More often than not, festival organisers are hard-working (often volunteering) members of the community who want to give something back or raise money for a local charity. Which makes it all the more frustrating to see them making the same mistakes that stop their events from being the successes that they should be.
Below is a list of the 6 most common mistakes that we think Festival Organisers make:
The Event calendar. The time of year that a festival is on is crucial to its success. The temptation being to choose the busiest time of year and plonk your event right in the middle of that period. That is the time when your town/city and ergo your festival will be at its busiest so why wouldn’t you? Well – several reasons! Firstly you will be fighting to be noticed amongst all of the other events. If you program off peak, there will be little other competition. If you stick your neck out and carve out a niche, you will create a loyal band of followers who will stick by you come what may.
You will also find that there is significantly more funding available from local and state government to boost shoulder events and drive visitor economy to your region out of season. Local businesses will also be much more onboard with supporting an event that drives off peak tourism. They will not have already just been hit up for all of the summer events that they already sponsor!
Oddly enough, the weather is also a lot more predictable in autumn, winter and spring as well. You don’t have the really hot weather that you do in summer and you will avoid the fierce storms that hot weather systems create.
It’s easier to book acts and infrastructure and easier to engage the local community as they are not away on their long summer breaks.
Festival Hub. You need to create a Festival Hub to give your event a focal point from which to radiate. All too often - in an understandable bid to satisfy sponsors – a festival will slowly spread out to include various pubs, parks, caravan parks etc. Whilst on the face of it, this seems to make sense as surely the more people who get to see you, the more people will attend your event in the long run? Wrong! What it actually means is that people don’t ever have to come to your festival as it comes to them. You end up with lots of small events spread out over a wide area with no heart and soul. It may seem harder and take longer but the benefits of staking your claim to one area and creating a festival hub/village, far outweigh the alternative. Look at any major festival – they all have a hub. Adelaide, Edinburgh, Perth etc.
Quality over quantity. I have been to countless festivals where you open the program and are thrown into a complete state of anxiety by the sheer quantity of things to do. How will you ever get to see your favourite band on the main stage and make sure that you also catch the Mongolian Throat orchestra on the Indie stage? Your best friend’s brother is one of the acrobats in the big top at the same time that your daughter is in the lantern parade… Having “as much stuff to do as possible” is not always the best policy. Programming the right amount of stuff is a delicate balancing act with your attendees. Your program should grow with your growing attendance, never over take it. It is much better to have 10 events over two days with maximum attendance (even turning some people away) than to have 30 events that have 50% attendance. FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out is the greatest advertising tool you could ever use! I have also been to several folk festivals that have literally booked as many acts as they could with their budget. Ordinarily that would not mean that many, but for some reason these festivals manage to book literally hundreds of acts on what I can only imagine to be miniscule wages. The end product – hundreds of very average bands on hundreds of inappropriate stages all with on average 30% audiences. The alternative? Pay 20 great bands to play on 20 great stages with 100% audience and every show rocks! This applies to arts based festivals as well.
Break the Mould. Every weekend across Australia the same thing happens. Amazing volunteers from a local Club of Charity – in an effort to raise money for a deserving cause – stage “events” in local parks or beaches. They follow a formula through necessity. Stalls selling basic market Knick-Knackery, coffee carts brew and sausages sizzle. Bouncy Castles are inflated, Petting Zoos erected, maybe a Show and Shine will roll into town, possibly a few fairground rides? A main stage with the local school bands, dance troupes and gymnastics clubs with their loyal audience of parents and grand-parents. And then the local radio station who broadcast live from the “festival” as the major Sponsor.
Whilst there is nothing technically wrong with any of the above, a festival (or even event) it does not make! The business plan is to spend as little money as possible to raise as much money as possible. It relies on volunteers and good will. If you ask yourself the question “what is enjoyable about attending this event?” the answer will not be browsing the same old stalls that appear at every other market in Australia, buying over-priced average coffee or watching your little darling freeze with stage-fright on stage. It will be the sense of community. It will be the simple act of relaxing outside with friends and family. It will be laughing and enjoying something en-masse. The above event formula is good for raising money (not quite as effective as it could be but that is another article!) but it is not a successful formula for an event. It also relies completely on volunteers and after 3 or so years, they will move on.
