at the top of the results list page and from the detail pages.

Once you are on the contact list page, you can then choose to make contact with either individual artists and organisations by selecting the 'contact' link adjacent to their name, or you can send a single message to everyone in the list by using the 'contact all artists in list' button at the top of this page.

Individual artists can be removed from the list using the link next to their name; please note that this does not affect any message you have already sent to them.

Composing a message is simple - enter your name, email address and organisation (if appropriate) in the fields provided and then type your message into the 'your message' area. Your message are then sent automatically to the recipient(s) you specified. Make sure you include any details in your message about how artists should contact you if you wish to receive a response.

It should be noted that the 'contact list' is not saved between visits to the site - if you close your browser window and come back later, your contact list will be empty.

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