Hyping the show through the podcast I designed a lot of online and print media to advertise the show
Organising exhibition with Sho and collaboration with HATW. Getting Brightr involved from the tour before and his work with mental health. I talked to everyone about the opening night and we talked in depth about issues the project looks at and what HATW does. Social media is a great way to reach an audience for this kind of project it took a little bit of learning new skills and disciplines but it was well worth it for the potential reach I feel.
Some Early viewing figures from previous podcasts
A lot of adobe products including Premiere Pro, Illustrator Indesign and After Effects where used to make work.
From a lot of research with both technical hardware, software and social media good practice I have managed to get a much larger reach than a regular ad would do by going going live. I’m also cross posting on google and podcasts.com the figures are the very minimum it could easily be 0.5 / 2 x larger than what I’m seeing. I need to be critical and have asked for feedback from other more established podcasters but as a massive fan of podcasts for many years I feel like I can develop it rapidly with constant feedback and small improvements consistently.
Youtube data
Good Old Fashioned in person Networking
Went into town everyday doing face to face meeting. Posters and flyers in coffee shops charity music stores skate shops and record stores and bars universities and colleges talk about the wide net of music and art people.
· Flyers posters ig facebook
· Facebook headers mailed out
· Zines call to action in the zines with ig account design and process q’s
· Stickers colab with Dan and using the skull as a desing given to to bands to tour with with urls on them pointing to the website.
· Using people’s portraits to have people to go
· Collective getting other involved to help – problems getting anyone else to do any work
· Cross promoting other artists etc Cardiff events clashed – timings with the gallery too early –
· Brightr playing the show, cross promoting – podcast – using facebook banner to get it out
I made lots of social media ads to share about online and also gave them to people that have sat for portraits with me already with details and info about the opening night with their image. The thought behind it was that it would encourage familiar faces to show support for people they know. I had SHO gallery and HATW run media through their social media channels too. I also did a facebook live video in the lunch times targeted at Cardiff City centre both before the opening to tell people about it as well as the exhibition week itself to get lunch time workers through the door.
Collaboration I decided to go ahead and get the branding websites and social media sorted for the Neon Pioneers Collective – idea – name from music inspired- logo deved – got idea from the ham project. Scanned and used on socials
I have James and Adam offer to help me out for a while but over the course of the weeks it’s been increasingly difficult to get even simple things done so I’ve ended up doing pretty much everything. I had a chat with them and said that it’s not really ethical for me to put money into the up keep and do all of the work. They agreed and they both have full time jobs doing non creative roles so I think the plan for now is to use it like a band would use a record label. As I Slowly look for other artists to get involved I can use it as an online mag/blog to promote the podcast and the other projects and use my website more for portfolio.
LINK TO COLLECTIVE WEBSITE HERE
Sat with an edit for about a week with them on the wall. Wendy tutorial concluded that the images are a bit too varied and that they could be used better. Took on board and workshopped the images with Aled Hughs a Welsh artist. Then run it by with Stella.
Then went to the gallery again and re worked out placing the images in to the space using less of them. Hit original plan but had one or two changes that got made up from the pillars.
Problems
Opening times - they were adamant we could only do 5-8 terrible for city centre traffic Hannah from HATW offered to stay and lock up ( it’s the same building) but it wasn’t ok.
Sport on - There was international football on which meant it was hard and public transport was strained, the weather was terrible and people knew it would be harder to get in if they did want to come.
I had reservations about these issues to begin with but decided to proceed anyway. If i have learned anything from it it would be to go with original feeling of doing it at a better time and place. Same applies for the collective, it’s basically just been me doing everything it’s problems where others don’t do enough.
On top of that the gallery isn’t massively marketed so a lot of people were asking ‘ oh where is that then’ but it’s in one of Cardiff’s most famous St’s especially for nightlife and culture in the scenes i’m networking with. Next time I need to look at these factors.
I originally wanted to place labels on the frame but Stella discussed it with me and we decided that that wasn’t really a good idea.
I set up a big cartel shop ahead of time to sell any work if people wanted to buy it. I doubt it very much and all of the research pointed me to people not buying of an unknown artist but I thought if i made it affordable and they could see it was a good cause then it would be a possibility.
https://fuzzchucas.bigcartel.com/
MORE IN DEPTH POST ON ZINE PRODUCTION HERE
Zines are printed and available to buy online and also at the show with bundle deals. I’ll also be shipping gratis packs of to other record labels and bands to bundle in with their merch. I’m resting it as a loss leader at present its basically advertising for my work, the collective and the a great way to build an audience
Big Cartel Shop is now set up…
LINK TO BIG CARTEL SHOP HERE
Habits and Mindsets Zine 001 . Chris Chucas 2018