A brief introduction to the programme

I have just met with Claire Simmons (our Gold Arts Award Advisor) and Hannah Higginson (Watershed’s Engagement Project Producer) who introduced me to the Future Producers Plus programme which enable you to complete the Gold Arts Award.

The Gold Arts Award is split into two units. Unit 1 focuses on my own art and career path. For this unit I’ll have to extend my own arts practice by learning new skills and creating a new work, research my chosen career path and do some training or volunteering in that field, then research and review arts events and do an interview with an industry professional. Unit 2 focuses on an arts project that I will plan, deliver, and evaluate.

Unit 1 Part A

My Artistic Challenge

I have been challenged to create promotional material for Watershed’s Cinékids programme. Cinékids is a monthly film screening followed by a workshop where children aged 6-11 years can try out different things (e.g. stop-motion animation, illustration, dance, creative writing) and generally let their creative juices flow. The aim is to introduce these children to creative practices, practitioners and the creative industries, as well as fostering their imagination, talent and love of arts and culture.

Here is the original new art work brief:

“We have a small but dedicated following of parents and kids who regularly attend the Cinekids screenings and workshops but want to develop new audiences for the slot.

Your brief is to create an art piece to promote Cinekids either within or beyond the building. Could you design a mural?  Make a short film trailer? Record a musical jingle? Create a stop frame animation to go online?  Choreograph a flash mob dance?  Or think of something else?

The art piece should reflect childlike characteristics such as being playful, daring, adventurous, watchful, destructive and performative.”

The diverse nature of the Cinekids events means there is lots of scope for creativity in the promotional materials I could produce. I intend to marry my existing artistic skills or primary art form/s with new skills or secondary art form/s to produce a new experimental art work that’s in keeping with the brief.

My Primary Art Form

I used to do a lot of sculpture, installation and painting when I was at college studying Fine Art. I especially loved mural painting and making large works in mixed media. I also studied lots about sculpture, installation and Now I would say my primary art form is illustration as its easier for me to practice when I have less space, time, and materials. I currently work full-time so practice my art in my spare time at home. I studied lots of art and artists in depth during my History of Art degree and have always been interested in the stories, theories and methodologies behind different art works.

Hosting a Skills-Swap Workshop

As part of this unit of the course I gave a skills-swap workshop so that I can introduce someone to a new art form. My soft spot for installation meant I decided to host an installation workshop with a fellow Future Producer, Lily.

The workshop involved giving a break down of what installation is or can be. In my opinion, installation is a very flexible art form. It can be anything that manipulates space and makes audiences interact with or think about their surroundings in a different way.

At the workshop we highlighted some inspirational artists (I especially love Land Artists and some of the Young British Arists) and talked about their different methods and ideologies. We also talked through the practicalities of what Zoe, the workshop participant, intended to do for the Cinekids brief.

Lily and I both agreed that if we were to teach installation, then we would need to practice it. So with minimal materials (some colourful string and scissors) we headed out to the other side of the harbourside and started off our installation, tying wool around the railings to create different patterns, angles and combinations.

A few people commented positively on our work – and most importantly, we made lots of people stop and look at that area in a different way. One person asked us how long it was going to take to do all the railings along the harbourside! But we kept it contained to a small section of railing. We decided to leave behind some of the balls of string we’d been using that evening, still attached to our work in the hope that someone would continue the piece.

In the morning, I saw that someone had continued the installation onto further railings, making our installation genuinely interactive: It started with us making it, the passersby commenting and looking, and now we had unknown collaborators expanding the work. Our installation showed how this art form can open up a dialogue between people and the spaces they inhabit, how it can facilitate a reinterpretation of space, materials and even the notion of ‘art’.

The photos above are ones I took on a digital SLR camera, which Lily showed Zoe and myself to use. We learnt about focusing and creating angles in our images. It was great to learn some new skills in photography, which I am sure I will put to good use throughout this course and beyond. I am also going to a filmmaking workshop, which I might choose as my secondary art form to combine with my illustration and mixed media for the Cinekids brief.  

My new art form

Filmmaking

Initially I thought about incorporating filmmaking into this project and did an excellent workshop with Luke.

But when I came down to brainstorming for an illustration and filmmaking mash-up, I kept seeing my ideas for the project in terms of stop-frame animation. This is because if I were to do filmmaking for this piece I would want to make a short advertisement trailer and then incorporate illustration on top of the footage, but I would need help from a professional to do this. Instead I felt I could experiment a lot (and independently!) with my existing art forms if I chose to work with stop-motion animation, which is a much more contained/individual process.

I also love the playfulness of stop-motion and see it as a particularly effective promotional tool for both children and adults because it can be particularly charming and memorable. I will use my illustration skills and probably incorporate other 2D design techniques, for example collage/mixed media to make a stop-motion animation. It would also be possible to create a mini-installation and use this as a stage-set style backdrop for the stop-motion.

The skills I learnt in the filmmaking workshop will still help with my stop-motion work because I learnt about the principles of planning and making a film. I looked at the different stages of production (pre-production, production, post-production), as well as composition and framing. I had some audio training, used the camera, and talked about editing software. Before I gave filmmaking a go the equipment intimidated me, but now I feel more confident about producing a short film and I will definitely give it a go in the future.

Animation

I went and talked to Rose Robbins before one of her animation workshops at Watershed as part of our Gromit’s Movie Marvels series. She is the ideal person to speak to regarding this project because she already understands the Cinekids brand and I loved the short promotional video she produced for this season.

We discussed planning my animation, different techniques and effects, using the I Can Animate software to capture, edit and export my animation and I shared some of my initial ideas. Using what I learnt from Rose that day, I made (very quickly!) this short stop-motion animation.

My Understanding of the Cinekids Artwork Brief

I am keen to make a lively, engaging, and inventive stop-motion animation video so that it reflects the playfulness of the Cinekids brand. Although I want my video to look as professional as possible, it should also showcase the type of work which Cinekids participants can expect to make in a stop-motion animation workshop, so its important that the video is not too complicated or fussy so it does not alienate potential participants.

The brief also talks about developing a new audience for these events, so I think it is important to get the video out there on as many online platforms as possible (e.g. Netmums website and through Twitter networks) as well as Watershed’s usual channels (e.g. website page/s and Facebook).

I have decided that I want to do a Cinekids video for a particular event (one which I am involved in programming for the Family Arts Festival), so that this video can potentially be altered and used to promote these events.

Once I have made my animation I will present it to the rest of the Future Producers and a panel of three judges who will all give immediate feedback on the project. This will be recorded in a video and I will post it below in the appropriate section. The judging panel will decide which artist and artwork will receive funding to have their idea developed into a promotional tool for Watershed to use in the future promotion of Cinekids.

I will record my creative process by posting the film on this blog after I have edited it and put up pictures of me making it, scan in my brainstorms, other preparatory sketches and some of my research. I am looking forward to seeing how animation will influence my illustration and vice versa.

Ideas, Research + Planning

Initially I was arranging a robot making workshop to fit into The Imagination Lab season (for details see my Unit 2 posts). Even at this stage I could already see how one art form was influencing the other: I found this wonderful illustration of a robot for the Robot Convention and design competition we are running at Watershed, and this inspired me to make my own drawings, which I thought could become part of my animation. I also experimented with an idea of a fox-themed animation for a Fantastic Mr Fox film and Origami Fox workshop that I was following up at one point.

When The Imagination Lab became the Alice in Wonderland inspired Down The Rabbit Hole season, I decided to change the animation to reflect this. Below is some documentation of the creative process: my search for inspiration, storyboard planning, research into how to make an animated film as well as sketches and notes for the different ideas. I’ve also included a powerpoint presentation that I used to brainstorm the rabbit/Alice idea.

Online research

Stop motion Ideas/Design:

–       Foxes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilKaJRsmZiI

–       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtWSQ-plUrc

–       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vZ0iqUS6sg

–       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQcBKUPm8o

–       Simple drawings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPSa2o-I_54

–       Robot stories: http://www.epicshortfilms.com/a-story-about-robots/

–       Writing design: http://www.theimaginariumstudios.com

–       Cinekids promo video inspiration: https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/4285/cinekids-stop-motion-animation-summer-school and https://www.watershed.co.uk/dshed/cinekids

–       More kids + making: http://www.thekidworkshop.com/open-play/

–       Design inspiration: http://www.behance.net/gallery/London-solo-show-LAVA-gallery/1267637 and http://www.thekrah.com

–       Google images searches: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=robot+lettering&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=hIEYUvGvMOaX1AXUm4CYCg&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1119&bih=663#imgdii=_  / https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=robots&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=m4AYUtyNKafL0AWMrYHgBw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1119&bih=663#imgdii=_ /

–       Watershed inspirations: https://www.watershed.co.uk/get-involved/opportunities/2013-09-13/robot-design-competition/

–       Hexbugs: http://www.hexbug.com/nano/hexbug-nano-single.html

Some notes I made to capture my ideas:

“This idea shows an illustrated robot animation with a mini story, with the aim of getting adults to book their kids into the Cinekids Robot Film and Workshop in October half term. Title page, lettering inspired by robots and mechanics, ‘Cine’ appears, then ‘Kids’, then the lightbulb for the ‘I’ appears and switches on with a click. Story: a futuristic ball rolls onto the lettering and bounces down, rolling out of shot and into a new shot. The background is a water colour of machine-like parts that tessellate together, the nuts and bolts move a little, and the ball rolls into shot and pings/pops open. Out pops a tiny robot who makes small noises (think of Wall-E). The next scene sees the little robot exploring as if he is in a computer game, and with the use of Perspex sheets I will design different layers to the background (e.g. binary code, flashing laser beams, magical puffs of smoke). As the little robot bops around the screen, he says ‘makey makey’. The next scene is an over the shoulder type shot where the little robot finds a store room (place with shelves) full of bits and bobs for making robots and he exclaims ‘makey makey’ slowly and in wonderment as the lightbulb in the room clicks on. I may animate some of the things on the shelves too (e.g. moving cogs, dancing wire – as if the materials were excited too). Next will be a white screen (as the beginning) where the little robot pops up from the bottom of the shot and opens out his arm to unveil a little hexbug as the letters above his head begin to appear slowly (‘What will you make?’) and we hear the voice of the robot say ‘ma ma mu maaaa’. Next shot we see the robot torso (medium shot) and as the little hexbug climbs around the edge of the shot, some paper starts to print out of the little robots chest. It reads ‘Cinekids Gadget Club at Watershed. Book now. wshd.co.uk/cinekids’. And that’s the end of the short film.”

I made a presentation mood-board for the Down The Rabbit Hole animation which helped me group together images and links for this art work all in once place.

Inspiring stop motion/animated films: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzxXQhMZHHo / http://vimeo.com/67774633 / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzQWgv5sNm4 / http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSwz01n8bhc / Shoe (2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz0rt8HIl0s / Scary but amazing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4RBmU-PIo

 

              

Making My Art Work

After I had made these last sketches, I simply tea-stained two pieces of A3 paper, photocopied this and began experimenting with how to animate. I chose to use pieces of paper in the end so I could still incorporate my origami idea and it recalled Michel Ocelot’s beautiful silhouette animation which I think is stunning. I chose this method first and foremost because I liked the simplicity of it and I wanted the video to have a handmade quality.

I set up my equipment in Watershed’s edit suite as Paddy and Rose had shown me previously, and worked on my animation. It took me a good few hours and it was a very slow process (I had to cut my idea short and just do the first few sketched out scenes), but it was very enjoyable. I found the process exciting because you could make different effects quite simply, e.g. adding details frame by frame, turning backdrops upside down to re-use the illustrated parts and then add details to change their look, making things disappear. It took lots of patience to arrange and re-arrange the little pieces of black paper that made up the rabbit’s body parts and it took me a while to get his hopping motion looking realistic, but I got there in the end! Once I began the animation properly, I followed my plan, drew the backdrops as I went along, adding text and was constantly watching my video as I worked.

In my next evening session I edited my animation. I had to make sure the frames were at the right speed before I exported it. At first I was going to put some quite slow, dreamy music to it, but when I came across a bouncy Japanese track on free music site jamendo.com – it just felt right. I adjusted some of the frames and the speed to fit the animation to the music. Then I exported it and using Premier Pro I added in the animation video file with the music and then added in poster frames which I was making in Photoshop as I went along. I found Premier Pro really intuitive to use, but I did have some notes I’d made in Paddy’s workshop from a few weeks earlier on editing a filmed interview in Premier Elements.

I made my art work in a very limited amount of time, but I felt really focused and happy as I was making it. When it came to exporting my trailer, I was exhausted but very excited as I felt I had captured what I wanted – the playfulness and adventurous nature of Cinekids in general and the flavour of our events in particular. 

Reflection, Showcase + Feedback

I presented my art work to the Future Producers group and the judges and was a bit nervous. Seeing everyone else’s artworks was great – it was inspirational to see and hear what others had done with the same brief and where they had taken it. It made me realise how much I missed Fine Art and sharing ideas/new works/studio space with other creatives!

Here is a video of me presenting my work at the session.

I explained the subject of the animation (Down The Rabbit Hole), my initial plans (which were cut short!), the making processes, getting open source music and some of the challenges I experienced. The video got a positive reaction and I was glad to see it made people smile. It was intended to appeal to both adults and children, and I think it achieves this. Hannah Higginson, one of our course advisers, said that the use of digital text at the end was a bit jarring in comparison to the animation style and I agree! I had intended to make the information at the end hand written but I had made mistakes in it as I was very tired by that point, so decided I would just add it in later in the editing process.

Next time I undertake something like this (especially stop frame animation), I will leave more time for making and editing as it really does take a long time to do and you should really take lots of breaks. I think I must have spent about 4 – 5 hours making the animation and a similar amount of time putting it together, figuring out the technology, and editing it together  – and my video was 1 minute long! I would still have loved to continue with my animated story (explained in the video presentation and in my storyboard sketches above) and I expect I would get quicker over time (especially with the editing). Overall, I was very happy that I had managed to get at least some of my initial plans into animated form!

On reflection, I believe that the animation process influenced my illustrations in this artwork in the following ways:

– I felt that through animating I had to work my imagination hard when illustrating: it was a great process and it made me experiment more with effects in my drawings and think about the drawing process, not just the finished product. Could I utilise the drawing process to create different effects within the video? Animating my drawings made me question the processes behind the making them and experiment with HOW I drew things.

– I felt I could be really playful with detail in my drawings when animating, adding it in little by little which I really liked – it meant you could build up a picture slowly over time for the viewer, which you can’t do with a static illustration (e.g. I did this with the letters in the video). I would have liked to explore this ‘layering’ idea with colour as well (perhaps next time!).

– I learnt how incorporating movement (via animation) into my drawings could imbue them with different meanings and convey different feelings (e.g. when the rabbit goes into the hole it is more humorous because he literally disappears – if this had just been a drawing I would have had to have him either jumping in, half in or disappeared. Whereas using animation you can encompass all of these parts of the narrative and not just suggest a before and after).

Cinekids Artwork Brief Outcome

Just before Christmas I found out that I was going to work with Alex who is a filmmaker on the course to make a Cinekids trailer! We will be working with her ‘Road to Watershed’ Idea which sees a young person taking steps through different film characters’ shoes. I will be illustrating and animating parts of the trailer! It is very exciting and I love that I will be working with Alex on this project – it will be a true ‘mash-up’ of our ideas and styles. We will also be working with a filmmaker/animator which will be great for developing our skills and getting the most out of our ideas. I enjoy collaborating with others on artistic projects and working on a film brief will be a new experience for me which I am sure will teach me a lot – I can’t wait! It’s exactly what I wanted to do before, but felt I didn’t have the knowledge or resources to do! I have already learnt lots from making my new art work and being chosen to work on the final Cinekids promotional artwork piece has given me a real confidence boost.

