The Importance of Showcase Events
Planning & Preparation
In our previous blog post, we spoke about the process of releasing music and the importance of promotion. As one of our promotional methods for the EP was to curate a showcase, we thought it would be a good idea to share our experiences with putting on events and live performance opportunities for our participants.
So far we have been a part of and organised three showcase events over the course of a year. Our first event was held at a local coffee shop in Nottingham called SOBAR, the second was an all-out musical showcase at a venue called ‘Metronome’ and the third was our EP showcase back in February at Rough Trade Nottingham - This is the showcase we will be discussing in this blog post.
Venue
Locking down a venue down is the most important thing when throwing a showcase event and doing this as swiftly as possible helps allow you to focus on the other areas. For our showcase, we wanted something family friendly, in the city centre and available at the times we wanted to run from (5.30-7.30pm) so this was at the forefront when looking for venues. Again, at this time, it's a good place to start with the mentors you work with, do they have any links to local venues? If so, can they start a dialogue with the club/pub/bar/coffee shop.
Rough Trade Nottingham is a local music venue and record shop based in the heart of Hockley, Nottingham. One of our mentors who had performed there a few times, sent a message to the general manager asking if the venue was free on the date and what would be included in the hire fee. Rough Trade messaged back saying that they could cover the cost of the venue hire and provide a sound engineer - it was a no brainer to snap their hand off! The great thing about nailing down Rough Trade for the EP showcase was the location of the venue, they typically have a good footfall and we ended up having random people come in to see what was happening.
When searching for venues, think about the layout, capacity, venue hire and live sound engineering. We got lucky with Rough Trade because one of our mentors had established a rapport prior to our event, so always look at what you have around you before anything!
Confirmed Lineup
When confirming the lineup, we wanted to provide as many performance opportunities as possible, so we gave each young person a 10 minute slot over a 2 hour period. Most of our participants took a slot and we had the privilege of hosting young people from CRS (Community Recording Studio) & YMCA Digital.
Both CRS and YMCA Digital work alongside us as part of CMON (Community Music Organisation Network). The idea of the network is to improve our knowledge of each other and other music projects across the city, create joined up ways of sharing music-based opportunities and basically support and learn from one another. In the process we intend to increase collaboration between artists from different cultural backgrounds and postcodes (we will talk about this in a future blog post).
We have worked closely with CRS and YMCA-Digital when arranging previous showcase events so we really wanted to give their participants another opportunity to perform again so each organisation took one performance slot each. We invited Elliott Caine (our graphic designer) back in to work on the flyer (pictured below) - once created we sent to print and we started promoting the event.
Promotion
With the venue secured and the lineup confirmed, it was time to let the city know about what was happening and when. In our previous blog post, promotion was covered quite thoroughly and the same method was applied for this showcase. However, the two additional elements this time were social media paid boosts and physical flyers.
To reach a wider audience, it’s possible to pay for promotion on Facebook and Instagram. This isn’t recommended for every post. However, if a special occasion is coming up, it can really give that extra push to boost attendance/streams. When setting up a paid boost, it is possible to model your boost to target certain demographics (e.g. males and females, from Nottingham, between the ages of 14 and 45 with an interest in music). By taking this approach to promote an event, it is very specific in terms of the type of people you are trying to get to attend whilst creating traffic to your own social media page. Alongside the paid boost, we created a Facebook event that was used to invite people online - when creating the event I would recommend tagging the artists performing, this way it creates traffic to their artists pages too - sharing is caring!
Creating physical flyers and posters is also a great way to promote a live music event. These can be handed out to your participants and they can hand out to people at school, college and even family. It's also important to ask local shops and coffee shops if they would mind putting one up in their premises - the worst they can say is no. We also handed them out to other local organisations that do similar work to ourselves which we will talk a little more about later. Alongside being great for sharing on social media, flyers and posters are also a nice memento for the young people to keep to remind them of the performance and having that experience of being on stage.
Performance Preparation (Backing Tracks, Rehearsals & Technical Riders)
On the lead to up to the showcase we were also busy promoting the EP so when it came to our regular Tuesday evening sessions, we wanted to have solid rehearsals which were led by our vocal tutor Steph Hargreaves and our two instrument wizards Rich “El Gritz” Grindon & Marsh Dawn. Steph, Rich and Marsh have years of experience with performance so it was great to have them coach our participants through the performance process and explain the importance of stage presence and good delivery. Each week before the showcase, we used our small hall space and set up a stage with a full PA system to give them an accurate representation of what to expect in terms of volume etc. Throughout this rehearsal time we noticed a substantial growth in our participants’ confidence and musical ability performing live and we see this same energy now being adopted during the recording process.
Creating backing tracks is quite a simple procedure and it's typically best to just have the instrumental of the original song that is being performed. Some of our participants like to have their backing vocals left in over the backing track as this can create a nice layering sound over selected areas of the song i.e. chorus and bridge etc. Try to make sure to keep a good level and ensure the recording is not distorted as this can cause issues when performing live.