Any arts-based festival needs to have a theme. It doesn’t have to be obvious to the audience but whether you like it or not, human nature dictates that we subconsciously examine things before we do them. We want to try and work out if it is something that we know/have done before and ultimately, is it safe? If we think we recognize something, we are much more likely to do it. Alternatively, if we can arouse excitement in somebody about stepping outside of their comfort zone we can also hook them in but they have to be aware of what their comfort zone is before they will step out of it! So even a very broad theme – “The Festival of Dangerous Ideas”, “Festival of the Winds”, “Folk by the Sea” - lets the audience know that it’s ok, you have some knowledge around the subject, you will be safe there! It’s not impossible to make an event a success without a clearly defined theme but it is an uphill battle!
Multi-generational events. Unfortunately, there are all too many events which claim to be multi-generational but fall very short of achieving that claim. Multi-generational really means that several generations of the same family can sit down together and enjoy the same piece of entertainment together. In this age of screen driven entertainment where isolation is a growing problem, there can be little more important than reconnecting as human beings. We are literally not hard-wired to live our lives apart from one another. Going to get a coffee whilst your kid watches a show that is designed for 5 year olds or giving your kid your phone while you watch a band that you like is simply not good enough. The importance and sense of family connection that we achieve when we do something genuinely uplifting as a family is so vital and strengthening that we should be striving to make it happen every day. Street Theatre is often overlooked when programming multi-generational entertainment. By sheer definition, street performers have to appeal to as broader demographic as possible to remain relevant. Now there are some bad examples of street theatre, just as there are bad examples of every genre. But there are some truly magical examples as well and a really good street show will transport every member of its audience – young and old - away to another place for the duration of the show and is often a way more powerful experience than a polished stage show. Circus and Variety/Vaudeville also appeals to all generations. We perform a duo show called Kiki & Pascal which is essentially a variety show with juggling, magic, contortion, magic, acrobatics, singing and lots of comedy. We have performed the same show (with a few minor tweeks) at Retirement villages, Family Festivals, Schools and Pre-Schools. The unifying element in our opinion is comedy. Some things are funny no matter how old you are!
Colour and Movement. There is a worrying expression in the entertainment world. When Agents and Clients are looking for entertainment for their event they often request “Colour and Movement”. By this they mean somebody on stilts roaming around “in costume” or a quirkily dressed hula-hoop artist in the background or similar. What they are really asking is: “can you provide me with some entertainment that requires zero engagement from my audience” in the mistaken belief that this will be beneficial to the event. Now don’t get me wrong, colour and movement does have its place at times but you can’t tell me that it is the best entertainment option. It is the option that requires the client or agent to stick their necks out the least. Audience engagement is not hard in the right hands and the benefits are huge. A shared experience will link a room of strangers like nothing else. Even though they have never met one another, there will be an unspoken bond created by experiencing theatre, music or performance of any kind really. A group of people that has shared a laugh about something are far more likely to hook up in the foyer or carpark and talk to each other like they already knew each other. They are more likely to help each other. They are more likely to go and share another experience together. If you are at a business event, they are more likely to network after the event. All that colour and movement does is provide a flash of what engaging entertainment looks like.
WHY we do what we do.
At Laughter House, we use comedy to create experiences that allow us to really connect with people and that really connect people to each other. The outcome is the sound of people laughing hysterically together in shared joy – best noise ever!
We believe:
That shared joy builds community and laughter creates bonds that help build better relationships.
That theatrical experiences should be accessible, diverse and multi generational in their appeal – bringing the broad community together to experience comedy, laughter and each other in an open and interactive way.
That comedy can create social change, one community at a time.
In leaving audiences wild, awake, alive and transformed by comedy experiences.
In thinking differently to create disruptive comedy entertainment that betters the social and cultural interactions of communities and improves interpersonal relationships at work, home and play.