Further Development

Finding myself inspired and energised by this creative challenge, I volunteered to lead on organising a stall at a Christmas market in the run up to the holidays. I found a group of like-minded creatives at Watershed and set about branding, promoting (read about the event here and have a look at my market news post/press release here) and organising (logistics, display, staffing, finances, paperwork) the stall itself. Although I was swamped with the organising element, I tried out doing some linocut printing as I have always wanted to do this and I got the materials cheap at the Bristol Scrapstore. I taught myself how to do it using youtube videos and help sites, and in the end I felt  the work I made was good, but not good enough to sell – although it is definitely something I want to try again! I intend to practice linocut printing at home in the spring when I have a bit more free time and may see if I can do a course at Spike Island if it is not too expensive.

After I had tried printing, I produced 4 paintings in time for the second weekend of trading. I took my inspiration from my Cinekids artwork and painted some sleeping foxes, and also designed some other sleeping animals to paint at a later date. I wanted to make paintings for children and I even framed them so people could buy and hang them up straight away. I got good feedback from passers by but only sold one of the paintings – but I was very happy! I have not previously sold my artwork, just given it as presents to friends and family. I talked to several other traders over the course of the market and they all said I should get my artwork made into prints: it brings the cost down and people are more likely to buy. In the meantime I had also identified that people weren’t really buying art (the stall was opposite Upfest and they had sold a few books and mugs, but the paintings were not really shifting!). People were looking for trinkets and stocking fillers and so I made some jewellery (another new skill!) and most of that sold. I have also just sewn a lovely tobacco pouch for my friend’s birthday and I am really happy with how its turned out (I used a beautiful old Islamic tapestry and some old clothing fabric – just things I had around the house). I made some bracelets for some other friends using old earrings I found in a charity shop – I love finding unloved bits and bobs and turning them into lovely new things.

Below you can see a few images of my working and finished pieces. Check out my interest boards to see the online inspiration I found for my projects.

I feel as though my creative juices are flowing again and I am very excited. I will continue to produce paintings and illustrations with a view to selling them at a later date and will look into getting prints made, doing a linocut printing workshop as well as continue to do some jewellery making. I intend to set up a tumblr or similar webspace (maybe Etsy) to advertise my goods. So far I am just using twitter (@rose_kala_dias) to promote my work. All very exciting stuff!

My Current Work

My day job as Communications Assistant at Watershed means I am exposed on a daily basis to the ins and outs of the cultural industries. I deal with distributors, curators, producers, writers, artists, filmmakers, journalists, publishers, technologists and all the different departments of our own organisation. Every day I feel like I’m learning new things about how cultural ideas are dreamed up, funded, produced, brought to audiences, evaluated and more, and my work puts me in touch with all kinds of films, events and projects. I have helped with BFI Academy, as well as looked after a school screening, introduced one of our Summer holiday Gromit’s Movie Marvels films, as well as other activities. During this course, I hope to extend my knowledge of events and initiatives that relate to children and families, as well as arts participation/engagement in general.

My Intensions

I will research different groups and organisations in Bristol which run community/child/family engagement events that I am interested in, and will do so mainly by talking to people (especially Hannah Higginson and Vanessa BS at Watetshed, and Ellie Jeffs at Arnolfini) and looking online. I could volunteer my time or see if they have any specific placement programme/s that I can attend at weekends. Due to working full-time and organising the events, it will not be possible for me to commit to an internship or a long period of volunteering, but I intend to see what is out there. I will also consider if I can do any training as part of my professional development at Watershed and will talk to my line manager about this – I think this may be the best thing to do for me at this time because it will feed into my current work as well as my own interests. I will also meet with my course advisers to discuss my ideas, research and progress in organising my placement/training.

My Initial Research

Organisations, groups, individuals and events I can research for training/volunteering/placement include:

Wellspring Wellbeing Centre in Redfield. It is just a few minutes from my house and runs various arts initiatives for the local community. If I can volunteer with them then I would like to find out about their projects, funding, who goes to the arts activities, what they think about community building and outreach, how they evaluate/gather feedback, and how their work integrated with the other activities (e.g. health care) at the centre. There are also Kids Summer Holiday Circus Camps at Creative Commons which I could have helped with, and I could see if they have upcoming events like this. I could also volunteer at the Bristol Children’s Scrap Store.

Kumiko are creative freelancers working in the community doing workshops, courses and installations. For example there is Charlotte Chapman who co-runs Kumiko, and has done other projects in Bristol (StArt at St. Pauls) who I could contact about her work and see if I could go along and volunteer. There’s also Kids Company who work with vulnerable children in London and Bristol and Voscur which is Bristol’s Voluntary and Community Sector (they have a good course on in October called Writing Small Funding Bids which costs between £60 – £150). I am also interested in finding out about The Trinity Centre and the arts and wellbeing community projects and initiatives they run, as well as contacting M Shed to see if I could volunteer for them at a learning in the community event. I also know Kate Cox, who works as an Arts Therapist in Bristol. 

In addition, on Sat 9 Nov at Watershed we have an Afrika Eye children’s event, there is a family film screening and We Are Family event at Arnolfini on Sat 30 Nov, as well as a family art making session at Spike Island on Sat 6 Dec.

Arnolfini flyer for families

All of these people and events identified could help me to find out about what its like to work with families and communities in Bristol and below are some events I could attend at the weekends if I have time. If I cannot do much weekend volunteering then I will look to do it after this course is finished to gain some more experience in this field and will look into the Bristol Cultural Engagement Partnership.

What I Have Organised

I have organised two training days through work (one in London and one in Bristol) which will cover families and community engagement – perfect! I will meet peers from other organisations who share my interests, learn form industry professionals, hear some of the latest research in these fields and engage with case studies.

For the first training day I could choose between three different training events that have been especially commissioned for the Family Arts Campaign, each of which look at a different aspect of programming and engaging families. I was interested in the Make Yourself At Home – Getting The Welcome Right For Families (which is aimed at staff responsible for welcoming and increasing family audiences, and would help me to understand what it is about the visitor experience that leads to excellent family arts experiences) and the Get Families: Understanding The Dynamics & Needs of Today’s Family Audience And Creating The Right Messages For Them (which is for those responsible for planning and attracting families and would give me an overview of the research and learning that has been gathered regarding family audiences and how to adapt our marketing strategies to maximise reach and engagement with families). Of the two which were most relevant to me, I felt that the Get Families would be especially useful from both a communications and producer point of view (attracting a family audience, what they are like and what they want/need, how to engage and promote effectively). This training course will hopefully give me some pointers for how to tweak the Family Arts Festival events to be more family-friendly and to help me to reach a wider family audience as I will attend it before the festival kicks off.

The second training day was sent to me by my boss Louise Gardner (see email below). This CultureHive course will introduce me to the principles of effective and genuine community engagement, the values of this approach, as well as how to achieve organisational goals and long-term audience development. I am very excited about how this can impact my future work – I think it will give me an insight into lots of different projects and how they are run.

I also want to work a Cinekids event to gain some extra experience, but I am not sure which weekend I will be available (after the Family Arts Festival events are over and probably nearer Christmas).

I am very excited to be attending these events and I intend to make notes/take photos and then reflect on my experience in this blog post afterwards so that I can record what I am learning.

Training Day 1 – Family Arts Festival: Get Families training in London at TMA

On 9 October attended a training day called Get Families: Understanding The Dynamics & Needs of Today’s Family Audience And Creating The Right Messages For Them. It was fantastic to meet so many different people working in the arts and hear about their work, organisations, activities and audiences. I think it is sometimes easy to forget that there are lots of other ways of doing things when you work in such a dynamic and really quite big and busy place like the Watershed. The diverse mix of people I met was really eye-opening in terms of my own knowledge and understanding of the wider arts sector: on my table, for instance, there was someone who worked in schools and youth clubs in Sussex doing arts engagement, a young man who ran a tiny community theatre in an estate in the Chelsea area and a member of Arts Council England who had come to hear about the Family Arts Campaign and hear what other organisations had to say on the experience so far. Interacting with others from different organisations and backgrounds helped me to gain a deeper insight into the arts industries and I really felt like I was part of a wider community of arts practitioners. That was a very important development for me.

The course itself involved an introduction to families (we worked in groups to do a short questionnaire), information about how to make your organisation and events more family friendly, a guest speaker – founder of the family arts events reviews website Curious Mum (I am now a subscriber!) – and then there was a general question and answer session relating to our FAF events.

Here is a pdf of all my notes on engaging families at arts events (below is just a selection of screenshots and photos of the other information I received).

Information pack for Get Families training day

Confirmation of attendance

I learnt, amongst other things, about how varied a family unit can be in the UK today, that the market is expanding, that families tend to distinguish between a ‘trip’ (cheap or free) or a ‘treat’ (expensive) and that it helps if events can fall into one of these categories; that giving families as much information in advance is the best way to keep them happy at your venue and event, that the online and Box Office welcome for families is very important for families in particular because they have certain needs (e.g. parking, buggies, noise levels, baby change, food and bottles, will they be welcome by staff and other customers?); Tatiana from Curious Mum also talked about how to write copy for families and said that the more it can convey feelings (how will a parent/child feel at the event!?) and the more friendly and human it is, the more likely families are to attend the event.

I came away from the course feeling very informed about families and family friendly events, as well as inspired to pitch to Watershed in the near future about why we want to encourage families into the organisation (e.g. building sustainable audiences and creating quality cultural experiences that families can share with us, fitting in with Arts Council Great Art For Everyone message, as well as getting involved in a growing market). Later it would be fantastic if we could  really critique how family friendly our building and our website is, as well as start a focus group/collect and analyse feedback to find out what families really want/expect from us, what they like/don’t like and how they find out their information. I would do all of this with a view to doing family events connected to elements of our regular programme and/or festivals (e.g. a family event for Black History Month). I think this course will help me with my career path as I will be able to talk about this audience with greater confidence and knowledge, and it has already helped me to critique and clarify some of the ideas I had about this audience and this area of arts events.

Immediate things I will implement in the FAF events as a result of this course include:

– Adding more information to all our listings info and website info for each events and events as a whole (e.g. informing parents that the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland before the Tea Party is a PG and what this means, as well as more information about timings and any catering),

– At the events themselves I will give families a clear breakdown of the event before we begin so they know what is happening and when and provide take-home materials, I will also talk to Box Office about our welcome (though I think they are great already!),

– Make the existing events copy more family-friendly, that is, tell the parents how this event is going to make them and their children feel (together and separately).

Additionally to the above, meeting and speaking with Tatiana, who set up Curious Mum, and finding out that her background is in marketing and branding, gave me additional confidence to follow my desire to work in this field. I think that this element is incredibly important for family events in particular and I love her website! I would love to make a similar one for Bristol organisations/events…

Further Inspiration 

At the Get Families training day I learnt about Rich Mix Cinema and Arts Centre in Bethnal Green, East London. Rich Mix is a charity and social enterprise that offers live music, film, dance, theatre, comedy, spoken word and a range of creative activities for people of all ages and all cultures. All their profits go back to support their education, arts and community activities which nurture new and local talent – much like Watershed, which is a social enterprise. When I next go to London I will arrange to visit them and talk to them about areas of their activity which really interests me: projects like Ladies Who Learn which RichMix Hosts, their dynamic programme of events for under 25s which includes regular spoken word poetry and dance, their events which celebrate different cultures such as Chinese New Year, as well as their series of family friendly events, which includes a regular Pan African family event which includes film, music, poetry, and food. Their cross-art form approach really interests me and I’d like to find out about how they produce the above programmes, their audience development practice and their position in the community, as well as how the organisation operates as a cinema and arts centre in general. They have an internship position (Film Programmer Assistant) open at the moment, but it is unpaid. I will keep an eye out for opportunities to visit them and see what they do in the new year.

Reading about Rich Mix inspired me to look closer to home. In Bristol I found out about an amazing project that The Cube, a small independent cinema run entirely by volunteers, ran back in 2010 after the earthquake in Haiti. Kids Kino was run by the Nanoplex arm of the cinema, which is the youth and family programme at there which aims to encourage active learning and creativity, and provide opportunities for young people to help build and create their own culture. The Cube volunteers hosted Nanoplex workshops, cabarets, film screenings and gigs to pay for the Haiti Kids Kino project. The Haiti project included two volunteers from the cinema going to Port Au Prince to project films on buildings and tents, while giving camera’s to children to explore their own lives, less than a month after that year’s devastating earthquake. The idea was to share the experience of making and watching films with the locals, while offering temporary childcare. I think it was a fantastic project.

At the moment they are very busy trying to get people to donate to save the building and I cannot see any recent or current Kids Kino/Nanoplex projects. Perhaps once they have secured the building (which I really hope they do!), they will do another project like this. I know that a projectionist at Watershed volunteers there so I could talk to him in more detail about future opportunities.

Training Day 2 – The Essentials of Community Engagement course at Tobacco Factory, Bristol

On 21 Nov I attended this Audience Agency/CultureHive run course on effective community engagement, which especially focussed on how to identify successful approaches to reaching people that you are currently ‘unconnected’ with (I think this could be families at Watershed) and explored strategies for connecting with wider agendas (and generally a more diverse audience at Watershed). I feel that I can apply learning gained from the numerous case studies we looked at from the arts and heritage sector to my own current and future work.

Here is a pdf of all my notes on community engagement (below is just a selection of screenshots and photos of the other information I received).

Information pack from Community Engagement training

Observations and insights which I have gained from this very interesting day-long include principally learning a lot more about how to approach these kind of projects (lots of planning, really careful budgeting alongside a lot of flexibility) and this kind of arts practitioner role (don’t let yourself feel isolated within an organisation because you are quite outward facing and often alone, and keep feeding back into the organisation what you’re doing and reflecting on how your work impacts on the organisation and vice versa). It also gave me lots of inspiration for the types of events and organisations I would like to be involved in and made me aware of challenges I may face when we looked at case studies; it also cemented in my mind that to do this work you have to be committed, creative, hands-on and a people person; it re-iterated the importance of evaluation in community engagement projects (identifying the key beneficiaries, objectives and performance indicators); as well as taught me some basics about funding.

I especially enjoyed when Emily Bull from The Station gave a presentation about the venue, how they came about and now operate, how they involve local young people in the decision making and running of the place, what other services and projects they offer, and the relationships they have with different organisations and groups within Bristol. Emily also talked about her career path and how she got to where she is now , and I felt I could really relate to her and it gave me confidence in myself and my choice of career path as I would love to work with someone like this.

In terms of my future career path, this training day really inspired me to investigate my love of installation art, dance, mural painting and illustrating to think about community projects which I could potentially set up in the future (as a volunteer). It has also helped me to think about how we might try to engage with harder to reach audiences at Watershed – it is so true that having a respected voice in the community or someone you know recommend a place or an event to you, makes you much more likely to go. I think that this is something we need to work on as an organisation in the areas where there aren’t many people who know our brand, work or what we do. The best form of marketing is word of mouth and I think if we could work on this in the communities and areas of Bristol who we don’t engage with as much as we might want to, then it could really make a difference.

Other work experience

In December I helped out with a Cinekids Animation Workshop (Cinekids: Animating Faces Out of Bits and Bobs) which was run in association with Cinecity Brighton and voice-over artist Tom. The workshop was part of BFI Gothic season at Watershed and was inspired by the work of Czech filmmaker and animator Jan Svankmajer who made a short film using stop motion animation where bits and bobs make up a pair of heads which proceed to eat each other and then vomit up the other to make a new head, made up of new objects. Pretty weird stuff – but the kids loved it! Whilst the kids were at the workshop their parents were able to watch a rare collection of Svankmajer’s Gothic inspired shorts (which are rated certificate 18) and so it was a great mix of adult and kids entertainment.

The most important part of my job was attaining consent forms from the parents, looking after the children throughout the workshop and helping them to use the equipment. There were a few times where I had to help with group dynamics, but otherwise the children were fantastic and just really energetic and excited. Some of them had been before to our Cinekids workshops in the summer so were familiar with the equipment and the processes and others were new. We began the workshop with a short introduction to ourselves, Tom the artist, stop-motion animation and the Svankmajer short.

The children had so many great ideas, the most challenging thing was trying to get the whole group to follow through with a few of the ideas and not just jump from one thing to the next. I also thought throughout that it doesn’t really matter if their story doesn’t make sense, as this is supposed to be a session for total creative freedom and not for learning ‘how it should be done’. They finished pieces were definitely experimental (but so is Svankmajer!). Watch the videos I helped them to make here.