With a few weeks of rehearsals under their belt and backing tracks at the ready, it was time for our participants to create a technical rider. A technical rider is a list of music equipment you need to use for the performance - you make a list of the equipment you need and send it to the venue. Because all of our artists were performing over backing tracks, we just required microphones, on stage monitors and a pair of Pioneer CDJ players (to play our backing tracks and songs between the performances). If you are sending any information of this nature to a live music venue, be sure to let them know if you are hosting performers that play an instrument as this will probably need to be soundchecked prior to the doors opening – it’s best to keep the engineer/venue as happy as possible to minimise any issues during the actual performance.
Showtime
With the event opening to the public at 5.30pm, we wanted to ensure our performers got the opportunity to soundcheck and get used to the sound of the room etc. and we found this made our performers feel more comfortable and prepared for their performance. Once the soundchecks were complete, the young people stayed around to catch the first performer and the event started to get going.
We wanted to delegate staff in the best way possible so our lead mentor Gaz Frost (producer Congi) played the backing tracks, instrument tutor Rich was the compere, project director Moon Cavanagh and vocal tutor Steph handled all audience liaison, including ensuring they were filling in feedback forms etc. Having enough staff on board can really help keep things running smoothly especially when people are allocated certain roles and responsibilities.
Each performer had a 10 minute performance slot but because the showcase was to celebrate the release of the EP, we wanted to have a section in the middle where the EP was performed from start to finish. This was our favourite part of the event as it was amazing to see the same tracks that were created, from scratch, a month or two before, being performed in front of a crowd of people. The vibe of the audience was fantastic and lots of comments were made on the level of talent we had on the stage; we will discuss that a little more in the next section of this blog post.
Feedback, Monitoring and Audience Involvement
When putting on events, it’s essential to get audience feedback and their opinions on how they feel you are doing in meeting your outcomes. At each showcase event, we always take an essential pack of resources to capture this feedback and this comes in the form of: feedback forms, more pens than you think you’ll need, a large map of Nottingham, a variety of cultural flags that are used to pin in areas the audience member is from - I'll explain a little more…
Feedback Forms
- The feedback forms ask three questions with options to answer strongly agree, agree, not sure, disagree, strongly disagree - each question has a box for additional comments, a “why?” box essentially.
- The questions are: Are you enjoying it? / Do you think events like this help increase the opportunity for people from different cultural backgrounds and postcodes to come together? / How did you find out about this event?
- Each audience member is asked to fill out the feedback form and these are collected before the end of the performances
Large Map & Flag (Picture below)
- The large map shows all postcodes of Nottingham with the text ‘Where are you from?’ & ‘What’s your heritage?’
- The flags represent different cultural heritages - the idea is for all audience members to put the flag or flags that best represents their ethnicity or cultural heritage and pin it to the post code they are from
- We find this to be a very interactive element of the showcase events
The feedback we have received from all showcase events have been extremely positive. For us, a major objective is facilitating question 2 of the feedback (Do you think events like this help increase the opportunity for people from different cultural backgrounds and postcodes to come together?) and the additional comments we have received have been testament to our aim.
“These events bring people together from different areas”
“This gives a place for young and upcoming aspiring artists to thrive celebrating the things that unite them rather than those that divide them”
“Events like this mix people and their talent from all different places”
“Music crosses postcodes - a good mix of all music styles”
“Take a look around. There’s your answer”
When going through the data from our last showcase, 52 out of 57 people ticked the strongly agreed box on the feedback form for question 2 and we truly believe that showcase events break down the barriers that some young people face when mixing with other people from different postcodes and backgrounds. The data we collect is so important for what we do and another part of what we do with CMON is to facilitate studio visits with our partners - this gives all of our participants the opportunity to work with each other to create music - again, this is for another blog post.
The last thing we wanted to highlight was the response to question 3 (How did you find out about this event?). Giving a quick thought back to our promotion strategy and utilising social media to the maximum, most of our audience members found out about the event through word of mouth, Facebook or Instagram - this is definitely the most current way to share pretty much anything these days so definitely include it in your own plans if promoting anything!
Peer Review & Sharing Achievements
A peer review is a very important part of growing as an artist. Understanding what the highlight of your set was and knowing what to do better next time is what progressing as an artist and performer is all about. During the session after the showcase event, we played live recordings of each performance and our participants shared their thoughts in a group. When doing this it's important to check if the participants mind if the recording is played out, some people are shy about their performances and maybe it could put them on the spot - we always like to identify who may be reluctant and have a quiet word prior to the peer review starting. We use peer reviews a lot in our practice as we have participants at different stages of their musical journey and there is always something to learn from the people you look up to.
The EP showcase was such a great way to celebrate the achievement of creating a body of work. To take the opportunity to share your music to friends, family and the general public is the step in the right direction to becoming a well-rounded musician. Performance is a big part of turning music into a full time job, so it was very inspiring to see our participants take this opportunity so seriously but at the same time having fun with their time on stage.
Do you have any advice for when booking events? What are your experiences of involving young people in the process? Any tips on promotion or data collection?
Drop us a message/ comment.
