BCTC | Pacific Contact 2008 |

BCTC | Pacific Contact | Pacific Contact 2008 | In Conference Workshops

Saturday, March 29, 2008

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
REAL TIME Conversations - Briefing

Through an Online Survey, Conference Participants told us what you’d like to hear/talk about during Pacific Contact. From the survey, we’ve developed a list of topics and invited 20 people/teams to serve as animateurs for each topic. We’re asking you to choose 3 topics to which you will rotate every 30 minutes during the one and a half hour session.

Logistics and Basic Premises:

Everyone’s time is valuable, we must engage it wisely
Most who come to Pacific Contact have field experience and are good listeners/talkers
We have much to learn/share from each other

Below, you’ll see an annotated list of topics to review in advance of Saturday morning + a map of the hotel with each of the topics/tables. There will be three REAL Time Rounds:

‘A’ Round beginning at 9:00 am and ending at 9:25 am
‘B’ Round beginning at 9:30 am ending at 9:55 am
‘C’ Round beginning at 10:00 am ending at 10:25 am

We’ll use methods from ‘Open Source Technology:

One Law, the Law of Two Feet: if you’re neither getting value nor contributing where you are, use your two feet and go somewhere where you can. It is also a reminder to stand up and go to places that express passion. We imagine the conversations to be intimate and engaging. Four principles:

Whoever comes are the right people
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
Whenever it starts is the right time
When it's over, it's over

For each of three REAL Time Rounds, participants will be asked to:

Write questions and give them to the animateurs.
Contribute to the conversation/discussion.
At the end of the session, write down what key knowledge/ideas you gained.
Move quickly to the next session.
Rate the conversations in which you participated and tell us what conversations you found most compelling so that they can be repeated during the People’s Choice time on Sunday morning.

Session	Animateurs	Session Title	Further Information
1	Renee Iaci & Pat Braden	From the Artist's Perspective	Shaping my career as a performing artist. How to connect to agents, managers, publicists + Different ways of making a viable career/living
2	Jill Brooksbank	For artists - Pros/Cons of Having a Manager/Agent	As an artist should you be looking for a manager/agent? What to look for in them? What are we looking for in you?
3	Michele Emslie	Success in Reaching Changing Audiences	Succeeding in engaging changing audiences; in terms of taste, time and discernment; how to increase ticket sales and attendance
4	Debbie Peters	Expand/increase participation & income	Night and Day: Perform in new venues at new times of day. Where do people gather in your community? Engage these people in a meaningful arts experience. Take a performance to an audience in “their” space and encourage them to buy tickets to “your” space. Increasingly the biggest barrier to arts participation is time. Engaging time-starved audiences means programming in innovative ways including taking the artists to where the audiences already gather. A performance can happen anywhere and anytime with the goal of breaking down time barriers to participation. Stage a happy hour concert in your theatre, a 15 minute lunchtime performance at the government building, late night concerts for a youth audience, and in the morning at the local school - performances in the theatre and all around town. Creative, flexible, and adaptable is the optimal mindset of the presenter and the performer.
5	Sandra Thomson & Camerion Smillie	Effective corporate and community sponsor partnerships	Collaborating with other organizations/businesses in the community in order to promote our events. New ideas about cross-promotions that are doable and within our small budget range.
6	Bronwen Sutherland & Andrew Kwan	Contemporary Performing Arts and Classical Music	Artists Need Light - innovative ideas & methods for presenters to support and develop contemporary and classical touring artists
7	Charles Bethea & Phyllis Stenson	Presenting Artists of Diverse Backgrounds	What skills/methods work most effectively to present First Nations, South Asian other cultural diverse Artists. Hear about the work at the Lied Center of Nebraska and the Harrison Festival
8	Paul Gravett	Partnerships: New ways to work with artists/other presenters	Newly developing partnerships and looking at different ways of presenting (co-presenting).
9	Kevin Korchinski & Sue Robinson	Presenting in Rural Communities	Contacts, Contracts, funding sources, rural challenges. - Rural participation, artist expectations, community expectations and perceptions. Professional vs. Community - Does it matter? - Drawing out the crowds, marketing. What other small towns have done successfully to get their maximum audience. How have they attracted families and younger people?
10	Heather Lundstrom & Barbara Slack	Rural Realities - in Vulnerable Economies	Coping skills/tips so presenters so don't feel overwhelmed by things totally outside their control. How to communicate to granting agencies understand our individual circumstances. Vulnerable local economies have difficulty weathering the storm, retaining population/audiences, volunteers, sponsors, other funding.
11	Michael Blachly	Succeeding with New Technologies	Using the web - podcasts, facebook, YouTube, etc. to market (from the perspective of a Baby Boomer).
12	Marnie Perrin & Jesse Peters	Connecting With Youth: Thinking Outside The Box	Connecting with youth; inspiring youth to innovative, "thinking outside the box", creative problem-solving. A topic important to everyone's future, artistically and personally. Leadership and support for youth is necessary to succeed. We hope to inspire everyone to broaden their scope in presenting/performing to include youth, in an engaging manner, if not doing so already.
13	Dan DeWayne & Carol Cairns	Outdoor Festivals	Successful Presenting in Outdoor Festival Formats
14	Peter D. Smith	Risk Taking in Presenting	Falling in Love with shows that require Risk Taking - How to position them in your seasons and series.
15	Margot Holmes	Successfully Raising Contributed Income	Successful donor based marketing and fundrasing + special event fundraising methods
16	Deborah Meyers	How to successfully access Heritage Funding	Canadian Heritage's regional offices deliver a range of programs that support the performing arts. Find out more about how you can make these programs work for you. Everything you wanted to know about Arts Presentation Canada, the Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program (Capacity Building Component), Cultural Spaces Canada and the newest kid on the block, Building Communities Through Arts and Heritage.
17		Securing and Increasing Support from Municipal Sources	Sustaining and increasing public support and tapping new funding sources. Get engaged in the public dialogue about the role and value of the arts and culture in your community through cultural planning and other civic processes
18	Ken Coulter	Loyalty and membership building programmes	Innovations in engaging audiences and increasing participation through loyalty building by analyzing your database and buying preferences of patrons. Shifting focus from a transactional sales metaphor to a gathering metaphor.
19	Tim Wilson	For artists & Agents - Booking at WAA	Engaging U.S. Presenters at Western Arts Alliance and other occasions
20	Judy Harquail	Booking and Touring Internationally	Methods to secure international bookings and manage successful tours

Sunday, March 30, 2008

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
People’s Choice Workshop
This session will be the delivery of 1.5-hour workshop topic voted as People’s Choice by those attending the REAL TIME Saturday morning workshop.