I especially enjoyed meeting the families of the children involved, they were so happy when we screened their animations at the end of the session and I enjoyed hearing all the kids’ different ideas. It was a bit of a tough workshop as we had more children than normal (it sold more tickets than it was supposed to) so it felt a bit cramped and there was lots of mess to clear up – all those bits and bobs!

It was nice working with Tom and Maddy on this workshop (there I am in the back of the photo on the right hand side) and I will try to do similar work again. I emailed around to the families who attended the workshop with the link to their video about a week later (see screenshot below) – it’s important to do that kind of aftercare, say thank you and you can let them know of any relevant upcoming events as well.

My role for the day + a participant’s ticket stub

Contacting the families from the workshop with their video links

Maddy’s comments on my work at the event

I would love to do workshops like this all the time and so in terms of helping me with my future career aspirations, it was another good experience of how to run a children’s workshop and how to produce one with the help of an artist.

Summary of my training, learning, and impact on my future career

I have really enjoyed gaining more experience in my interest areas and I am looking forward to gaining more. Doing the two course days has been really lucky and invaluable experience, and I find I respond really well to this kind of training. I feel like I have learnt a lot about the groups I would like to work with, the types of work I would like to do, the roles available and necessary skills to do them, information on funding, and about programming and producing successful events for families and in communities with a variety of different groups. Working the Cinekids workshop was really good hands-on experience and taught me that getting out there and volunteering for things will be a great way for me to learn about how to run the kinds of events and projects I am interested in. It will also help me to make the necessary contacts to learn more and progress in my career. For example, in February I will have arranged to help at a friend’s charity fundraising event in Southville for LinkAge during the children’s workshops and I would like to do more of this for events and initiatives that relate to children and families, as well as arts participation/engagement in general in the near future.

What I Intend to Research + Why

I am interested to learn more about producers who work in the arts, and am especially interested in talking to the people behind Bristol’s big cultural events and festivals, its contemporary arts scene, as well as those involved in engagement and participation within arts organisations or community projects in Bristol. I will mainly used the internet (blogs, organisation websites, press and social media sites) to find out about industry professionals in Bristol. Where possible, I will talk to colleagues and our course facilitators, Clare Simmons and Hannah Higginson, about who is working in the kind of areas I am interested. I will read up about the career paths of people I come across in this research and will document it in this blog.

I think that this element of the course is very important for me in terms of building my confidence and learning about the history (and future!) of advanced arts practitioners. I hope to find out that they were not too dissimilar from me when they began their career and I am sure they will have some inspiring stories and advice to share. It will be interesting to see whether they always knew what they wanted to do, and if not, how their interest and expertise evolved over time. I am looking forward to gaining some first hand insight about these area/s of the arts and I hope to better understand how these areas work, which will give me the confidence to follow my interests in the arts.

Initial Research

Here are a few of my initial ideas for who I would like to interview and why:

Mike Bennet – of Bristol Media fame is employed by the City Council as Place Making Director, working on projects to help develop the city’s profile and attract investment in the area. He is the man behind events such as See No Evil (which attracted local and international graffiti talent to the city to turn Nelson Street into one of Europe’s most impressive outdoor galleries in which to host a weekend long summer festival and celebration of all things Bristol) and Eat Drink Bristol Fashion (which takes over Queen’s Square by the harbourside to bring us a two week gastro-extravaganza with michelin chefs, tapas bar and live music). He is also involved in the regeneration that is going on around the train station, an area which is now called Creative Common which has various little places to eat and drink at, including the Yurt Lush Cafe. This distinctive blend of art, music and great food goes down really well in Bristol and I would love to find out more about how these events are produced.

Helen Cole – is Artistic Creator and Chief Director of In Between Time, which is an international production company creating extraordinary public art works, and the biennial In Between Time Festival. They encourage artists and audiences to let their imaginations run free and I love the live art and performance elements of their work. Helen Cole is particularly interesting as she began her career as a producer in Manchester in the mid-90s, developing interdisciplinary projects in unusual unused urban locations, and then worked with Bristol contemporary arts gallery Arnolfini as a producer of live art and dance there, where she then set up the festival. The work she champions is often cross-art form projects from emerging artists, which I am most interested in exploring. She explains her journey and what she does in this interesting article.

Poppy Stephenson – is the CEO of the Bristol Festival Community Group which produces BrisFest, an entirely volunteer run music festival which brings together the best of the South Wests artists, performers, circus acts, food stalls, and much much more. Next year’s festival has been cancelled (it is thought that this is due to the volunteer model and shoestring budget), but I hope that this not-for-profit event will be back in 2015 (they say it is a fallow year). I would love to chat to Poppy about what gave her the idea for the festival and how she managed to organise so much with such little cash.

Jack Gibbon – is Director of Antlers Gallery, which is a nomadic art gallery that operates out of Bristol. They produce many temporary exhibitions both in traditional contexts and disused urban places as well as representing a select group of contemporary artists through exhibitions, art fairs, consultancy and private sales. The artists they work with are particularly interested in natural history, narrative and folklore, and all have a slightly darker, or uncanny side to their work. I have worked with Jack in the past (that’s me in the right hand photo!) but I would like to spend some dedicated time picking his brains about doing all of this highly organised, creative and innovative producing at such a young age. I studied History of Art and so have a real interest in exploring in more depth the contemporary art world, curation and artist representation.

I would also love to talk  his work for Studio Upstairs which is an arts engagement project that works with arts therapists to provide artistic resources and therapeutic support to people experiencing mental and emotional distress and to those in drug and alcohol recovery.

Ellie Jeffs – is Assistant Curator in Participation and Learning at Arnolfini art gallery and does a lot of work with family audiences which especially interests me as I am working on the Family Arts Festival for this project. I met Ellie at the start of the project to talk about our joint marketing campaign – she is friendly and open. I think she would be an excellent person to interview as I could talk to her about engagement and work with families in the context of a large public arts organisation which I can reflect on in relation to Watershed and my own career path. I could also ask her about her experience of the Family Arts Festival itself, once this year is over. She is a very relatable person and I think that talking to her could give me insight into what I could do next in terms of carving out a career in engagement.

Planning the Interview

Ellie also attended a Family Arts Campaign training day I went to in London at the TMA. Hearing her talk about her work at Arnolfini, the focus groups she ran, and her current work with families was really interesting. I asked if she would mind doing an interview with me about her work and her career path – and she agreed!

So, I set up an interview date and time, did some research into Arnolfini’s family engagement work and drew up some questions, which I sent to Ellie in advance so she could prepare for the interview if she liked. Here are the interview questions I sent to Ellie.

I then arranged to get a room at the Arnolfini in which to film the interview and booked out the necessary tech equipment available at Watershed. Initially I was going to use a Kodak Zi8  but I used a Canon SLR digital camera instead as it records better quality footage (but only for 11 minute sections at a time!). I used a tripod to set up the camera and a Tascam audio recorder which needed headphones and a lapel mic for Ellie. A few months ago I attended a masterclass on producing a video interviewing with Paddy and Grace from Watershed’s programming department, where I got to know the equipment, discussed shots, sound and lighting, interview techniques, and then made a practice interview.

I took the tripod and camera out before the interview and shot some cut-aways of the harbourside area and the gallery inside and out, which I may or may not have to use, and I have selected some intro music, which again, I will wait until editing to see if I use it or not. I also prepared a consent form to get permission from Ellie to publish the video on this blog. 

Shooting and Editing the Interview

I was really happy with how the interview went. I set up the camera in the room, taking into consideration the natural light and shadows, and luckily it was not a very sunny day – I learnt that when filming in a room with windows, if there is lots of sunshine and clouds outside it means light levels go up and down and make editing more tricky. Before we began we had a chat over some tea and cake so that we both felt relaxed. We then hooked up the mic and I did a few tests and began filming. The interview went more quickly than I expected. Ellie answered all my questions clearly and concisely, and I only had to direct her a few times to reply using the question for her answer so that I knew I had some good soundbites. I forgot to ask Ellie to clap so that I could sync up the sound and video easily – I realised this as I was packing up my equipment. But again – I will remember next time! The editing went well (I learnt how to do audio and visual transitions and add stills) and I am happy with the final result. Here it is:

Interview with an Arts Practitioner by Roseanna Dias, 2014 from Watershed Bristol on Vimeo.

Reflection

By interviewing Ellie, I have learnt about how important getting as much experience helping at workshops in different organisations will be for my career development. I think that I need to start going outside of Watershed and volunteering in different organisations or with smaller groups to gain a different perspective and other insights into how others run public engagement events. I would like to volunteer at children’s arts workshops in Bristol and I have already fixed up to help at one next week with a friend at SOUTHBANK Club in Southville. I hope it will be the first of many.

I also learnt more about how to produce a family event, which is what I am most interested in and I will aim to get involved in the production and not just the on-the-day running of such events during the coming year. I find it really exciting that Ellie runs many of the workshops at Arnolfini – I did not know that this happened and thought external practitioners were nearly always brought it – and I would love this part of the job! I learnt a bit more about how little funding there is in this area, and what this means for working in participation (resourcefulness, collaboration and creativity).

The thing I have learnt most from my research is that being proactive, making contacts, and seeking out new projects to help on will be key to my development in engagement and participation. I think the same goes for pursuing a career in festival production, so getting in the mindset of an arts practitioner who does the kind of work I want to has been useful for setting short and mid term goals. I still think I need to have a good think about what my long-term goals are and I hope that the year ahead’s experience that I will gain will help me to clarify these.

I do feel more confident about how to get into engagement and family events having done this interview as I feel I am more knowledgeable of the type of skills needed, the roles out there and the state of this arts area. However, I think it will be important for me to keep talking to as many arts practitioners as possible to get as much advice as I can from people working in the industry.

On a side note, I have also really enjoyed making and editing the video and this is a new skill that I will aim to improve on. There are loads of great tutorials online for editing and I want to continue to learn more by experimenting with the equipment and software.

Other Research into Arts Practitioners

Here is an interesting site (artsinterview.com) which I came across last year. The website has sadly closed down now but its a rich archive of interviews with arts practitioners. This interview stood out to me as it follows emerging arts practitioners, who talk about their professional development.

I met with Aisling to discuss her work on the Bristol Jazz & Blues Festival (coming up in March) as I will be working with her to promote an exciting event we have at Watershed as part of the festival. I also had a chat with her about her work in events PR and marketing for various clients in Bristol, including BrisFest (2012), Arc Festival, Harbourside No. 1 and The Canteen in Stokes Croft, Shambala Festival, and now Bristol Food Connections Festival which will run in May. Aisling specialises in music, food and cultural events and loves working in Bristol because of the city’s unique creative vibe and easy going nature, which I can definitely relate to. She talked about how busy and full-on it can be, but also said how enjoyable it is, especially since you are often surrounded by lots of people. I have realised this year that I enjoy (even need!) to interact with people on a day to day basis as it gives me lots of energy. Aisling said that she had previously worked with agencies, but much preferred working with the clients and on the events and festivals she works on now. I hope to speak in more detail with her about her career path and what her current job involves.

Today I had a catchup meeting with Polly from the Asian Arts Agency. Hearing about her work on the DESH project (which I attended the launch of) was great – and she actually comes from a similar background to me (History of Art) which I found really interesting. I have arranged to go along to a session in two weeks time to meet the participants and see how they are getting on. Meanwhile, I am going to think about where else we can publicise the project to push up numbers!

Introduction

Living in Bristol makes it easy to attend some fantastic art events from from which to learn, as the local creative scene is booming and varied. From large to very small, some permanent and some pop-up arts projects, festivals and events happen all the time. Since I work at Watershed, I often attend events as a representative for the organisation or in my own time.  Being involved in our ever changing roster of events, films and festivals is a good way of keeping up my interests and getting involved with the ins and outs of how different events are run. I am especially interested in community and family events, youth projects, installation work and art exhibitions. I hope that by attending events that interest me in terms of my own arts practice and career development, and then reflecting on these experiences as a trainee-producer, I can build on my experience and extend my knowledge. Above all, it is important to keep searching out inspiration and like-minded people.

St Pauls Carnival – Community Music and Culture – Sat 6 July 2013

Last weekend I attended the much anticipated St Paul’s Carnival, Bristol’s annual celebration of all things Afro Caribbean. Alongside the other estimated 80,000 people who descended on the city to be a part of this huge street party, I meandered through the roads of St Pauls and soaked up the atmosphere before heading to meet friends, catch the vibrant parade, track down some tasty Caribbean food and see some of the top homegrown and international reggae, dub, drum and bass, garage and hip hop talent on show. It was a fantastic sunny day which definitely added to the already relaxed and friendly atmosphere, as young and old soaked up the good vibes side by side, the party lasting late into the night.

Attending the event was helpful for seeing how you could produce such a huge event right in the centre of an already busy city. This event is especially interesting because St Paul’s Carnival is a registered charity sponsored by Bristol City Council and Arts Council which also relies heavily on donations from attenders to bring the next year’s festival to life. The organisers of 2013 had a strong campaign for collecting donations – using the standard collection buckets, but you could also text to donate. Everywhere you went, stewards and mcs were reminding us how easy it was to donate and what the money would mean for the festival next year and I think it was an effective way of fundraising on a grassroots level. Considering that 2012’s carnival was called off, everyone seemed extra happy that the festival was back on and as big and colourful as ever.

Tens of thousands descended on St Paul’s for a day of music and culture

I thought a lot about how you’d go about arranging something so big on a shoestring – and what you noticed walking around and talking to people was the number of different groups working together to make it a success. Everyone was sharing their skills, equipment and space. One lady I talked to said she thought there were over 1,000 people collaborating to make it all possible: this included local organisations such as Ujima Radio and local businesses like Cosie’s on Portland Square, many musicians and artists, sound system owners, children from local primary schools and their parents, local sports groups, circus groups, and officials.

The St Paul’s community had been involved in Mas (masquerade) camps in the run up to the festival where they made costumes and floats together. During the festival, residents could pay a small fee to the organisers so they could sell food and drink from their front gardens, many families and friends also set up small sound systems, adding to the atmosphere. Everyone stopped to enjoy (or join in!) the parade, which included dancing, circus acts, music, and drumming, as it wound its way through the neighbourhood. There was a real sense of community spirit, and I believe this not only came from so many people coming from far away to support and enjoy the festivities, but also from the local residents who were involved throughout the festival in numerous ways. 

This spirit of all coming together to make something special happen also applied to the artists, many of whom performed for free or waived fees in order to support the event and the area. Live graffiti artists provided an instant welcome as you walked through Stokes Croft from the centre up to the festival. Here’s a short time-lapse video of the day’s work by Inkie, Silent Hobo and Leon.

Fringe events have also provided a promotional platform and context for the carnival and they will continue for the rest of the month, with art exhibitions, shows of historical collections, and talks. That evening many venues held official Carnival after parties to continue the fun and help raise more funds.

I found the whole event very inspirational as an aspiring producer: the atmosphere was incredible (despite some stigma which has surrounded the event in the past), I loved that the whole family could enjoy the festivities all day long but there were dedicated after parties for those who wanted to continue celebrating, and most significantly, I liked that there was a real sense of it being a festival for and by the community. It’s definitely something I would like to be involved in next year, especially with the Mas Camps (I love doing hand embroidery and can make a mean headdress) and I can see that its an integral way of involving the community from the outset, and having lots of fun getting creative.

Redfest – Celebrating the Local – Sat 3 August 2013

Welcome to the Wilderness! Or St. George’s Park – an expansive Victorian landscaped park found just down my local high street in Redfield, Bristol, taken over for a second year running this Saturday by Redfest, the area’s lively independent free art and music festival. More than just a lively all-dayer, Redfest proper spanned from Wed 31 July – Sun 4 Aug, and encompassed more live music, cabaret, art and kids activities themed around ‘The Wilderness’ than you could shake a stick at. All this was happening in the park itself and across local venues such as Cafe Grounded and St George’s Community Centre, as well as local pubs The Red Lion and favourite, The Old Stillage (which put on a brilliant after party with live dub at the weekend).

