We’ve reached the mid point in the Digital Producers, Lab that we are running in Pervasive Media Studio in collaboration with National Theatre Wales. This morning we heard from John McGrath, Artistic Director of NTW and Dick Penny, Managing Director here at the Watershed.

John started by talking about the ways NTW has sought to foster communities since its inception in 2009. Describing Wales as a rural, urban and digital space for theatre, he said that the company draws heavily on the country’s landscape of and is continually asking what theatre could be in the context of Wales.  In turn this focus on place, community and site–specificity fuels productions are relevant and meaningful. Engagement typically starts a year in advance of any production being staged, and takes the form of social media and face-to-face engagement through the NTW’s assemble strand. Productions, for example The Passion, often cast local people alongside professional actors, a strategy that embeds the community at the heart of the process. John felt that it was through fostering communities in this way that leads people to proposing their own projects, which ensures that that NTW is truly a national company.

In the Q&A, Alison from Yellow Brick asked John whether there was a particular project NTW that he considered messy. His answer sits at number three in our list of things that came out of the group’s discussion with Dick. Everyone presented a project that had kept them up at night and from that process we were able to pull out the following learning points.

Nine things we learn from the messy projects session:

1. It’s best to have a direct relationship with the funders. If you are sub-contracted there can be difficulties understanding the institutional frameworks that can affect your project.
2. When working with groups of artists be aware of pre-existing dynamics when introducing new people to the mix.
3. All good projects will, at some point, feel messy.
4. Fire in tunnels can be problematic.
5. The people who will need more managing are those that are not invested in the creative idea. Make sure you know who they are and keep communication open.
6. When working with venues and partners, get everything in writing and keep pestering them to make sure that they are still going to do what they said they would.
7. A bloke from Essex with a fire engine is not equivocal to Pinewood’s water effects department.
8. Always know your equipment or face the consequences of pressing pause when you thought you were pressing record.
9. When working collaboratively, it can be helpful to prepare a ‘Statement of Intent’ that outlines your working practices, ethics and expectations.

Sarah Ellis, from Royal Shakespeare Company, spoke about their work with Google on Midsummer Night's Dreaming. In order to explain the collaboration, Sarah posited the RSC as a content maker, regardless of whether content is digital or in a more traditional form. In this vein the collaboration with Google, who act as a platform to amplify content, makes perfect sense. Yet throughout the project there was the heritage of the RSC and the weight of its canon to consider.

The project aimed to explore the way in which the RSC could use technology in order to interact with their audiences more playfully. This involved creating vast amounts of online content in the form of hangouts, video, text, gifs, photos, soundcloud, maps and animation. Sarah shared her approach to fleshing out the character’s online presence. When thinking about what content to put out, she said that she wanted it to be as if you were looking at a party that you didn’t go to, but that some of your friends attended, through the window of social media. The result of this was that the content opened up the RSC to new audiences, but it also enable the RSC’s core audience to go on a journey with them if the chose to.

Keep up to date on the day’s developments using our twitter hashtag #digiproducers or take a look at our Storify