Towards a consortium/network to support small scale venues programming more European work Sarah-Jane Watkinson, 11 January 2016 Towards a consortium/network to support small scale venues programming more European work Attendees Sarah-Jane Watkinson, Sadie Newman, Anthony Lee, Stella Kann, Kirsten Burrows, Deb Justice, Sarah Watton, Jolie Booth, Susan Swanton This action session came out of the session on Sunday “How can we support British venues and audiences take a risk on European theatre?”. All venues are under pressure to maintain audiences and box office in a hard economic climate and are therefore very risk averse. Many venues are reluctant to programme European work, especially if it’s not in English on the grounds that it’s too risky and there isn’t an audience. Issues around marketing a show in a foreign language, dealing with dense, wordy marketing copy and different expectations from companies not use to the idea of touring as in the UK and spending weeks on the road. When companies are booked, as with other supposedly niche work, they are increasingly expected to do more of the marketing themselves. Following the discussion at the session, a suggestion for a consortium of friendly venues that would support both touring companies and other venues. Examples exist in other artforms or to support new/emerging artists eg Dance Network or House that support small scale touring in the south east. BE Festival – Best of BE tour offers a programme of three short pieces selected from the festival, offering a low risk package to venues and which has begun to establish its own touring circuit. Nomadic Tendency of Fools – revisited the same cities over six years, each time building an audience by treating the city as the venue, not the building itself with associated activities around each location. The venue was used as a hub with audience growing largely by word of mouth. Making Tracks – world music consortium. Started as a small GforA project and is now an NPO. Each consortium member commits to taking four tours a year produced by Making Tracks. The shows are offered as a package for a fee, so additional costs of travel, accommodation etc are dealt with by producer. What sort of things would a consortium do? - Develop strategies to remove element of risk eg offer shows as pay what you decide - raise awareness of European work - strengthen links between venues and companies - share good practice/experiences - share audience data - marketing support including joint flyers etc - venue twinning – eg visits from groups from other venues so that ambassadors can try something before home venue takes the plunge - curate a menu in the same way that rural touring networks do with their community promoters - facilitate putting together a season - pool travel and accommodation costs It would be useful to link with Audiences Europe – this huge consortium made up of audience development agencies, companies and practitioners currently does not have any representation from a strategic audience development organisation (except for Audiences Northern Ireland) because of the void left by chances in the audience development sector across the UK. Sarah-Jane Watkinson @sjwatkinson @ATRESBANDES Comments: 1 Antonio Ferrara, 11 January 2016 Hi - I was at the Sunday session - glad to hear it's been taken up today. Let me know if I can help. Antonio