Cat John showing the group some of the forms of offline commuications that the Watershed use.

Today is the forth day of the lab that we are running in collboration with National Theatre Wales. This morning our Digital Producers met the Pervasive Media Studio’s Magicians in Residence. Now at the halfway point in their residency, Keiron Kirkland and Stuart Nolan shared some of the ideas that they have been developing.

 

Stuart introduced us to his ideobird, which plays with our ideomotor response and common coding theory. Keiron discussed his maker magic project, which aims to bring a touch of the open source mentality and maker culture to the notoriously secretive world of magic. At the heart of each project were questions on how the use of technology might change the culture of magic. This felt particularly relevant to our Digital Producers, as the ways technology is changing how we interact with culture is a pertinent question for them all. The debate that followed focused on the how magic can be understood as a particular form of storytelling, and how narrative and performance are core elements of this. As Stuart summarised: ‘If you think the trick is in the how, then you’ve been misdirected.’

Simon Coates, Creative Associate from National Theatre Wales, discussed Wales Lab, a strand that NTW uses to support emerging artists. As a producer he said that it was difficult to define the role, just as with artists, Simon felt that there was no ‘off the shelf’ version of a producer. He saw his role as one of supporting artists. Sometimes this is in the form of hand-holding in order to reassure people that they are making great work and at other times it can require an equally compassionate approach to point out areas for improvement.

 

Simon said that he sees it as his role to act as a conduit between the work and audiences. This means engaging communities and providing them with opportunities to feel invested in the work. NTW achieve this through residencies across the country. Most recently this saw them pitch up in Treorchy to stage Tonypandemonium. Simon and Katherine shared their experience of working in this way saying that the connections they made with local people were really valuable to NTW. They both felt that this practice was at the core of understanding, communicating and engaging with their audiences.

 

Cat John, Marketing and Communications Manager here at the Watershed, continued this theme in her presentation. Last May the Watershed stopped producing a monthly printed brochure. This was a response to the fact that the number of email subscribers and the number of brochures being recycled had been climbing for some time. The brochure had taken up a significant proportion of the communications budget and Cat described that other types of communications that the money has since been channelled into. This includes traditionally outdoor media, like banners and billboards, but also Facebook ads. With regards to the latter, Cat said that it had been a learning experience to see what worked and what didn’t. Several members of the group agreed with this. In Cat’s experience the more targeted ads were in terms of demographic and location the more successful they had been. She also spoke about the way digital engagement had been wrapped around the traditional forms, for example running a Twitter campaign linked to the billboards.

 

Creating content that reflects the values of the institution was a key point. It took time to develop the Watershed’s social media voice. Initially this meant assigning the role to one person who honed it over three years but now the approach is embedded across the communications team. Striking a balance between creating content and inciting it from audiences was also important. The use of a post-it board for feedback that can then be photographed and tweeted has been particularly successful.

 

This evening Carl Morris from NativeNQ is joining us for cocktails to discuss approaches to language, but more on that in tomorrow’s blog. Speaking of which, tomorrow is the final day of the Digital Producers Lab here in Bristol. We will cover how to end digital projects and cultural entrepreneurship. The group will also be performing the GPS Orchestra that they have been developing all week with the help of the artist Nikki Pugh.

 

Follow us using our twitter hashtag #digiproducers or take a look at our Storify

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