Last meeting of the year round-up

Thank you to Ruth, who has very speedily posted to the blog after coming in yesterday to talk marketing with us all. She gave us a bit of an overview of the marketing approaches available, as well as getting us started on thinking about what exactly we're going to do, who we want to come and how we'll get our message across.

In particular, pulling together some elevator pitches for the Take Over and getting ideas down for images (including an invading army literally taking over the Corn Exchange!) were useful.

It was also great to have three newcomers at the meeting. We're still hoping for more people to get involved and there's plenty to do, so first-time attenders should not be put off. The next meeting is going to be Wednesday 6 January, 5-6.30pm in the Corn Exchange, but you can get involved on the Ning before then.

Two other brilliant things happened yesterday: groups of people volunteered to take on responsibility for organising the headliners and the brochure entry, and there were mince pies. Hard work and Christmas might not always go together but were pretty good in this case.

For the new year we're aiming to confirm our headliners, sort out our brochure entry and start pinning down the rest of the festival programme. There are also going to be opportunities to do work experience and other training in February half term - keep your eyes peeled!

A note from Ruth

Good to have a meeting with all the takeover recruits to talk about marketing! Impressed with all your ideas and enthusiasm...if only we could really afford a bi-plane trailing an advertising banner around the Newbury skies!! Hope it helped with thinking about who you want to come to the Takeover weekend and how you might get that message over to them.

Remember we are here to help so do get in touch with me on ruthc@cornexchangenew.co.uk if you have any publicity-print-press-promotion related things.

Also looking forward to seeing the logo and image ideas for our season brochure.

Lastly was pleased to see the group working well, listening to each other's ideas (mostly!) and taking the plans forward. Speak soon...

Come chat to us this Sunday!

Recently we've noticed that more people are getting in touch with us through Twitter and Facebook, which is really encouraging in terms of the importance of social media. Sometimes they just want to see if we will actually respond (we always try to!), but we've also had some good conversations about everything from ticket offers to allowing hippos into the building.

Because of this interest, I'm going to be online this Sunday to talk Take Over with anyone who wants to (or chat about any other Corn Exchange-related matters). I'm planning to be on Twitter, Facebook and the Ning, henceforth to be known as 'Twacebing', between 1pm and 3pm, so ping me a message if you're around. I'll try to get some other Corn Exchange staff on as well, but it is the weekend so no promises!

And don't forget - last meeting of 2009 is next Wednesday (16th), 5-6.30pm in the Corn Exchange. There will be mince pies!

A (quick) note from Jo

So I had fun last Wednesday putting together a budget for TOCEX. Not sure about the rest of you who were at the meeting - I guess it felt a bit like a maths lesson. On the plus side, we achieved our goal and now have a starting budget for the project. All the plans for the weekend sound really exciting and l look forward to hearing more in the coming months. And I need one (or more) of you to look after the finances with me please...

Headliner news

Wow, it was a really great meeting today - thank you to everyone who came along and contributed. It was good to hear some arguments going on and see some of you getting passionate about your ideas, and I hope that after it everyone has a clearer idea of what they want to do and why. It was also brilliant to have a couple of people along for the first time, especially as they engaged so quickly with what was going on.

So, the main discussion we had was about our headline acts. I'm not going to put all the detail on this blog until some of the ideas have been finally pinned down and we've worked out the finances, but if you want all the info and want to contribute to the discussion then check out the Take Over Ning.

Using some of the ideas from previous sessions and some new ones, we roughed out an overview of what sort of events we wanted to use as headliners and were very drawn towards music and comedy. There was a lot of discussion about programming local acts versus big names, and about how we can put on an event that is different from what is already going on locally. We also thought about whether it's important for the events to be age appropriate - and, if so, which age bracket we need to cater to. We previously decided that we want to put on a festival which is largely by under-25s, for under-25s but worried about limiting ourselves (and blocking out adults, who are going to have more disposable cash!).

At the end of the conversation we did have two clear ideas for headline events; we're now going to work on these and try to confirm them ASAP!

We also touched on how important it would be to make sure that some of the other events we'd thought of (particularly film and theatre) were represented in the weekend alongside the headliners, to make sure that we didn't miss any opportunities to keep people involved.

Lastly, we agreed that a small group of people would need to 'manage' each individual event to make sure that everything runs smoothly and our bases are covered. We're going to start setting up these groups via the Ning.

The next meeting is going to be very money-oriented, and will be a chance for us to make sure that we can pay for our headliners and the other events we want to run. It's going to be tricky, but hopefully we will be able to get close to putting together the budget and having a clear idea where we're going!