I’m going to focus on the main festival day held on Sat 3 Aug, which I attended with a group of friends. The first thing to mention is that lots of people don’t know much about the area I live in and people from other areas of the city don’t really come to visit. Redfield is an up and coming area, with a high street that’s got lots of great amenities and pubs along it, a train station, local shops and supermarkets. Although some of the area is a little run down, it’s got loads going for it and the people who live around here are genuinely friendly.

It was important for me that my friends come down and witness how good Redfield and the surrounding area is – and with this free music and art day to attract them, they happily came and explored a place they may not have considered visiting before. Perfect. From a producer’s point of view this is great, because if a local area can promote itself through free, fun events which showcase the area in a good light and attract different people to the area, then real positive experiences can replace any negative preconceptions. Certainly, my friends were impressed and had no idea we had such a lovely park, or that I lived amidst a community so interested in having fun all together and so keen to celebrate Redfield and the East of the city.

A few friends arrive for festivities

From the moment I entered the park, there was a fantastic atmosphere, with small stalls selling artisan products and food lining the pathway past the acoustic stage and then down to the main stage where the familiar fronds of a pink and blue tentacled monster clung on. It was a stroke of genius to involve Filthy Luker, the now world-renowned Bristol graffiti and installation artist whose blow up creatures and contraptions are instantly recognisable as a Bristol festival staple and which generate feelings of playfulness and fun.

Filthy Luker takes over the main stage with his crazy caterpillar

Stretching out along the avenue of trees to the right was an adventure area with activities for children and a Kid’s Village tent, where families could join in with dancing and music making, painting and crafting, circus skills, games, theatre and more. Talk about a great quality, packed programme for the family – an audience group which I am particularly interested in and hope I can work with during the Future Producers programme. I will also look in to getting involved in the Redfest Kid’s Village next year if possible as I think this would be great experience, arranging a programme of arts activities for families on a small budget.

Families enjoyed the sun and little children, teenagers, young adults, parents and even a granny or two sat and enjoyed the music by the main stage in the afternoon as local acts and small bands played on stages supported by music makers and players Jelli Records, Ujima Radio and BCFM. Even when the rain threatened to clear the park, most festival goers stayed on, proving the resilience of the event. The music, market and activities went on until about 9pm, after which we could go to various live music events going on in pubs around Redfield and neighbouring Easton.

Redfest 2013 was a fantastic example of how to run a small, local festival that effectively showcases the best of a perhaps otherwise lesser-known area; gives a platform to small local businesses and start-ups via market and fringe events; and engages people of all walks of life and backgrounds, and especially those, like myself, who make up part of the local community, giving us an opportunity to come together and celebrate our area and the people who live here.

Local veg shop Dig In came along with a little Ape van selling all kinds of good for you goodies

There were many volunteers with branded t-shirts and excellent costumes providing friendly information and festival programmes, and it was great to see so many different people involved in the running of the event. Without the support of sponsors and partners (see below) this free, independent festival would not exist, and funding from Bristol City Council and Arts Council England is integral for arts activities and paying local artists.

Here is a really interesting document which I have just come across after writing this post. It clearly lays out on the first page what Redfest 2013’s aims were, and I honestly feel that they achieved what they wanted. I really did find this event encouraging as an aspiring producer and it confirmed to me that this is the kind of event I would like to work on in the future as it is an effective platform for getting art into the community, helping local artists, amplifying pride of the area and boosting the local economy.

DESH Launch Event – A South Asian Youth Project – Tue 29 Oct 2013

Last night I attended the Asian Arts Agency’s launch event for their DESH Project – it was not a public event but since it was being held at Watershed, I asked if I could attend as an organisation representative so that I could meet the people running this interesting project.

Desh, meaning Homeland or Motherland in Hindi, is a project aimed at helping young people from the South Asian Community in Bristol to record and reinterpret their family stories and traditions. By talking to elders and learning about South Asian folk arts and oral traditions and then working with professional artists, participants (aged 18 – 24 years old) will be encouraged to develop their own work in response to what they’ve learnt. They’ll have the opportunity to use different animation techniques, digital story telling and music production, and then their works will become part of an interactive touring exhibition in the South West in March. More details can be found in this DESH Lauch Event handout.

My grandmother is originally from Goa, and so this project really appealed to me. Not only is it facilitating intergenerational dialogue, but it is also helping a generation of South Asians in Britain like myself, learn about or revisit elements of their Indian culture. It also helps this community to gain new skills and experience and providing them with a a creative outlet for their own interpretation of their family’s memories of the ‘homeland’ and gives them an opportunity to reflect on what ‘home’ might really mean to them. The fact that participants’ work will be shown to others outside of the South Asian Community is also very important, as this project needs to be outward looking as much as it is inward looking, so that it can inspire other communities, be they Polish, Somali, British or other to do the same. The DESH project will run from Jan – Mar 2014 at The Station, which is a youth-led creative-hub and one-stop shop for youth services in the Bristol centre, a great location where participants will be able to build a creative peer network. The project will also form part of the Creative Youth Links Network. Safe to say, I was excited to see what the organisers and others attending the event had to say about the project.

The event itself began with a screening of Ravi Shankar in Portrait: Between Two Worlds introduced by its director Mark Kidel, Polly from the Asian Arts Agency and a representative from Arts Council England who had awarded funding to DESH. I found the latter’s speech really moving, as she stressed that the project immediately jumped out at the board due to its multifaceted approach to engaging different communities with art and culture (through input from different generations, creation of new work, and then exhibition of this work).

Mark Kidel, who is a Mark Kidel is a film-maker and writer specialising in the arts and music, talked about making the film and his experience of meeting the legendary sitar player and his incredible life story (which included hanging out with American film stars when he was still a boy). He also discussed the importance of South Asian and other cultures for him (and I have since found out that he helped to set up WOMAD festival in the 1980s). The film itself was fantastic and very interesting, as the music, performances and relationships that made him famous were contextualised with archive footage and interviews. Ravi Shankar’s sitar playing was given pride of place, with lots of long, interrupted footage of him playing on stage and his teaching and pupils featuring throughout the film. As we hear Ravi’s stories from across the globe, which span both South Asian folk art and Western hippy culture, we are brought tantalisingly close to the star and his beliefs. The film was as moving as it was informative, and it was very human: we meet Ravi’s family and pupils, and see the beginnings of his new dream house in India.

At the drinks reception after the film, I chatted to Mark some more about his new film and his work as a director. He said that he especially enjoyed meeting Ravi because he was easy to talk to and came across brilliantly on film. We talked about his work in France and then chatted about when I lived in Italy and what cultural life was like over there compared to the UK.

Tom, One of the artists that the DESH participants would be working with chatted to me about his work as an animator/illustrator and said he was looking forward to helping the participants to visualise their stories in animation. I also spoke to the project co-ordinators, Polly and her team at the Asian Arts Agency. They were really excited about the project and we’re hoping to get a wide range of participants with different artistic interests including digital, illustration, storytelling, music and theatre to create a really dynamic course and resulting exhibition. The recruitment process was beginning, they had a flyer and posters as well as the course being shared by networks online. I said we could put it in our weekly email, as its exactly the kind of cross-art form youth project that Watershed supports. I am sure that they’ll find lots of help through The Station (part of The Creative Youth Network), who have a large following on Facebook and Twitter.

Those that I talked to also encouraged me to talk to my nana at Christmas, which I will definitely do. I find the issues of ethnicity, identity and memory really interesting, but I’m yet to properly explore this theme in my own illustration.

At Christmas, I did talk to my nana and made some sketches in response to our discussion about her early life and then as an immigrant dress maker in the UK.

The Drowned Man – Expecting the Unexpected – Fri 15 Dec 2013

In December, as part of Watershed’s Cultural Development Programme, I went with a group of colleagues to see The Drowned Man – A Hollywood Fable in London. It was a co-production by The National Theatre and renowned theatre company Punch Drunk. They came onto the scene in 2000 and since then have been pioneering new approaches to immersive theatre, combining slick physical performance with award-winning set design in unconventional spaces for an audience that roams (or runs!) around during the entire production. I had never been to an immersive theatre event like this and I was incredibly excited, even a little nervous.

Below is the blurb that I read online before the production (I don’t want to explain the story as the show is still running):

Have you ever seen nature inside out? When the sun stands at midday and it’s as if the world was going up in flames?

Step into the world of Temple Pictures where the Hollywood studio system meets a forgotten hinterland filled with dreamers who exist at the fringes of the movie industry. Here, celluloid fantasy clings to desperate realism and certainty dissolves into a hallucinatory world.

Inspired by Buchner’s fractured masterpiece Woyzeck, this theatrical journey follows its protagonists along the precipice between illusion and reality.

Upon entering the building, we were given a small slip of paper with a story printed on each side. Along with a small introduction to the main characters in the lift by a suave yet subtly menacing maitre-de of sorts this was pretty much the only ‘spoon-fed’ narrative fodder on offer. If you wanted to know more about what was going on then you had two choices. You could either meander around and nit-pick through the many seemingly empty rooms, streets, and spaces to find clues to characters’ stories, past, present and future, left lurking in objects. The mis-en-scene was mind-blowing and the attention to detail phenomenal – you really could find out a lot about what was going on this way. The other option was to descend on characters as they performed scenes, and then chase one of the sub-groups or individuals from these scenes as they inevitably dashed off to another part of the building and another part of the story. Most people chose to do the latter, meaning that following the characters at a pace was a challenge, and a little rough. Yyes, contending with sharp elbows and arms that pushed you back felt quite normal by the end of the three hour long show. And if hounding the actors or tip toeing around the creepy corridors did get too much, then there was a themed bar complete with cabaret and everything you needed to lift the spirits.

Perhaps the fact that all audience members had to wear strange white monkey-like masks and were therefore stripped of their usual identity made them more ferocious than they would be on the street? When I did manage to get right to the front of a scene and see the actors, it was very arresting. As the only ones in the spaces without masks, they stood out from the anonymous crowd surrounding them and I especially appreciated the choreography which harked back to the movements of old movie stars and conveyed love and pain without words.

Trying to follow The Drowned Man narrative was really difficult, which initially frustrated me. After about an hour and half, I decided that if I wanted to really enjoy the show then I needed to stop trying to fill in the gaps or understand who was who. It was still going to be possible to draw parallels between different characters even if I didn’t know their back story and I was sure that I would find out other stories, if not the main ones.

I can see why this process might leave some feeling a little indifferent or dissatisfied. It did feel as though the narrative was always running away from you, but disregarding it in this way was also a strangely liberating experience. It was interesting just enjoying the ride, as the action seemingly dried up and then engulfed you unexpectedly in waves of song, dance, dreaming, screaming, scheming and awe-inspiring technical effects. The finale was incredible, and did tie up a few questions I had, but more than anything it was an all-out spectacle, and felt like stepping into the most dramatic scene of a Hollywood movie.

Being let loose in Temple Pictures Studios and the Hollywood hinterland was both entertaining and nerve-wracking. The cinematic nature of the production was transportive and mesmerising, at times it felt exciting, at times it all filled me with a genuine sense of dread. It evoked in me a real sense of adventure and I felt the whole way through the show that anything was possible and anything could happen. I loved having control over what to watch and where to explore next, even though this freedom initially had me confused and disgruntled. The Drowned Man theatre production was an unprecedented experience for me and I will not forget it, although in all, I think it did feel more like I was immersed in a vast and impressive installation rather than in a story or show.

In terms of producing a show like this, I can only imagine that it takes months and months of preparation to iron out all of the innumerable details. They must have a rigorously rehearsed production plan and schedule for all scenes and the complex lighting and technical effects. The actors would have to have impeccable timing and discipline as they moved in and out of spaces, making way for new scenes to be played out. I kept thinking throughout the production that the actors must find the experience really intense, and immensely enjoyable – having a whole building as a stage would be very exciting. The actors had to make sure that as many people as possible were lead back to the final scene, before the audience was ushered out of the building.

The set design team must spend months sourcing props and creating the installation within the disused building. Then there are the many masks that they must collect and redistribute after each performance. There were lots of ushers, who wore black masks, who were integral for the production. They made sure the scenes could proceed as needed, moving people out of the way of dance routines and making sure everyone kept their mask on so as not to spoil the illusion. Training this troupe of helpers would take a lot of time.

In terms of health and safety, I can imagine it was a nightmare to do a risk assessment for. Many places were pitch black or had very low lighting, and as mentioned, the audience was mostly charging about, up and down stairs and over uneven ground.

In terms of promoting the event, I doubt that Punchdrunk had any problems as they are a very famous theatre company and their reputation proceeds them. Their shows are consistently sold out and they frequently extend runs. The challenge would be living up to the hype and expectation of an audience that always wants more. The ticket price would have been around £50 and I think that considering the high production value of this show, this is a fair price, though it doesn’t make the show accessible to culture-lovers on a low-income.

It was great to be able to attend an event of this calibre with Watershed as part of its staff Cultural Development programme and it has given me an insight into another style of theatre and producing. This experience has inspired me to find out more about Punchdrunk and whether they do engagement work and what this might look like if they do.

Reading more about Punchdrunk after the show has been really helpful to understand more about how they work and their motivations behind it. They specialise in what they call ‘enrichment’ (or engagement). I was especially interested in a project that I read about from 2008 where they would turn an area of a primary school into a mysterious shop which became a magical learning resource (stories were told in this space). Here is a video about Punchdrunk’s Under The Eiderdown project which toured to over 30 schools in London. 

I’d love to work on something like this. I especially love experiences where you are free to explore an installed environment in an individual imaginative journey and can rediscover a childlike excitement and anticipation of exploring the unknown. I think being able to offer these experiences to children is also important, especially if learning, enjoyment of arts and culture, or being encouraged to run with their imaginations can form part of the project. I started to research other companies and organisations which work in experiential events for children and came across London-based Land of Kids who also have an exciting programme of events for kids. I also came across The Imagine Festival at Southbank Centre, The Spark Festival, Imaginate in Edinborough, and Bath Kids Literature Festival closer to home. This article is also a good source from which to start some more detailed research.

Further Research + Reflection on Arts Events + Arts Practitioners

I have also attended amongst other things:

Black History Month: I Am The Gorgon + Intro + Q&A – Thu 10 Oct at Watershed

A fantastic event where Bunny Lee Striker (reggae and dub legend) came to launch a new film about his life and the roots of reggae music to a full house at Watershed as part of our Black History Month season. It was excellent – it was really informative about how the music developed and why, it gave me an insight into songs by providing more context about the people involved, and the animation and (music of course!) was fantastic. I really enjoyed listening to Bunny and his son talk after the screening and I chatted to them briefly in the bar as we listened to some reggae. What an amazing night that brought together Bristol’s music community with a real legend! I brought friends along who had not been to an event at Watershed like this so it was fun to show them what else we offer. From a producer’s point of view it would be important to work with partners on events like this to reach different networks and ‘on the night’ it would be really important to take good care of the artist and have a good mc (in this case it was a famous Bristol DJ) to help introduce the film and the guest, and give the event a local feel.

Totterdown Art Trail – Sat 16 Nov 2013

A great day-time mooch around local makers, artists and creative types in Totterdown. It was lovely to chat to people about their work and share ideas. I gained lots of confidence seeing how other people (and friends) could sell their art works and took some notes and sketches for inspiration for a later date of little things to make – perhaps for a Christmas market.

The Shining Immersive Night – Fri 29 Nov 2013

A one-off immersive cinema night at Watershed by Future Producers based around cult-classic The Shining. It was inspiring! I would have loved to help at this event but I had already organised to go along with lots of friends. We had a great time and I especially enjoyed the extended film edit, the doctor’s creepy show and the actor playing Jack who was up for interacting. This was a very impressive event that took lots of liaising across all departments, planning, organising and run-throughs.

Summary of what I have learnt and how these events will impact on my career

I believe that by attending any events or interacting with art, artists and the arts industries in any number of ways can give me invaluable insight into what to do next in my career and what I would like to be involved in. When I like something I really like it, will rave about it and mull it over and over in my mind, especially if it has given me lots of ideas. When I attend certain events or find out about certain projects (e.g. Redfest / Under The Eiderdown) and I think – “this is exactly what I’d like to help with” – it motivates me to get the right experience as and when I can around my full time job and make progress in these areas.

