Phrased & Confused promoter development training
In 2004 the hub produced the first Phrased & Confused tour, which tested our hunch that music fans are a potential new audience for live literature events. The tour went to seven music venues across the UK, and enabled us to learn a lot about who came and why, and what the barriers are to developing live literature artists, producers and events around the country.
One of the key issues we uncovered while producing the tour what that there are is a lack of producers/promoters with the skills and networks necessary to promote and produce quality live literature events and tours around the country. It’s in our nature to look for solutions to problems, so we decided to do something about this, by using our experience as producers to support the development of emerging talent we uncovered whilst on tour.
To do this, we put together a development programme, which would support potential and emerging live literature promoters and producers to learn new skills, give them opportunities to work with venues in their region, and expand their networks.
Whilst on tour with Phrased and Confused 2 in 2006, we ran a number of networking events for artists, promoters and producers, in order to publicise the development programme and encourage them to apply. From the applications we received, we selected fifteen emerging live literature ‘activists’ to take part in the programme.
Stage 1 of the programme was a training programme, which was designed to equip our participants with the skills they need to become a successful promoter/producer. Over two intensive weekends, we led sessions on fundraising and sponsorship; finance and budgeting; marketing and press; and, event planning and production.
Stage 2 saw us supporting 6 of our training participants to work up their creative ideas, and to submit their first application to Arts Council England in support of these ideas.
Phrased & Confused was supported by Arts Council England.