Third meeting summary

Meetings are rumbling on, and we now have dates confirmed for the rest of 2009:

• Saturday 21 Nov, Corn Exchange (Bar 1861), 5-6.30pm
• Wednesday 2 Dec, Corn Exchange (Bar 1861), 5-6.30pm
• Wednesday 16 Dec, Corn Exchange (Bar 1861), 5-6.30pm

These are open to anyone under 25, so if you haven't been able to come along so far please don't be afraid of turning up! You can also contribute to the discussion on our Ning by joining up.

At the meeting yesterday we switched from thinking about what we were going to do for the Take Over weekend to how we are going to do it. We tried to outline all the different areas we would have to cover, including:

• Finance
• Marketing
• Technical
• Events
• Duty Management
• Design

Alongside this we mapped out the responsibilities and activities of the different areas, trying to get a sense of what decisions were most urgent and how we could make meetings as efficient as possible. We decided that after the next meeting (21 November) we would start to 'theme' meetings so that they would address certain areas; for example, the meeting on 2 December will be a finance meeting to try and pin down exactly what we're going to spend (and hopefully raise).

These themed meetings will also be supported by members of Corn Exchange staff, so our Finance Manager Jo will come along to the first meeting, for example. At the meeting we also talked about using office space at the Corn Exchange for phone calls etc - basically anyone on the Take Over is welcome to come up to the offices, you just need to let Sam know in advance. This would also be a good opportunity to meet some of the staff and see the building in action!

After the how we turned back to the what; specifically to what theme we'd like to go for. After a bit of thought the enthusiasm for a 'sofa fort' theme had mellowed somewhat. Several people were concerned that it would exclude people too much and grow tiring if we kept it up for the whole weekend. The general consensus was that having a subtler approach to the theme overall would work best, including possibly focusing on the decor rather than bringing everything into the theme. We agreed that getting lively discussion going on the Ning about themes and event ideas was best, and that the next meeting would be a hardcore programming meeting to really decide on the nature of the event and what headliners we'd like to approach.

There was also some good feedback from Luke about his efforts to secure some space in the Market Place. He's going to continue pursuing this with the various contacts he has been given.

So, lots going on and lots to do! The important thing now is to hammer out our ideas for events and make sure we've got the budget to pay for them all...

Meeting the second: Nings and things

Hello take over-ers! Or probably, takers over - really we need a better name.

This is a very quick post about the meeting we had yesterday, to be followed by another post with more detail on a couple of webby bits I promised to follow up on. The most important news is that the next two meetings will be on Thursday 12 Nov and Saturday 21 Nov - full details below.

So yesterday we started out by catching up a little on ideas from the first meeting, particularly looking at the events ideas that came up and thinking about the practical obstacles we faced (money, time, space and people). I've squished the ideas we came up with into one mega mind map with the help of the very easy to use bubbl.us, and we used this as a way of helping first-time attenders see where we'd been before.

The practical obstacle we talked about most was money. With a starting budget of £2,500, some acts (particularly celebrities) are beyond our means unless we can find sneaky ways of convincing them to get involved. Fortunately several people at the meeting immediately volunteered sneaky ways of getting people involved, so in the sessions to come we should probably think about working out who we can contact and realistically hope to get involved.

In the light of this we turned our attention to the sort of festival weekend we wanted to run - whether it should focus on a few big events or lots of little ones, whether we should have a theme or not and who we wanted to come. The feeling was very much that we wanted a festival offering 'different things for different people', with a real sense of something different going on and an exciting atmosphere. To help this it was decided that we should look into the possibility of using the Market Place for events during the weekend. We also agreed that having two 'headline' events on the Saturday and Sunday evenings, accompanied by a varied programme during the day, would be a good structure.

The group agreed that we probably would want a theme for the festival to give it a sense of coherence. Various ideas came up, including funfair, art and artists, cardboard monsters, fantasy and films/comics. However, there was one idea which dominated, which was taking the idea of booting parents/adults out for the weekend and running with it - sofa forts, creches for grown ups and bouncers armed with super soakers were all mentioned. The group didn't want to finally settle on a theme without further thought, though, so we decided to open up discussion online to try and develop more ideas before the next meeting.

To this end we moved on to talking about the Ning. This was on the agenda from the previous meeting - basically, the idea is to set up a social network at Ning.com for private Take Over discussions. Any information that needs to go out to the public will still go up on this blog and on Facebook, but having a separate space to throw ideas around should help us get discussion going. The Take Over Ning is now active - hop on over and sign up! More detail will follow in a dedicated post, but do be aware that membership is moderated so it might take a day or so to go through. Over-25s won't be able to join the Ning at all, so if you're reading this, don't try!

