CAF2020 - A Review
Well …. that was intense - but we did it! Camberwell Arts Festival 2020, all online and mostly live from my kitchen. When we decided to go ahead with the festival online, I didn’t think we’d end up doing as much as we did.
Let’s start with some headline stats - everyone loves statistics ;)
12,000 + Website views
28k reach on Facebook
42k reach on Instagram
100hrs + 3200 impressions on YouTube
60k impressions on Twitter
From what I can gather that’s good. Unfortunately, the old website is gone so I can’t do a like-for-like comparison.
But more important than stats, how did it actually go? Well, it was an odd one. There was a surprisingly strong sense of community surrounding the programme. We got so many entries for our A-Z, and people were really engaged with the idea of rediscovering their local area. We chose the theme before COVID was properly a problem, but it ended up feeling really prescient and relevant to the times. Perhaps that would have happened with any theme. Though I don’t know how ‘Art of the Party’ would have fared in that context.
For me personally I really did miss the physical interaction. There’s a real catharsis that happens and a release of stress when you see people at the market or walking around with a brochure in their hand during open studios. Something tangible, and I guess, immediate feedback, instant gratification that smooths over any resistance you’ve built up whilst planning the festival.
But then there were some definite upsides. Most important to me is, with more time at home and arguably less ‘work’ to do in some ways we had time to reach out to new people. The framework of the A-Z themes also allowed for smaller deliverables, so we could work with more people. Some of my favourite new friends of Camberwell Arts are the 23rd Camberwell Scouts, The Chateau, The Black Heroes Foundation and The Bunker Collective!
Another one for me was being strong-armed into learning new skills, and I guess also having the time to do it. I did learn how to live-stream, which I can imagine is going to be pretty useful until this is all over. Also had a crack at the Adobe suite and brushed up on my web-design skills. At times it was really stressful to be the tech person for the whole festival. But that leads onto my next point - I saw EVERYTHING. This year I genuinely saw every piece of content at the festival, a combination of uploading/streaming/commissioning everything but again, of being on furlough. If I had the week off during the regular festival, I’d try to see everything again.
So, in summary, it definitely went better than expected, but I can’t wait to get back into the ‘real world’ soon.
A final anecdote - on the morning of the first Saturday, my partner Ciarán said, aren’t you dreading spending the week doing all this work on the laptop? To which I replied; If this was happening on the Green, we’d both be lugging around gazebo’s right now.
So, there’s a sunny side to everything.
The Monday after the festival I fell into the dreaded post-festival malaise very quickly. I got a call from my manager at RMG in the afternoon, and I was full sure I was about to be made redundant. Actually, I’m going back to work part-time in July once flexi-furlough kicks in.
…. Excellent timing