EC PAPERS NOVEMBER 2017

13

Liberating Arts as part of the work of the GFTU Educational Trust and as a cost rather than as potential income stream.

Recommendations

Marketing: In the future the GFTU needs to add a budget for marketing to projects such as this. I recommend a marketing budget equal to 20% of production costs. The Facebook marketing campaign coordinated by Steve Hobby was crucially important in getting ‘bums on seats’. Without it I doubt we would have got to 100 attending. The GFTU needs to urgently update its use of social media and explore the very cost-effective social media advertising provided by consultants like Steve. Partners: The difficulties with Exeter University were partly caused by a lack of definition about who was paying, who was doing what and what we were each getting out of it. In future I would recommend a contractual agreement that specifies duties, responsibilities and benefits. If for example, an institutional partner requires an executive, decision-making role in production then they must nominate an executive at an appropriate level in the institutional hierarchy who is able to represent the institution and come to joint decisions with the GFTU Gen Sec. Online Systems: There was no budget for online ticketing or programming systems and no capacity within the GFTU itself to create them. As a result the Producer had to create the ticketing systems using a number of free online tools. This was effective to a point and certainly the branding and curating of the various tools was consistent and visually attractive. The downside is that from a customer’s point of view it appeared as a complicated system that had to be negotiated. It was actually fairly simple but you did need to read the instructions on the website. Many people did not read those instructions and thus became confused. If the GFTU is to continue mounting ticketed events such as Liberating Arts it may be worth the GFTU investing in a bespoke booking system, or

13 Producer’s Report 06/11/2017