I am looking forward to carrying on attending arts events and I think I will try to talk (where possible) to the people running or performing at the events to find out more about their perspective and processes undertaken. I will also now aim to keep a record of any thoughts and insights I have along the way in one place so that I can refer back to it.

Initial Idea, Planning + Research

I decided to talk about the issues surrounding diversity in the arts in my presentation this week. I wanted to specifically talk about diversity in terms of ethnicity, specifically the under representation of Black and Minority Ethnicity or BME people in the arts and creative industries. I was keen to find out more about why there are still barriers to creativity and participation for BME individuals and organisations in the art world. I intended to look at how we can challenge and eventually change this.

I reflected on my own experiences of the arts and culture industry and gathered other individuals’ thoughts. I also found out statistics (for the UK, Bristol & the South West) and further information using government and research institute websites, read reports by the Arts Council and other organisations, as well as news articles and websites. At the end of the powerpoint which I made for the presentation, there is a list of sources and some suggested further reading which deals more broadly with the issue of diversity in the arts.

Here are some photos of my research and planning along with some screenshots of a powerpoint presentation which I used to collect my thoughts, evidence and sources in.

Initial brainstorm for my case + Identifying areas to research

Outline of my case

I used a quote from Sir Brian McMaster’s 2008 report to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport into excellence in the arts to act as a springboard for my argument. He says:

We live in one of the most diverse societies the world has ever seen, yet this is not reflected in the culture we produce, or in who is producing it.

I found this statement particularly interesting as I believe that the crux of this argument rests on under-representation of BME communities in the arts and creative industries. I wanted to point out that I felt that a lack of diversity in the cultural sector meant a stifling of creativity and a ‘national culture’ (is there such a thing?!) that is not fully formed – at least not fully representative.

I believed this was due to access to opportunities, networks and jobs, and my research supported this. I do not think it is a case of mindful discrimination according to where you or your relations come from in the world, but rather the demographic of people involved (creating and consuming) in the arts is fairly homogeneous and the industry itself is not that flexible, despite it growing fast.

The routes into the arts are still mainly traversable only if you can do unpaid internships or have family connections in organisations and the like. There will always be competition between candidates, and that is a good thing as it keeps standards high, but if you do not have the same level of access to the competition, then something isn’t right.

I wanted to give a snap shot of the industry of recent, illustrate some of the challenges and barriers to BME communities in the arts and also highlight some ironic facts and figures that I found in order to interrogate the way we like to talk about BME participation in the arts. I also wanted to give the positive side of things – who was doing what, and how, and why – it isn’t all doom and gloom!

Most importantly, I wanted to open up a debate on something which I think is often hushed up because it seems like the UK has moved on from the days of the 70s, 80s and even 90s when overt or casual racism and discrimination towards BME communities was not considered absolutely politically incorrect. Just because we have learnt to talk about something, does not mean we are talking about it or engaging with it. I wanted to see what the others in the group thought about these ideas and opinions. I wanted us to “grab the nettle” together… (I cannot explain how weird I think that phrase really is…!!)

Here is the video of my presentation.

Here is a copy of the presentation and notes I had on the day.

Reflections on the Q&A session

It was great that everyone had so much to say. I argued that a dialogue needed to be opened up and it certainly was. I was happy that the group wanted to talk about diversity, and offered up their own ideas, opinions and experiences.

Varun raised some very interesting points – ones that I would have loved to cover in the presentation but just didn’t have time. He talked about access and the socio-economic factor (which is perhaps the biggest and something I want to find out more about in detail) impeding some BME communities to follow creative paths which often call for unpaid internships or voluntary work. It is true that this is not just linked to ethnicity in the UK but mainly class – which is essentially the barrier to a lot of people’s involvement in the arts industries and THIS is the bigger issue (but one for another day perhaps)…

Varun also commented on the idea of expectations on BME creatives – that people expect you to be a certain way or have certain concerns or want to work in a certain way. I agreed that this is in itself a discrimination and is not acceptable. When he also raised the issue of ‘guiding’ people from BME backgrounds or any background really in their creative work, he also touched on an interesting part of this debate. There is a real tension between wanting to give BME artists and their work a platform and also being prescriptive or patronising.

Tensions spilled out all over the place during the presentation – like when Flo asked about the audiences BME events are aimed at/attract. It makes we ask questions like… What is their purpose? Is it to raise the profile of a community? Is it to open a dialogue between different members of different communities? What about the minorities of BME communities – who is representing their story? Is it about making BME work part of the mainstream? How can arts and issues around BME communities and their histories and their place in the UK today be produced, programmed, talked about and recorded? Whose responsibility is it to make sure all people have equal access to jobs in the arts? How can we realistically remove socio-economic barriers and other barriers to opportunities in the arts to show all people of all backgrounds and walks of life that they can be involved in the arts as well and that it is POSSIBLE?

In short, I loved that we could talk about this in the context of this course and the debate has left me with just as many questions as before.

Researching and talking about the issue has made me want to find out the answers to my questions even more than before. I intend to continue to talk to arts practitioners about, read articles and blogs on the topic, as well as listening to seminars about this very issue that are available online. I also want to research and talk to project leaders in this area and see what they have to say about their specific work and experiences.

I feel like my presentation just opened up lots of questions and a lot of tensions, but hopefully, not just for me, for the others in the group as well.

Further reflection

12 Years A Slave has opened at Watershed and we have opened the debate to the public and are attempting to engage audiences other than our core audience. Claire Stewart sent around this very interesting open letter in relation to a sold-out screening of the film at The Walker Art Centre.

It is incredibly interesting and talks about the dangers of placing BME work in a vacuum where the audience watching is not representative of the culture on show. I agree with many of the points raised in this letter as well. It’s not just that we should not make assumptions that only BME communities will want to engage with BME events and not others, or that BME events are just for BME communities. It is also important to recognise that without a representative audience in any situation, the work on show can become valued as ‘exceptional’ or its true cultural value is not unlocked, when it is placed in a ‘dialogue’ where the voices of members from that community are not heard.

Choosing My Project

I have chosen to work on the Family Arts Festival project and I am really excited to get planning.

The brief is as follows:

“From 18 Oct – 3 Nov 2013 there will be the first UK-wide festival of family arts events. From music to theatre, to circus, art and dance, all events are designed for families to enjoy. Along with Arnolfini, M-Shed, The Architecture Centre, Bristol Hippodrome, Scrap Store and SS Great Britain, Watershed have joined the initiative. We are using the Family Arts Festival (FAF) as a pilot for exploring how we can offer a more joined up programme to families around the harbourside.

Your challenge is to plan a programme of activity within the Oct half term holidays as part of the FAF. Through the activity we would like you to explore how you could bring the work happening in the Pervasive Media Studio (PM Studio) to a family audience. PMS is out research lab which brings together a network of over 100 artists, technologists and acafemics to explore the future of mobile and wireless media.

Working with the talent in the PM Studio you need to engage families in the new merging technologies and ideas that are being developed in the studio.”

Deadlines

Watershed online copy deadline: 16 Sep 2013

Event details confirmed on FAF website: 18 Sep 2013

Outline Budget

Watershed budget: Workshop facilitators £400 / Materials £300

Core budget: Room hire £2200 / Marketing and Promotion £500

I have chosen to work on this project because I see myself going into public engagement or learning and participation. I hope to gain invaluable experience and learn about producing arts and cultural events aimed at a family audience.

I am also very interested in the ‘joined-up approach’ that is at the core of this project. It is going to be very exciting working with a host of other local organisations in the harbourside area such as the Arnolfini and MShed to see what we come up with together and as individual arts orgranisations. It is going to be a great opportunity to see how other organisations in the Bristol art world operate and how their way of working compares to Watershed’s. I am also very interested in working with technology and deepening my own knowledge of its possibilities. Trying to bring a new audience to the PM Studio, which is not traditionally family-oriented, is an exciting assignment.

The brief is fairly open and I already have lots of ideas for events and activities inspired by PM Studio projects and people. What about a digital storytelling adventure along the lines of These Pages Fall Like Ash or a site-specific theatre production with guided walk like Give Me Back My Broken Night? What about dance workshops inspired by Danceroom Spectroscopy nano-science, or design your own spacecraft workshops? There are our new magicians in residence who would be very popular. The themes I have initially identified are magic, illusion, adventure, immersive experiences, and of course, technology.

The skills I will bring to the project include my knowledge of Watershed values and ways of working and my familiarity with the PM Studio. I am creative and artistic and love installation, which I think could work really well here. I have experience in marketing (communicating with colleagues across departments and with audiences, copywriting, promotion, design work) and I think I show good leadership skills as I am pragmatic, energetic, ambitious and have a real can-do attitude.

I am going to be working with Hannah WW (who works at the PM Studio), Louise (who works in arts engagement) and Amy (who works in events organising). I am looking forward to getting together as a team later this week to draw up our initial group response to the brief,  start following up some of our ideas and designate roles and responsibilities.

Initial Ideas

Individual Brainstorming and Project Planning

I thought about the following project planning questions in preparation for our group meeting.

Who is our audience and what do I know about them?

The Watershed is interested in expanding its knowledge relating to families. We currently have lots of initatives for children but none specifically for a family audience: Cinekids is our monthly film and workshop session for children aged 6-11 (which often sells out), Cinebabies is our weekly screening of a film from our regular programme for parents and their babies under 12 months old, we screen children’s films during the school holidays, and we facilitate school screenings and have the National Youth Film Festival coming up soon. It’s important for us to build on our knowledge of our current family audience from these activities and widen our reach. I know from my experience that lots of parents like leaving their children at the Cinekids workshops while they relax in the Café/Bar. They also love to come in at the end of workshops and see the work that their children have done. Sometimes they do try to join in, but there is often not space for them as well as the children. We also find that the children often get on with the activities more easily when their parents are not present. It will be interesting to see how the parents will react to us asking them to be active within our workshops and events, and how their children also react to this change.

My impressions of the modern family is that parents often do not have as much time as they would like to spend with their children, so I think they will enjoy having the opportunity to join in with the activities on offer and join in being creative with their children. I know that families are usually very busy and that they like to plan in advance, so regular programming works well. The flip side is that families also decide on the day what they will do as children and their moods and energy levels can be changeable and usually a lot of people turn up on the day rather than booking in advance.

I think that we should not charge much for our events and keep in line with Watershed’s current pricing structure for children’s events so as not to exclude people from lower-income households, as taking the whole family out can be really expensive (especially to a cinema!). I also believe that we could try to do events that are not just for kids aged 6-11, but also for other age groups so we can engage more children and their families.

What events could I produce, what could the theme/s be, and who could be involved from the PM Studio?

I met with Hannah WW for a brainstorming session so we could think about these questions and bounce ideas off each other in preparation for our first meeting with the others. We both felt that loose themes of Magic/Halloween/Enchantment (the festival is late October) would work really well for the FAF brief. Ideas we’ve got so far include a spooky interactive walk with a storyteller/actor, origami foxes with origami meets electronics workshop, a space themed rocket making/space food workshop, a robot design/costume making workshop with robot dancing session/silent disco, topped off with a Halloween themed magic show… Our heads were also buzzing with thoughts of outdoor screenings (risky we decided), the Stand+Stare Jukebox, Time Winders, AntiVJ light projection, Magna Mysteria and other PM Studio collaborators. Perhaps none of these ideas will make the cut, but I am enjoying thinking about the many possibilities. Below is the brainstorm I made.

Brainstorm for FAF events

We know that as part of Watershed’s BFI Gothic bid there is a separate pot of funding for a screening of Gothic feature film Alice by Czech animator Jan Svankmajer followed by a magic ink worksop with Becca Rose. This will take place in Oct half term so we have been asked to include this in our FAF strand as a cross-over event. It already fits in with the ideas I’ve got so I think this will work well, and it’s good that it won’t come out of our budget but will add another event to our season.

I have also received information about other events that the Bristol FAF organisations are running, which include things like a Slava Circus Skills Workshop with Circomedia at Bristol Hippodrome, Crew Capers Family Storytelling at SS Great Britain, and Curious Creatures puppet and music show by Squashbox Theatre at Bristol Old Vic. It has been useful to see what other organisations have already planned and what’s on offer, as well as confirming that we should keep events low-cost.

How will I motivate a family audience to get involved?

I think we should build on the successes of the Cinekids events and make the format of our FAF events similar (screening + workshop), as we know that it is popular. I think this will help motivate families to come to our events, as they will feel familiar with what we are trying to do. I think we need to make sure the events have a clear strand identity and clear themes so that people know what to expect (I think this helps families decide what to do). Again, the pricing should be fair so that they are more likely to come. Of course the events need to be as fun as possible to attract them in the first place!

Who is part of the team and what will our different roles and responsibilities be? Do we need other people’s support?

I hope to lead on an individual event that we program, as well as helping with the overall planning and delivery of the whole strand. I think I will be good at artist liaison, marketing, set dressing, as well as event management and customer service on the day (as this is where my experience lies). I am looking forward to doing some film programming too. I expect we will discuss whose going to do what at our team meeting once we have decided our programme.

We will need to ask Future Producer Charlie to help with the documentation of our events, although I am happy to help with this part too and am looking forward to writing the report at the end of the project. If we do organise a magic show or mini-festival style event then we will need the help of fellow Future Producers on the day for the set-up, ushering and get-out.

I am aware that we will need to work with the events department to arrange when and where our events take place, with Maddy Probst from the Programming department who will be able to advise us on sourcing films, and with Front of House especially the Duty Managers who can help with getting the events on sale and with advising customers. I am sure that I will also work with my department, Communications, especially with Claire Stewart on our copy and social media.

We will definitely be working closely with Verity MacIntosh (a PM Studio producer) Hannah H who is leading the Future Producer course. We will also have conversations with Clare Reddington (PM Studio/iShed director) and Ellie Jeffs (Assistant Curator of Learning & Participation at Arnolfini) who is overseeing this year’s Bristol FAF.

What resources will I need and where will I get them?

This largely depends on what our events will be. We will definitely need Watershed rooms and cinemas for our events and their standard required documentation (such as risk assessments and contracts). We will need decorations that I am sure we can make with Scrap Store materials and maybe props that we cannot make, which we can source later. I expect we will need tech which we can arrange with our IT and Projection department, as well as other tech and materials for any workshops we run, which again we will need to find out about via the Studio and the artists we will work with.

What do I think about the budget and will we need to rework it?

I think that we will have to cut down our original brainstorm a lot and do perhaps four events, which includes a launch event. That would give us £175 per event for artists/workshop facilitators and materials. It means we could spend maximum £150 per artist, leaving about £25 for materials, which is doable. I think we may have to cut our plans back to just three events, including a launch event if the launch event is to be bigger than the others, as it will probably eat up more than £175 of the non-core budget. I want to include as many PM Studio residents as possible in the FAF, but it will depend on their rates, and I also think we will be more successful if we do fewer, better quality events.

We definitely don’t have budget for producing our own piece of print for Watershed FAF events, but I don’t think we’ll need it as there is the joint marketing print that is already covered by the core budget. Room hire is also already covered by core budget costs, but if we want any catering then we will have to take this out of the non-core budget, which could prove too expensive for us.

How will I advertise/promote the event?

At Watershed we publish all our events online and using links we can cross-promote events across the website. I think we should promote our events on Cinekids workshop pages and in person at the workshops themselves in the lead up to the festival. If it is ok with Hannah H who programmes the Cinekids workshops it would be good to email past workshop attenders and let them know about the FAF events. I also think that social media will be very important, as we should be able to spread the word through Watershed’s online networks. Lots of people use Twitter to decide what to do on the day, so I think Twitter will be important for capturing our family audiences nearer the time.

There is already some core-funding put aside for a joint marketing campaign with the other Bristol FAF organisations, with Arnolfini leading on the production of the print that will list organisations and events. I need to make sure that this print is distributed across Bristol arts organisations and in appropriate places for family audiences that we think will be interested in the events we eventually programme (e.g. places with storytelling or dance events or classes for kids/adults). It should also be displayed all around the Watershed building before and during the festival.

