THE GREAT THING about the Fling was the degree of community involvement it gained. This made a huge difference to the smooth running of the event itself. The nature of one-off or annual events is such that no matter how well planned they are, contingencies tend to arise and having local people available to help resolve them is invaluable. The local commitment to hosting the event helped with the marketing effort too. There is a lot of media interest in the Assynt Crofters for obvious reasons, but the local marketing was of greater significance in determining the overall success of the event.
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No sooner was I back in Ross-shire than the Wester Ross Festival preparations resumed in earnest. Normally I try to document all my professional activities as I perform them, but a glance at my electronic calendar for this period reveals an embarrassing paucity of information! There simply wasn’t time to write it all down.
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Although consisting of fairly small discrete community events, the Wester Ross Festival project is big and complex. We needed to ensure that the event received the marketing coverage it deserved, and despite printing and distributing nearly 10,000 colour posters and leaflets, building a comprehensive website, obtaining editorial coverage in the main local newspapers with four separate press releases, email and local marketing, the effort still seemed to fall short of what was required.
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One of our chief criticisms has been our apparent failure to publicise the event. The key element to marketing a community arts event is to generate a “buzz” on the ground and where this was achieved it was almost entirely the result of efforts by local Wester Ross Events committee members for their own communities.
Dealing with performing artists may seem a glamorous activity but the reality of it is that artists are generally too caught up in their own creative processes to have much of an appreciation of what is going on around them. I should know – I am one!
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In order for them to show up they must be contracted and the specification of that contract can vary enormously. Some prefer to send their own contracts to the promoter; others expect the promoting organization to send them out. As a general rule, except for the really major events, contracts are signed late, and so a lot depends on trust levels between promoter and artist/agent. These are extremely susceptible to pre-event jitters!
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© Tommy Beavitt, 2003 |
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