A Unique Art Tour -- London-based V&A Museum Goes Virtual on Kuaishou

BEIJING, Aug. 27, 2020 — The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), a world-renowned museum in London, launched its official account on Kuaishou on August 25^th, becoming the first overseas museum to join China’s leading short-video and livestreaming platform.

The next day, the 160-year-old museum made its livestreaming debut on Kuaishou, whose livestreaming service has been embraced by over 170 million daily active users.

Before the pandemic, the V&A received over 1.5 million visitors annually, contributing more than 40% of visitor admissions in London. Renowned as the world’s largest museum of applied and decorative arts and design, the V&A houses a collection of over 2.3 million objects, with 5000 years of art and design history.

For their Chinese visitors, the V&A provided a virtual gallery-travel for Kuaishou’s millions of users, who are blocked from going abroad due to the pandemic. This 2-hour-long special exhibit tour via livestreaming attracted 3.8 million audiences, with 166 thousand users contributing likes.

"The coronavirus blocks physical communications between people from China and other countries but cannot cut the connection and emotion bonding between peoples and cultures. Artistic-cultural heritages are borderless," said Yi Xuan, Senior Director of Kuaishou’s regional cooperation.

"As the leading short-video platform in China, Kuaishou is continuously striving its best to introduce the international cultural-artistic contents via social media in China, enabling users to have a better understanding of the world without leaving home," added Yi.

Guided by Xiao Lang and Li Xiaoxin, V&A’s Chinese social media adviser and Chinese collections researcher respectively, Kuaishou users enjoyed themselves with the museum’s charms and exhibits from India and the Royal Family. Kuaishou also kicked off a Quiz Challenge about V&A to personalize the event and make it memorable for the audience.

Nick Marchand, V&A’s Director of International Business, expressed his appreciation to Kuaishou and the audience. "With the V&A’s reopening, we’re thrilled to welcome audiences back. But not everyone can travel right now, to see them. Thankfully, Kuaishou provides an invisible thread to connect us. While our worlds seem a little smaller right now, the V&A will transport you across time and geography. Step behind the doors of the museum with us, and get close to the extraordinary."

Nick Marchand, V&A’s Director of International Business, addressed the online audiences in livestreaming via Kuaishou.

As the leading livestream platform, Kuaishou has been putting great efforts into pushing the art sector to reach more people. On 14 February 2020, the world-renowned pianist Lang Lang gave a piano demonstration lesson to over 3 million music lovers and fans on Kuaishou via livestreaming, in honor of supporting efforts against COVID-19.

Since the first quarter of 2020, the National Museum of China has rolled out a series of cultural events on Kuaishou. On 5 March, the museum launched a short-video campaign under the hashtag of #virtual museum tour on Kuaishou, providing a chance for users to experience the museum. One of these short videos, which exhibited a 1500-year-old Celadon lotus-shape Zun from ancient China, achieved 2.5 million views and over 44,000 likes.

About Kuaishou Technology

Kuaishou Technology develops content sharing platforms and makes content production, distribution, and consumption fast and easy. Our content recommendation system is built on a deep understanding of our users and the content being shared on our platforms every day.

Our flagship product, Kuaishou, is China’s leading short video sharing and social networking platform that enables users to capture the unique and memorable moments of their everyday lives, and to interact with followers in real-time. Our technology offers users a highly personalized experience and encourages members from all communities to create and discover interesting and dynamic content.

Founded in 2011, Kuaishou Technology is headquartered in Beijing with more than 10,000 employees and offices in China, the United States, India and Brazil. Our notable investors include DCM Ventures, Morningside Venture Capital, Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, Tencent and Baidu. For more information, please visit www.kuaishou.com.

March 2011 GIF Kuaishou was created as a product tool for creating animated GIFs
October 2013 GIF Kuaishou was transformed into a short-form video social platform – Kuaishou
January 2015 Kuaishou’s DAU (daily active user) exceeded 10 million
September 2017 Kuaishou’s total users exceeded 600 million and DAU exceeded 80 million
December 2017 Kuaishou’s DAU exceeded 100 million
June 2018 Kuaishou Technology completed the acquisition of Acfun, an ACG video community
May 2019 Kuaishou’s DAU exceeded 200 million
March 2020 Kuaishou’s DAU exceeded 300 million
July 2020 Kuaishou’s Livestream DAU surpassed 170 million