Finally, we need to list Watershed as an organisation on the FAF website and then we can get all our events listed on there by 18 Sept. This will give us another good online platform where parents will be able to search for our events. The FAF will also carry out their own marketing and PR campaign so its important we get on board as soon as possible.

I am looking forward to getting some feedback from the others in the group and hearing some fresh ideas.

Group Meeting To Discuss Initial Ideas

On Tuesday we met for the first time as a group to discuss our initial ideas, after Louise and Amy had a tour of the PM Studio. The rest of the group liked the brainstorm that Hannah and I had drawn up and also liked the themes. I wanted the strand to be connected with imagination and taking creative risks, as this is what the PM Studio specialises in, and we needed the strand to sound fun for children as well as adults. I suggested we call the event strand ‘The Imaginarium’ or ‘The Imagination Lab’ to convey the experimental nature of the events which would aim to bring the projects, technologies, and ways of working from the PM Studioto a family audience. We settled on ‘The Imagination Lab’ and also identified some artists and projects from our brainstorm who we would each contact, asking for their ideas on workshops they could run as well as suggesting those we had drawn up, and their availability, rates, and requirements. I was to contact Dave and Kritsin from The Ice Book about possible performances with Ocelot’s Tales of The Night screened beforehand, Constance and her Makey Makey Robot Making Workshop with The Iron Giant screened before, Kathy Hinde and her Bat Boxes activity and Vocal Migrations installation, and also Laura Kriefman with her Rolling Stones Dance Workshop. We decided we definitely wanted to do a Magic Show as a launch event and that I would talk to Victoria Tillotson who is looking after the magicians in residence whilst they are at Watershed to see if they could be recruited for the event.

We discussed having a day-long festival style event that would span the whole of the building (cinema with magic show to begin, art installation in the top foyer, use of all three Waterside spaces in the afternoon which could be joined up to create a one large space with different activity areas in each room). I will investigate whether this is possible with our Operations team. I did raise the issue that it could be hard to do this for this year’s festival as we did not have that much budget (especially if we wanted to do other events as well), but I thought this was a great idea for future Family Arts Festivals and would be nice and celebratory.

Meeting With Ellie from Arnolfini

Straight after our group meeting we met with Ellie Jeffs who is Assistant Curator of Learning and Participation at Arnolfini and who is leading on the Bristol FAF this year. We told her our initial ideas (theme/s, strand title, examples of workshops we’d like to run), which she liked and said fitted in with the types of events other organisations were running. We talked to her about the joint marketing print that Arnolfini was producing, and we fedback that we liked the passport idea for the flyer (like the very popular and effective Gromit Unleashed map and passport flyer) and agreed it needed urls on it next to each event/organisation depending on space. This would be really important for us as we would have lots of information online (our standard way of engaging with our customers).

Ellie informed us that we needed to get titles, dates, ticket prices, age range and short copy over to her by next Tuesday to allow time for the print to go ahead before the schools went back  (they are going to distribute it in The Primary Times the first week of Sep). I said that this was going to be difficult as we had not yet confirmed any of our ideas for events with artists or Watershed, but said we would do our best to get as much of the information to her by next week. I have got lots to do – and quickly!

Updated Project Planning, Roles and Responsibilities 

Below is a detailed project plan (Arts Leadership Project Plan) outlining what I need to do in the coming weeks according to my role and responsibilities (where appropriate I have added in event names at a later date as well as info on the further planning, delivery, contingency plans and evaluation), which I made after our first team meeting. As I am Co-producer of the Family Arts Festival strand, and Producer of one of the events in the strand – I have lots on my plate!

In a nutshell, I will be leading on:

– Marketing for the whole strand (copywriting, branding, news, PR, marketing campaign/s, internal marketing and print)

-Budgeting for whole strand

-Set-dressing (designing and making decorations) and on the day leadership for launch event (MC, materials, forms, catering, liaising with Box Office)

-Planning, programming and delivery of the last event in the strand

-Evaluation and reporting for whole strand

Arts Leadership Plan Roseanna Dias

Programming + Planning

Artist Recruitment

I’ve spent a lot of time emailing and on the phone to potential PM Studio residents and artists I think we could work with on this project. For instance, I contacted the team in charge of The Ice Book performances about their availability and rates for our Magic Show launch day. They had performed at the Watershed 30th Birthday Party and were a huge success – miniature paper-cut pages of a book are transformed by projection mapping, and you follow tiny characters (creators Kristin and Dave) through a narrated wonderland. It would have tied in perfectly with the essence of what we want to bring to a family audience (art, science, technology and pure wonder!).Unfortunately the Ice Book Show was not available at that time, but I talked to Dave and Kristin’s Tour Manager about a lotus-making workshop which they have run for families in the past that could work really well if we screened the beautiful Tales of The Night by French animator Ocelot, which I am really keen to do.

Contacting The Ice Book about performances

In Conversation about a Lotus Making Workshop

I also contacted Constance, who works in the PM Studio about a robot making workshop (using hex bugs and household items) and we were all set to go, but unfortunately she was not available in the end as we changed the date we had originally asked if she could do. I would love to organise a workshop with her in the future: I had researched different robot films for a family audience and there are lots of great ones – I particularly liked the idea of programming The Iron Giant and talked to Maddy in Programming about this.

Contacting Constance about a robot making workshop

I also liaised with Kathy Hinde via phone about her Bat Boxes and Vocal Migrations project as a possible workshop or installation, but it was going to be too expensive to get the Vocal Migrations installations and we needed a room for longer than we could probably have it. I also contacted Stand + Stare about getting their amazing Theatre Jukebox involved, perhaps in the Cafe/Bar as I found out they had recently made an Alice in Wonderland themed one and I thought that could be pretty wonderful for kids to use over the course of the festival. Unfortunately the jukebox is going to be in Oxford over the dates required.

Contacting Stand + Stare about their Theatre Jukebox project for an installation or workshop

I have had lots of contact with Laura Kriefman about her Rolling Stones – magical spherical sculptures that make music according to how you move them. They were also really popular at the Watershed Birthday Party, so I thought they could be good for a season based on letting your imagination run free.

Contacting Laura Kriefman about her Rolling Stone workshop

Laura Kriefman replies and we begin ironing out details

Laura Kriefman sends over her initial Rolling Stones workshop copy

I also met with Opposable Games and we chatted over what they could do for us and costs. I liked the idea of their Occulus Rift headset which has an AR walking game on it where you can explore different environments (they even said they would let us test an environment they could create for our theme!). In the end we decided it could be risky for young children to be using it as it can make people feel nauseous. Clockwork Racers was decided on instead, which is a multi-screen game where you race wind-up toys around a track. I was thinking this could be a longer-term installation, but it takes at least two people to man and would take up quite a lot of room if we were to have it in the bar for instance. If we have a festival day then we can hopefully get them on board to share their game with the families. Becca Rose had already been contacted by Maddy in the programming department and the format of the workshop is worked out, so we will liaise with her at a later date.

As part of The Imagination Lab we will be hosting a Magic Show (perhaps a Magical Mystery Show?!) where we will host different installations and workshops – we are not sure where it will be held or how big the event will be, but as a group we have contacted lots of different artists to see if they want to be involved. For instance we have contacted Nikki Pugh with her makey makey’s, Ad Spier’s with his Origami Fox workshop (which I want to screen Fantastic Mr Fox before), and I have been in contact with Victoria Tilltson (an iShed producer) about getting the new magicians in residence involved in the magic show (as a pre-promotion for their project showcase in December). I have also been talking to a young magician, Rishi, who had got in contact with the PM Studio when they did their call for magicians but was too young to apply.

I really want all the events we do to be a fun, fascinating showcase of all the amazing work that goes on in the PM Studio and raise the Studio’s profile with a family audience. It would also be fantastic to offer a platform for Rishi to share his talents and do something that challenges him.

Liasing with Victoria about magicians

Liaising with young magician Rishi

Contacting lots of people has been tough but really enjoyable. It’s important to put out lots of feelers as I found people were not always available, which has meant our artist confirmation deadline has had to be pushed back a bit. It was hard negotiating on price because you want to make sure the artist is getting a fair deal and at the same time you have a budget to stick to. Learning more about their projects and discussing how they could fit into our programme or idea is great fun, and all the people I talked to were really helpful. It has been important to get as much detail from the artists as possible at this stage so I can figure out what might be possible and what will not be due to budget, time, space or other restrictions and considerations. I am lucky because the brief calls for me to work with PM Studio residents, of which there are many amazing projects that are perfect for this season – fun, wacky, weird and wonderful projects that seem to have come right out of an Imagination Lab. It is going to be really important to get families being creative together and seeing, doing and discovering new things.

Programming

I researched films for this season using IMDB, the BFI website, Filmbank and lists of films (e.g. in the Guardian and other publications) on the recommendation of Maddy from the Programming department who met us to talk about where to find films and hear our initial ideas.

Here are a few notes I made about films.

We talked about getting a Buster Keaton film which includes some scenes of rolling stones to accompany the Rolling Stones dance workshop. We also talked about availability of films and getting the rights, and that Watershed is part of Europa Cinemas so we foreign films are particularly good for us to screen.

Maddy thought our ideas were good, but that we needed to be realistic about what we could achieve. I agree that we should try to do fewer events well and I feel responsible for upholding the Watershed quality of past ventures and was keen that ours live up to this standard. This meeting will help me to consider going forward what might be feasible or not – I especially think that the Magic Day needs to be carefully thought out so we do not try to over-program it. This does depend on whether it is a whole day or just an afternoon, so I will have to wait and see about what spaces are available before deciding what I would consider was too much for the time/space/intended audience. I also think that this is the nature of the project at this time, in that we have so many different ideas and quite a lot of flexibility with our theme. The deadline for getting Ellie at Arnolfini her information for the joint marketing is getting close now though!

Location

I have found out via our Events and Programming departments which events spaces and cinemas are available during the Oct half term so we can move forward with planning. It looks like we can do our launch event on Sat 19 Oct using Cinema 3 (our second largest screen) and then Waterside 3 (our largest event space), followed by the Svankmajer event on Sat 26 Oct (which has already been programmed by Watershed), then we can run an event on Wed 30 Oct in Waterside 1/PM Studio, and finally an event in the PM Studio break out space on Sat 2 Nov. It was important that the events were at regular slots, so I pushed for a 13:00 start for all events which is in keeping with the Cinekids work Watershed already does. I think it is better to stick to what we know and try to build on our existing audience whilst trying to target new participants.

This means we can now go back to Ellie with dates and times – but we were yet to figure out titles for our events and firm up with artists about what they were doing. We have a meeting soon with the other seven organisations taking part in the Bristol FAF (SS Great Britain, Bristol Museum and Gallery, Bristol Old Vic, Children’s Scrapstore, MShed, The Architecture Centre – and of course Arnoflini) so I hope we can have everything to do with our programme sorted by then.

I am feeling a bit worried that our branding is not strong enough at this point. We have been trying to write copy for the general programme and for some events that were more firmed up but when I am writing and editing, I just can not get the ‘offer’ right. It does not seem very strong and I am a bit worried about how we will attract families – “Are we being too techy/sciencey?” is a real worry of mine. It feels like it is going to be a bit of a hard sell, even though I am super excited about the events!

New Branding

I have now firmed up our event locations and to some extent the artists we can work with and so we met with iShed director Clare Reddington to discuss the programme and our branding of the strand. Clare has worked with organising and promoting National Science Week and has extensive experience working at the PM Studio where art and culture meets science and technology. She thought that the inclusion of the word lab in our existing ‘Watershed’s Imagination Lab’ strand title was not a good idea as it could alienate people who were not really interested in science and technology, which was not the point of the events. It was interesting to hear her feedback and suggestions, and she said she thought that our theme of imagination, discovery and invention was great, but that we should re-work our title and our existing season copy.

After our meeting with Clare, the group met with Hannah Higginson to discuss changing the branding. We talked about the BFI Gothic event Alice + Magic Ink Workshop and we all agreed that an Alice in Wonderland theme could work really well at bringing together our existing themes and artists. Using this already popular story and theme would help families to identify with the (relatively hard to sell as science to a family audience!) work of the PM Studio.

I suggested Down The Rabbit Hole as a season title, as I thought it connoted an adventure for families where they could see the impossible become possible – a key theme at the PM Studio. So instead of the PM Studio being an Imagination Lab it would be a kind of Wonderland! The group liked it and so the the Magic Show became The Mad Hatter’s Magic Tea Party and we decided that we wanted to screen Disney’s Alice (the 1951 version) beforehand. I wrote some draft copy for the season and its events and sent it round to the group a few days later. I received their edits and continued to work on it. I feel so much happier with this theme and I love where it is going already. It is going to fit in perfectly with what we already have programmed for autumn/winter as an organisation (we are cooking up a season of magic films for December for example).

Here is a Tea Party ideas powerpoint and a workshop ideas powerpoint I made and sent around the group for general theme/event/copy ideas and below are a few screenshots – I got so excited I had to get my ideas down. Here’s also an example of draft copy and some more here.

Initial re-brand copy

We also met with Claire Stewart to go through the existing copy we had and she gave me lots of pointers on how for refine the messages and bringing the theme together.

Event Planning Masterclass

We were really lucky that this week we had a really useful session with Clio Beeson from the Watershed events department who clarified all the different procedures we would need to go through in order to get our event on sale and okayed by events. It was very helpful to have all this events department information, floor plans etc. and advice about past events and I feel moe confident now that I can seriously think about what is feasible.

We also had a great session with Festival of Ideas organiser Zoe Steadman-Milne – which really helped me to understand the different stages of delivering a project involving lots of different artists and events. Below are some notes I took during the session. In summary, I learnt tips on how to plan, prepare and deliver events successfully (e.g. going through every stage of delivering a project and making a timeline, as well as imagining you are the visitor and thinking about what you want and need, plus finding out about Zoe’s trick of having an event toolbox which has all the bits and bobs you might need on the day). I found the talk totally inspiring, partly due to the detail of Zoe’s advice, and partly because of her incredible enthusiasm! I loved her honesty and good humour, especially when she said: if it is too complicated, it is not meant to be!

It was also great to be able to ask Zoe some specific questions after her presentation as she used to organise the Bath Children’s Literature Festival so has experience in engaging children and families. She advised that we be really specific with the age-ranges and information we gave online; that we consider capacity in workshops and ratios between children and adults; and make sure the events are value for money. Lots to think about and lots of great advice to use going forward when I start confirming the artists and their requirements as well as all the event details. I also think Zoe’s advice will inform the copy and the branding.

Meeting with the other Bristol FAF Organisations

Today we had a great meeting with the other Bristol FAF Organisations (Arnolfini, SS Great Britain, Bristol Museum and Gallery, Bristol Old Vic, Children’s Scrapstore, MShed, The Architecture Centre). Lastly we discussed plans for our joint marketing and Ellie has given us another week to get our workshop titles together. We discussed what the FAF was, collaboration between our organisations in general and that we want to foster it in this strand and also in the future, as well as how to promote the events on social media and online (e.g. Netmums).

We then discussed the joint marketing and Ellie showed us some drafts mocked up by Arnolfini’s in-house designer. We all liked where it was going, but felt that the design could be much more family friendly and pick-up-able (brighter, more festive and clearer). We also talked about have a passport system like the popular Gromit maps that took over Bristol in the summer, where kids could collect stamps for Gromit spotting. We wanted to emulate this with a similar sticker collection space on the back of the flyer around a map of the Harbourside with the different institutions marked out. The idea is that when families visit the different organisations or attend events there then they can collect a sticker to fill in the map. It also turns out that we did not need to have short copy ready yet, as between the 8 FAF organisations in the city we have so many events, they can just about squeeze onto an A4 flyer in the middle section. This was a relief to hear, because I think it is important we get the copy right – even if we add to it later, we want to be able to sell our workshops in one or two sentences, and at the moment it still sounds a bit vague. The flyer itself has such a short lead time before it needed to go to print because we are going to have it distributed in the Primary Times when the schools start – amazing targeted marketing! We also talked about outreach, further than Bristol city centre and outlying residential areas, e.g. in Hartcliffe or Withywood. Due to time constraints and the rushed nature of this first year’s festival we will not be able to put many resources into this, but Ellie hopes to lead on this next year which is excellent as the FAF is all about expanding new audiences.

