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