The meeting was very good for me personally because it meant I could meet representatives of other Bristol arts organisations and see how they like to do things. I definitely noticed that at Watershed we rely heavily on our website and email (which goes out to 20K people), but this really works for us.

The next week we gave Ellie rough titles for our workshops and dates and times to be printed in the flyer. This gives us time to refine our ideas before rushing into anything that we cannot later deliver. The next steps will be finalising artists and their workshops, spaces, tech and other requirements, and then we can get the events on the FAF website (the deadline, again, is soon!) and then start promoting the season – which I cannot wait for!

Initial joint marketing email

FAF flyer designs

Continuing to Liase with Artists

I have continued to iron out the details with Laura Kriefman for her Rolling Stones event with us on Wed 30 Oct. I know we need at least 4m x 4m space for her to lead the dance workshop and some tech for her sculptures (e.g. speakers).

When Constance’s robot making workshop and Ad Spier’s Origami Fox workshop fell through, I needed to find another artist to fill this slot. Initially, I was really keen to do a guided narrated walk/storytelling event and when I found out about PM Studio resident Ben Gwalchmai who is the creator of the app Fabler, which plays you stories as you move, and learnt about his e-books and other narrative experiments, I was really keen to talk with him.

We had a fantastic phone conversation where we discussed what a digital storytelling workshop could look like and how we could make this work for the Alice theme and make it fun and engaging for both adults and children. First Ben talked me through what it was he did, and I explained about the festival and the season and what I had in mind. I explained the requirements of the workshop (1.5 hours) and that we could screen a short film before, but that there was no longer going to be a feature length film in the cinema beforehand because the ICO screening days were in all the cinemas – so I explained that the workshop needed to be really strong to make sure people came, considering it was going to be a different format and offer to what we usually do at Watershed for children.

It was great having such an in-depth conversation about digital storytelling and it was during this process of liaising that I really felt my skills in curation come out. I realised that my role was all about bringing the best out of an artist/practitioner for the organisation, the programme and the audience, as well as helping to showcase their work and talents. Because Ben’s work is really aimed at adults, producing a workshop for children with him was a good exercise in understanding concepts, context, and relevance when producing.

We came up with a few rough ideas for the workshop and I then made draft workshop plan and sent it over to Ben to see what he thought. He was happy and gave me some feedback on the tech requirements and how long he thought things would take and so I adjusted things a little, then sent it off to the team to see what they thought. I then drew up the artist contract.

Notes from phone conversation about Spellbinding Storytelling

Feeding back about the new workshop

The key performance indicators which I have identified for this workshop are engaging both adults and children in the creative processes of writing, introducing them to at least two new ways of creating digital stories using free online platforms, and making sure the project has some kind of legacy (Ben and I hope to incorporate parts of people’s stories into a digital storytelling app which he makes called Fabler). I am really excited about this workshop and I now need to find out about tech requirements (potentially new or different software/apps and the different devices required).

We have already talked about ages and I think 8 – 12 years is perfect (nice and specific). Capacity wise, I am very keen we do not overbook this event as everyone needs to have access to the technology we have (I know we have 8 project laptops and I think there should be maximum two persons per laptop). If I could, I would still screen Ocelot’s Tales of The Night because it is all about an old storyteller who lives in a dilapidated old cinema and tells old fables and fairytales, which a little boy and girl enter into – in other words, its all about imagination and storytelling. It is probably more likely that we will screen just a short film before the workshop begins just to settle everyone in and introduce the themes of storytelling.

Catering

Alongside organising the storytelling event, I have liaised with our Events department about catering costs. I want us to have high-tea or at least tea, coffee, squash and cakes and they have given me a quote of £3.95 per head for cake, sandwiches, tea and coffee, with jugs of squash at £2.95 + VAT each. Hannah Higginson, our course facilitator, went back to Events and managed to negotiate us a better deal – meaning we can get some more people along to the party. I am so happy! Our budget is still looking really stretched though, and so myself and Hannah WW have set up a meeting with Clare Reddington, iShed co-ordinator, to discuss potentially getting some funding through the PM Studio.

Meeting with Clare Reddington about Budget

I drafted a very rough budget with my team member Hannah and met with Clare Reddington about getting some iShed funding for this strand of events, as we had the skeleton of our events and it looked like we were going to have to completely scale back the Tea Party. Clare offered up some new ideas of what to explore, but essentially told us that we had not asked for the money in the right way – to go away, prepare a proper budget and tell her exactly how much money we are asking for. It was a steep learning curve and has made me realise how prepared you need to be for meetings like that: you need to know exactly how the money is being spent, where it is coming from in the first place and what you are missing. You also need to explain really clearly how the funder is going to benefit from giving you the money and have this really clear in your head.

So myself and Hannah WW in my group wrote a proposal to go alongside it to present at our second meeting with Clare Reddington and we included a proper budget this time.

Luckily, we got the funding – £200 pounds extra meant we could keep all the artists we wanted at the Tea Party (Nikki Pugh who we wanted to give some travel money to, Opposable Games and also Tarim and his Miniature Cinema installation). It meant we could get Rishi and the two magicians a present each, and have money for catering for up to 60 people.

Here is the final budget and proposal we sent, along with some emails.

Final proposal we sent

Receiving the extra funding was amazing

Continuing Film Programming + Copy Writing

This week I have also liaised with Maddy about the film and she said we could get the rights to Tim Burton’s Disney Alice in Wonderland from 2010, which I saw at the cinema when it came out. It is a good example of how a story like Alice can be updated and reinvented for a modern audience so we ran with it, even though we had concerns that the film might be a little scary for very young children (its rated a PG). I said I would make sure this went in the copy.

With the finalised budget in hand, the films we are screening all sorted and booked out, catering nearly all confirmed (we can confirm nearer the time), I can now finish off the copy, get the events on sale and online, and begin promotion. I cannot wait to go public with our events and see what Bristol families have to say!!

Promotion

I had so much enthusiasm for the marketing for our strand of events! We got the events on the FAF website in time for their national deadline, which involved listing them and then sending them off for approval and then got them listed on sites like Netmums, which is a widely used resource for planning days out with children. I also sent the events to a BFI contact working on the Gothic strand, since we had the part Gothic-funded Svankmajer event as part of the season. We have a children’s film, Justin and The Knights of Valour, on at the moment so I have cross-promoted the season and this film.

Listing the events on the FAF site

Contacting BFI Gothic about promotion

Working in the Communications department meant I had access to all Watershed’s usual channels and tools for promotion. I sent an email to past Cinekids attenders who we know from Box Office bookings that they are return customers, so I was hopeful this would spread the word. I was able to get the events online with the draft copy we had straight away, I sourced images, made a season poster to go in our Cafe/Bar, made a dip for the cinema to screen before the films in our regular programme and made foyer screens to display in the top foyer, as well as lcd screens of the Cafe/Bar poster. I also put the events in our weekly email (and the lovely Claire wrote intros for 3 weeks of emails which mentioned our Down The Rabbit Hole events) end I even wrote a news post and sent out a press release – all in about about two weeks!

Here are the final exhibits that I made, as well as the programme page linking it all together.

watershed.co.uk/whatson/4447/alice-in-wonderland-the-mad-hatters-magic-tea/

watershed.co.uk/whatson/4448/alice-the-big-draw-magic-ink-workshop/

watershed.co.uk/whatson/4449/rolling-stones-dance-workshop/

watershed.co.uk/whatson/4450/spellbinding-storytelling-workshop/

watershed.co.uk/whatson/season/252/down-the-rabbit-hole

watershed.co.uk/news/get-curious-at-our-magical-family-arts-festival-events/

Cafe Bar poster

DCP for the cinemas

Emailing past Cinekids attenders

Attending a marketing masterclass with my colleagues Claire Stewart (Digital Communications Manager) and David Redfern (Online Publishing Manager) to learn about how Watershed create content and messages for events and films was helpful for clarifying the objectives for my marketing campaign. Working with Claire on the copy was also really great – we came up with some good solutions for selling the season. I also heard a talk by Emma Williams who is Marketing and PR manager for the Creative Youth Network which runs amongst other venues in and around Bristol, The Station. Her advice was fantastic and really easy to engage with – for instance, she advocated a balance between product (the offer), place (where is it and what does it mean for the event – i.e. is it special in some way?), promotion (sell, sell, sell and get it out there) and price (be careful with your pricing) to make an event successful. She also talked about getting in touch with who is talking to your current audience: if you can get them to spread your message then your efforts will have more impact.

This was key advice for me – getting the message to a family audience would definitely involve online platforms and social media – I learnt at the FAF day-long training course that I attended that parents use websites and social media a lot to find out what to do for family days out on short notice. I felt that we needed to get other arts organisations in the city to help us push the event out through twitter, online and in news bulletins so we could appeal to as many families who are interested in art in Bristol as possible, with the hope that word would then spread to more families about the events. I planned to target specific interest groups as well, e.g. storytelling, dance, illustration. I also liaised with the other FAF organisations to see if they could put up our FAF events poster in their building or staff room. Of course, during the entire lead up to the launch event and throughout the festival we were distributing the joint marketing flyers and I was keeping them well stocked around the building.

I also sent regular updates to the team and we communicated effectively together to ensure we  covered as much of our marketing plan as possible, whilst firming up the other events in the season.

Getting the FAF poster out there

I also helped to compile a database of arts organisations and contacted people I already knew (such as Colston Hall), asking them to help us push the strand through their newsletters/facebook/twitter and websites. The email that I sent over to these people was carefully planned and had all the information that the organisations would need to get the event out there (short copy, link, date and time, image, poster) and I also made sure I was very specific about where it would be good for them to share it. This makes the process for the other person as easy as possible (I know this as I get requests like this from time to time and it is so helpful to have all the info you need in one place and you are much more likely to share it if it is easy for you to do so!!). I shared this email template with the other girls in my team, and we set about getting our events out there in a big way!

Weekly email listing our events

There was an amazing response to our events and we received lots of support from local and not so local organisations, especially on twitter, pushing our events.

Twitter

Twitter

Twitter

More Twitter!

The council tweeted about us too!

The lovely people at Theatre Bristol listed is on their site

Dance & Theatre Cornwall picked us up…

I was also in contact with The Mirror about doing an offer for our events in their half-term ‘things to do with the kids’ supplement. Unfortunately it fell through yesterday, but the tickets are for the events were selling gradually this week and I think that come next week and the first even we will have sold at least half of the Tea Party tickets! This launch event will hopefully raise the profile of the other three events and I will make sure that we plug the other workshops at this day to those attending. I can’t wait to see what the next week brings…

Suddenly we are a week away from the events and the press has started to pick us up! The national Metro (online), local Metro South West and in the Bristol Post newspaper, as well as online on Bristol Culture have all featured us. 

Metro online

Metro online copy

We made the Metro!

Dressing

I love to paint, make and invent so leading on the craft day we had was really fun for me. Using the powerpoint I had made a while ago for inspiration for Alice-themed decorations, made it easy and we discussed and critiqued ideas together before we had a list of things to get and to make. The idea was that we would produce a stock set of decorations for the Tea Party that would create an immersive atmosphere for the families attending and then re-use these to decorate the spaces where the other workshops were being held to tie all the events together.

After myself, Amy and Hannah had been to the Bristol Scrapstore, we headed to the PM Studio to set up camp and start making. So we had a realistic idea of what we could get done in a day, and so we could check progress and delegate tasks, I wrote on the huge whiteboard there the different items we would be making.

We were so lucky to have a team of willing volunteers who came along on the day to help us make our vision come true! The other Future Producers were so great and we had a really fun time making all the decorations, here are some photos from that busy, paint-paper-and-pritstick-packed day!

Detailed Planning in Lead Up to Events

It is just over a week away form the first event and we are getting the last minute things together for the Tea Party and other workshops! It has come around really quickly but I am so happy as to how it is all coming together.

We have now got some volunteers on board for our Tea Party and I have firmed up the room plan and Hannah WW has dealt with all the tech for the party.

Requirements for Tea Party (rough breakdown):

There will now be 5 large cabaret tables with ten seats around each.

2 x large plasma screens, 3 x iphones, 2 x laptops + animation equipment (camera, stand, small spotlight). Nikki brining her tech.

The catering will be at on the left as you walk in and will include a self serve drinks station and platters of cakes and sandwiches laid out. There will be plastic glasses.

The doorway will be decorated. There will be bunting around the room and fairy lights. We will project a slideshow on the large screen at the front of the room and the music from the 1951 Alice in Wonderland will be playing in the background.

The activities will be all around the edge of the room: opposite the door there will be a coat rack and greetings table with all our promotional material and necessary forms on, then the mini cinema will go behind (small round table), with a single tressel table for Nikki Pugh and her jabberwocky makey makey station next to that, and another single tressel table for an animation station set up with two sets and cameras and two seats, set up in the left hand corner of the room.

There will be a small area for Rishi the young magician at the centre back of the room. He wants a large screen with seats around it (6) to do his mini-magic show, then we will have a photo booth backdrop in the next corner, with Opposable Games and another large screen with their Clockwork Racers game on the other side wall. This should leave enough space for wheelchairs and for the general flow of people around the room.

There will be coloured pens, feathers, googly eyes (FAF symbols) and activity sheets on the table. We will need to use the Cinekids dotty table cloths.

We need print out of Nikki’s jubjub bird templates.

I will make appropriate feedback forms, child-friendly programme notes, consent forms, and have clipboards, labels, pens ready to sign the children in to ensure we can take their photo and if not that we know we cannot use it after the event.

I will get ready keeping in touch cards and some new info we have for Birthday Parties to cross-promote, What’s On programmes, other appropriate marketing materials and FAF flyer.

We will need signage for on the day: table names, slide, poster with directional arrows.

Planning the room layout

Signage for on the day

I had another meeting with Events, this time with co-ordinator Roberta to discuss the exact catering requirements (I thought catering for 60 people would be good, but Roberta suggested doing it for just 40 people because there were going to be lots of children which seemed sensible) and we talked about the room layout, capacity, and other requirements. I also had a chat with Hannah Higginson about the running order for the day, handling the flow of people and our approach to different situations (e.g. what happens if people start squabbling over the activities, we can assist with moving people around the room through encouragement and demos in small groups in rotation).

I also liaised with Box Office to get the events on sale and displaying correctly, as well as to update capacity, deal with other requests and track ticket sales. I also talked to Ellie about how we were going to implement the FAF flyer passport system.

A mistake on the booking screen needed to be rectified 

Coding the events

Confirming details with Box Office

A change of details for an event

Requests

What to do about FAF flyer passport idea

A week before the third FAF workshop there was a last minute change to the Rolling Stones workshop location, but Ellie at Arnolfini allowed us to use their Dark Studio for the event which I thought was a much better space than Waterside 1 was going to be! It is completely painted black with spotlights and there is a huge screen and speakers at the front of the room – a perfect space for performing and nice wooden floors!

All of these activities were set against a background of making plan-Bs all the time and I learnt a lot about how flexible you need to be to work in event production. It is important to think of feasible solutions and act quickly to make amendments and re-arrange things. For all the events we ensured we had a Risk Assessment drawn up and were all briefed on what the exact plan was and what we expected.

A few days before the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and we have almost sold-out! Not long now…

Delivery:

Alice + Mad Hatter’s Magic Tea Party

On the day of the Tea Party, the team was join by some lovely volunteers (fellow Future Producers) who were going to help take photographs at the photo booth, run the animation station, and generally help with the amount of people we were going to be dealing with. We all dressed the room and the tables (and also the cinema door!) and then got changed into some make-shift costumes. A few of us greeted the families at the cinema door and then I did a brief introduction before the film and we were off!

We finished off the room and got the consent forms, labels and stickers ready for when the families arrived. I greeted the families at the cinema when the film ended and we processed through the Cafe/Bar to the Tea Party. The team was waiting with the clipboards and consent forms so that we could make sure we got everyone into the room and signed up as quickly as possible (which was no easy task). The audience was asked to take their place at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and I did another brief announcement welcoming them to the Tea Party and introducing the PM Studio residents and their activities. I also touched on Health + Safety, said that we were all here for questions and to chat, and please help yourself to tea party goodies!

The atmosphere was fantastic throughout: all the families were getting along and everyone was flowing around the room nicely and the food went down a treat (I actually asked events to bring us more cake). The magician in residence Kieron was absolutely fantastic as the wondering entertainer engaging those at the tables (the kids loved him!!) and the animation station was very popular (it always is with kids). Daughters and dads alike were colouring in and decorating the jubjub bird designs on the tables and then taking them over to Nikki, where she recorded their monster sounds and hooked up the drawings so that when you touched the image it growled or roared or sqwaked! Tarim’s Miniature Cinema or Projection Hero was screening magical films from our DepicT! collection and it was very popular. Rishi was amazing! He had made a really well produced video as part of his trick and Hannah WW was great at helping him overcome a bit of nerves before he gave his performance, as well as ensuring all the groups saw the show. Opposable Games was popular and it was great to see different kids interacting. Our photo booth was used and we have some great photos from the day, thanks to Ella and Louise.

In the end, I had to make another announcement when we had overrun by about 10 minutes (it was okayed with events first), to let people know that we would have to wrap up soon, and I encouraged parents to fill in feedback forms and post their thoughts on our notice board, and asked the children if they would vote using our child-friendly feedback board with gold stars.

The families went about ten minutes after that and we talked to people as they left.

I had also talked to quite a few parents during the event to check in with them and see what they thought and if they were new to Watershed. Everyone was very positive and said that we should do more events like this for families, and ones with lots of activities like this. Julian who was our projectionist technician, Paul the DM and Eider from Events all said we should do more events like this and asked – why didn’t we? The feedback form PM Studio residents was that they had really enjoyed it and thought that the format really worked.

The standout feedback I saw from the forms that I read was that we should have had a list of the activities on the tables. I wish I had thought of that! I will definitely do this next time.

When the majority of the families had left (a few stayed on, including Rishi and his family) we packed up and about an hour later – had a nice long drink!!! Myself, Amy, Louise and Hannah could not have produced this event without the help of Cristina, Rosie, Jaye, Ella and Nicola! Amazing people and so much fun!

Rolling Stones

I went down to the Rolling Stones workshop once it had started at Arnolfini as I had a meeting. When I got there I was shocked to see so many little children. Straight away I took my shoes off and joined in the workshop as being so little, the children needed a bit more attention to keep them engaged in what was going on. They were loving it and the older ones were figuring out how the tech worked. Fantastic! We had slides on their screen and the room looked great with our decorations in it… I talked to the few parents that were there and they seemed happy enough, but unfortunately they weren’t really joining in which I thought was a shame as it was supposed to be a family workshop. I think it would have maybe been better to target the workshop at older children and their parents so they could both join in the dance elements and learn some moves – in this workshop, the kids were encouraged to express what they felt when they heard the different movements as well as discovering how their movements influenced the rolling stones. We gathered a few feedback forms from them once it was over and after the workshop Laura said she had enjoyed it, although thought the children would have been older and that she hadn’t really taught such little kids before (she did amazingly though!!) and she said she was happy that we had joined in with her engaging the children. All in all the day went really well.

Spellbinding Storytelling

For the Spellbinding Storytelling workshop I finalised the workshop plan with Ben and we liaised about materials and resources, set up and tech requirements and I wrote up the Risk Assessment. I got all the laptops and iPhones charged up and we installed the Fabler App on them. Myself, Ben and Hannah WW dressed the room and got the projector working, laptops, pens and paper on the table. We got some food from the shop and we for a jug of water ready. I tried to get all the websites for the workshop opened on the laptops, but when families arrived early we did it whilst we waited for the other participants to arrive. I felt a bit rushed to be honest when the workshop began even though one family was very late so we postponed starting for nearly ten minutes (we knew this through radio communication with Box Office) and I made got tea/coffee/water/milk if they wanted it. In the end, we just had to start without the missing people, but they turned up after another ten minutes or so, which involved making sure they were got up to speed.

Ben began the workshop by introducing himself, the theme and ideas for the workshop and then we screened the short animated film Presto (so brilliant and bonkers and fitted in perfectly with our Alice season!) which people seemed to enjoy. Ben explained about how the narrative in the film reflected the things we would learn in the workshop about narratives. We were going to do some ice-breakers but we were already at least 20 minutes into the 1.5 hour session so I was still feeling a bit rushed! So instead we got stuck in straight away with showing them some short and fun digital storytelling examples on the New Media Writing Prize website. We then asked them to make origami fortune tellers which we used to explain the principles of branching narratives. I had printed out instructions to do this for each pair and once made, the families got really into writing their stories on them. The kids did it much quicker than the adults in the end, who laboured over it much more – an amazing thing I did not expect! We then moved onto the second part of the workshop where we showed them how to use forking stories site Inkle Writer, a free site used for creating narratives and seeing how they are formed. We helped them to set up accounts and they began to write the first act for their stories using their origami fortune tellers.

We had many more plans for this section (workshop plan notes) but the families got really involved and we all went around and helped them with the branching parts of their narratives. We were also going to do a section on Gambits, which are digital stories where the reader can choose how the story unfolds by clicking through multiple choice questions. The entering of their stories into the digital storytelling platform took a lot longer than I thought it would, and I recognised that we had over-programmed and would need to jump straight into the last part of the workshop, using Fabler.

We had no time, so adopted a low tech and really easy option and asked each participant to write an A4 page long story about what they had been doing in their digital storytelling or just anything they fancied. This was really quick actually and people needed little encouraging, so once some had finished we gave them the iPhones and explained Ben’s Fabler app and they walked about the studio and listened to the stories. With those who were finishing their stories, once they had finished, I recorded them narrating their stories using an audio recorder (which Paddy had taught us to use for our interviews). The stories will be turned into a Mad Hatter’s Fabler app by Ben and the link with instructions on how to download will be emailed to participants. I used the edit suite to record the stories where possible. We recorded a few more whilst others took the iPhones and then we ended – 20 minutes late!

I asked people to fill in feedback forms even though we had overrun and I felt they wanted to go (they had been concentrating for a while now and had been bombarded with lots of information and new things!), but I needed to see what they had really thought of the workshop. It was also important to get all email addresses for the Fabler app link. At this point, I felt it had gone okay and was not sure if everyone (mainly the adults) had really enjoyed it because it had not gone to plan and I felt a bit stressed about that.

When I collected up and read the feedback I was pleasantly surprised – it was all positive and the parents really had enjoyed being with their children at the workshop and learning new skills. They were very thankful when they left but I could not properly gauge how the workshop had been at that time. One boy who, at 11 years old, was older than the others (who were mainly around 8 years old), and who had come along on his own, stayed on when his dad arrived and we all had a good chat. This young man was really talented and smart and understood all of Ben’s principles really well. He was a keen writer and we talked to him and him dad about the New Media Writing Prize and how he could enter. I felt really happy at this point because it really felt as if we had done something inspiring for the participants and have hopefully inspired at least one new digital storyteller.

As I reflect straight after the event, I still feel frustrated that I had thought we could cover so much in one workshop. I felt positive at the same time about this though because I think Ben could run a course on digital storytelling with some carefully planned sessions. I was a little concerned that Ben was pitching his digital storytelling information and explanations too high for the age group we had roped in, but I think it was alright. If we had had a room of 11 year olds then it would have been totally appropriate and I really think we should do this again!

I’ve come away energised and feeling like the challenge of the workshop was great. It was a steep learning curve re-thinking and reacting to the participants of the workshop and the fact that I had over-programmed. It was a good experience though and Ben, Hannah and I worked really well as a team and the group who came along were lovely. Once the last participants had left, it was time to pack down and really relax – all of the Down The Rabbit Hole events are over…

After the events

There were a few things to sort out after the events: Ben’s invoice, receipts, entering feedback into a spreadsheet, the FAF baseline survey, getting the Mad Hatter Fabler app to work and then sending participants the link. Phew!

Liaising with Ben about the follow-up email + invoice

Follow up email

Planning Evaluation

I recognise whole-heartedly the importance of planning how I will evaluate the FAF events, as I want to identify the key performance indicators at the planning stage, so I can plan for them!

Our brief calls for me to bring the PM Studio and its projects, artists, technologies and ethics to a family audience. I will have achieved this if we can get a high attendance at our events and especially if I can get some people who have not been to Watershed before.

I will also collect feedback about how participants rate the event and what they would improve.

Evaluation Workshop

I really enjoyed the session we had with Lycia from Glow Consultants last night: we used the ‘story of change’ framework to think about the amount of change and the significance of the change our events might have and on whom. Lycia began by giving us a talk through the framework and explaining some examples, then we set about applying these methods to our events (which at the moment are not very firmed up at all, but we know what we want to do for the brief – an Imagination Lab of sorts with Magic Show launch event).

I identified key beneficiaries, the inputs I would make, the outputs or events I would produce, and the impact I would have and how I would measure this.

Objective: Bring the work of the PM Studio to a family audience.

Beneficiaries:

1 – Families (existing and new Watershed customers)

2 – PM Studio (raising profile)

3 – Watershed (experimenting with a new format, reaching a new audience, organisation exposure through FAF)

4 – Studio residents (workshop facilitation and profile)

5 – Us (talent development and career experience)

Inputs: We invest time, Watershed invests time, money and resources, Studio residents’ invest time, effort and resources

Outputs: We will produce events for the season.

Impacts (key performance indicators – how to measure):

– Families find out about PM Studio (many families come to our events – measure through attendance)

– Children and adults have fun together and learn some new skills with a view to inspiring them to explore art and technology in the future (participants gain confidence and knowledge, and have lots of fun! – measure through feedback forms)

– PM Studio, its residents, and Watershed are more widely recognised and they find a successful format for family events (we get press coverage and expand our family audience and offer – measure through listings etc and coverage and build on this with similar events in the future)

– We learn new skills and about arts event production (we gain confidence and knowledge – recorded in this blog)

This framework has really helped me to define the key performance indicators for this project and I plan to take necessary steps to evaluate them to be able to report on them later.

Evaluation planning

I think it will be important to collect information about the families who attend (ages and postcodes) and where they found out about the event, whether they are new to Watershed, how they would rate the event, what they would improve and if they plan to come back. I will adapt the Watershed feedback forms for our events.

I also wanted to have a more dynamic way for our participants to feedback so we came up with the evaluation boards, one with post-its for adults and one with stars that could be placed next to a smiley face, indifferent face and a sad face for the kids. I think it is really important to let people know you are listening!

To read about the delivery of events and initial feedback gained go to Arts Leadership – Unit 2 #4 – Promotion, Further Planning and Delivery.

Collecting Feedback

At the events I was very focused on collecting feedback from all events and we imputed the info into a spreadsheet we shared as a group on Google Docs. I got the financial report and the Box Office reports and sent this over to FAF as part of the required base-line survey we were required to complete. This will help to inform future Family Arts Campaigns.

Example of financial report

Immediate box office reports

The baseline survey

Sending off the feedback to FAF

Reporting and Reviewing the Events + Feedback

Here is a draft report I have written with some screenshot below – it outline what we did and why, what worked, what didn’t and what we we would do differently next time as an organisation.

Did we achieve our objective? How can we measure our impact?

I believe we have achieved our objective of bringing the PM Studio to a family audience.

– Families found out about PM Studio (for each event we achieved 90 – 100% of tickets sold – see Box office report above – and 34% of bookers we captured were new customers)

– Children and adults had fun together and learnt some new skills with a view to inspiring them to explore art and technology in the future (participants gained confidence and knowledge and have lots of fun! – captured via feedback forms and anecdotal evidence)

– PM Studio, its residents, and Watershed are more widely recognised and they find a successful format for family events (we got press coverage, got 34% new bookers, 43% of attenders came to more than one event showing they enjoyed the season showing we found a relevant theme/format)

– We learn new skills and in depth about arts event production (I have gained confidence and knowledge, my journey is recorded in this blog)

Reflection

We met up after the last event to debrief on the project as a team with Hannah Higginson, and share our experiences and insights. Here are mine:

My favourite part of producing the events was definitely achieving nearly all sold-out events and working with genuinely inspired and excited families (seeing Dad’s and Grandmas with little and big kids all sharing the same activities was great!). I loved the atmosphere and flow of the Tea Party and was really happy with how our theme and branding developed.

Challenges I faced were time and energy constraints whilst working full-time whilst delivering this season, and when I had to completely re-think the format and activities of the Storytelling Workshop. I think we could have found better ways of communicating than via email and Facebook, which I find get clogged and confused after a while. We perhaps should have used Basecamp or another similar platform and this is something I would like to try out in the future.

Programming these events has given me invaluable experience and has been very enjoyable, if seriously hard work! Here are some of the things I learnt: 

– Not to over-programme and to think seriously about how much time you will have in one workshop if you have different activities to complete.

– To be really flexible when programming events: last minute changes can shake things up considerably and it is best to have a plan B when that happens.

– To say ‘no’ to things when necessary and to keep it simple so you can give lots of thought to each element of a project. If something seems really difficult, it probably will be, so think of another way to do it, or use your plan B.

– To use a framework for evaluation which makes things nice and clear and helps you to identify your objectives and how to achieve them, as well as making you think in advance about how to measure success. In other words, I have learnt that evaluation is a crucial part of event planning and helps to keep you focused throughout a project.

– To programme events for families. I learnt lots about family audiences and what makes a good family event. The most important things I learnt were that thoughtful touches made all the difference to families and they really appreciated lots of clear information. I learnt that a launch event is a great way to start a family season as it gets word out there.

– To budget carefully and keep updating the budget.

– To work collaboratively in a team (and with the Watershed team!) to produce an event, across departments and organisations.

– To utilise joint marketing opportunities. If print is not necessary, it is still good to come together to discuss cross-promotion and sharing resources.

– To understand the Watershed work-flow and people’s roles in the organisation better and am more familiar with the systems in place and to understand where Watershed fits in with other Bristol arts organisations.

– To lead on marketing and event planning, production, delivery and evaluation by being committed, hard working, flexible, creative and unafraid to ask questions.

What I would do differently next time

• Price confidently
• Plan interaction with customers into this e.g. content prior to event / content around it at the time / info flow to them in run up to event (new box office system will make this easier).
• Have a longer lead-time to help with planning and implementation and spend some more time on the PR opportunities.
• Use a different way of communicating across the group e.g. Basecamp.
• See if we can have a dedicated family page on the website and assess our family friendliness and include info to make our family offer more enticing and field some faqs.
• Have even more clearly defined roles within the group to share workload more. 
• Set clear targets to measure success against (e.g. number of attenders we want next year).

Course summary

Doing the Future Producers course has been fantastic I have learnt so much about producing, engagement and participation, family events, roles in the sector, the arts industry as a whole: I’ve had the opportunity to spend dedicated time researching and reflecting on what I would like to do in the future. I have learnt some new skills, such as animation, filmmaking, photography and have met lots of great people along the way. Having the opportunity to explore and experiment with my own artistic practice has reinvigorated my confidence and I am keen to use my creative skills more now and am really looking forward to the animation/illustration/filmmaking collaboration between myself and Alex. Its been quite a journey spanning around 6 months, full of ups and downs, mad moments and challenges, but mainly lots of fun and satisfaction. There is still lots I would like to learn and I hope to continue to develop as a creative practitioner in the future.

Thank you to…

Hannah WW, Amy and Louise for being great team members and always smiling; to the other Future Producers for their bags of creativity and skill sharing; all the artists we talked to and worked with and to Rishi and Kieron; Hannah Higginson, Clare Simmonds, Claire Stewart and Maddy Probst for mentoring our group throughout the course, and to Paddy and Grace for fielding my many questions; all the Watershed departments for your help and patience, especially box office, events and projection; and to the other Bristol organisations who helped promote our events and Ellie Jeffs for her fantastic work bringing us all together for the FAF; and of course to everyone who attended the season, it was a great experience.