The last thing we did was to confirm the dates of the next couple of meetings:

• Thursday 12 November, 5-6.30pm at the Corn Exchange (Bar 1861)
• Saturday 21 November, 5-6.30pm at the Corn Exchange (Bar 1861)

If you can't make it along or you need help, or even if you can make it along, let me know.

That's it for the moment. I suggest you head over to the Ning and sign up now! See you there or at the next meeting, I hope.

Video: first meeting summary

Due to the mad editing skillz of Alec Hopkins (and the fine camerawork of Zack Dove, Alfie Dickens and Jamie Lillycrop) we're lucky enough to have a good chunk of the meeting from Saturday 24 caught on film. Big thanks to those of you who made this possible!

We're hoping to video all the meetings as a good record of what's been done and said. This first one has a small issue with sound level (and too many shots of me - I really didn't speak that much!) but is the quickest way to get an idea of what went on.

First meeting!

It's official: the Take Over has begun! We had our first proper meeting on Saturday to start getting some ideas down and planning what kind of festival we'd like to run in the Corn Exchange.

It was particularly nice to have a good mixture of ages, from 12 to 23 year olds. Even better, everyone was able to contribute equally and some fantastic ideas came up. Below is a quick summary of what we talked about, but most importantly the dates of the next meeting is Wednesday 4 November, 4-6pm at New Greenham Arts. Anyone can come along (especially if you weren't able to come on Saturday!). If you need directions or help with transport please contact Sam Sampson.

Meeting summary - Sat 24 October

We kicked off with an opportunity for everyone to get their hands dirty and mess around with some of the Corn Exchange's sound and lighting equipment, which quickly resulted in an impromptu disco. This was also a chance for everyone to meet, chat and get to know each other a bit.

After this we knuckled down to the business of mapping out what sort of events the festival should include. To start off with everyone tried to picture their ideal event - the one thing they would really like to see happen if there were no constraints at all. These ranged from a battle of the bands between Coldplay and U2 to turning the whole building into a swimming pool!

Once everyone had warmed up with this exercise, we split into groups to try and splurge as many ideas as possible into mind maps (pictured below). This was really valuable, with a whole range of really creative ideas springing up. I've included photos of the maps themselves here and will be bringing them along to future meetings so that we can use them as a basis for discussion. One thing we did find was that each of the four groups hit on some common threads, specifically celebrity events, immersive or ongoing events, outdoor events and variety/mixed events. This is such a big area that we'll be posting again soon with more details, and will try to gather all the ideas into one place in a useful format (let me know if you have any bright ideas!).

Talking through the programme ideas that had come up gave us some sense of what we wanted to do, so for the last part of the meeting we moved on to the how. This was a lot trickier, but we managed some sensible conversations touching on how to set up meetings, how we might make sure that people of different ages and from different areas should be involved, and how decisions could be made. At the end we'd firmly decided two things:

1. Future meeting dates should be decided at each meeting, to ensure that they are as convenient as possible.
2. At the next meeting we will look into setting up a ning network for the Take Over, as a private forum to discuss ideas.

To round off the meeting we gathered a bit of info about when people felt was best to hold meeting for the future. The two most popular times were weekday evenings and weekend afternoons, with weekend evenings coming in third. So, I will be putting forward some potential future dates at the next meeting on Wednesday - check back here for confirmation of times!

Please remember to leave comments here if you've got any input or questions. This would be especially useful if you were at the meeting and think I've left anything out!

Here are the mind maps we produced (click for large versions):

One day to go...

So, it's the day before the Take Over properly launches and I've been spending the day preparing materials, getting stuff printed and making sure we've got enough pens. Hopefully all is now in readiness - we just need you guys to come along and bring your ideas! Fingers crossed it is going to be a blast and give us some real impetus to get planning. There should be a follow-up post on here soon afterwards, with more to come in the shape of different people's views and even a video. Just keep your eyes peeled.

It's also worth flagging up something else that happened this week. On Thursday a whole bunch of Corn Exchange staff went along to a training day for Hear By Right, which is a fantastic tool for working out how much youth participation there is going on in an organisation and what we can do to improve. Best of all, the process demands that young people get involved and have input into the mapping and planning so we're going to set up an event in the next couple of months to hear from you.

Lots of ideas were bubbling up at the training day for ways to give youth a bigger voice in the Corn Exchange, from establishing a members' scheme for young people to helping primary schools to run their own Box Offices. Look out for some of these surfacing in the months ahead - and let us know your own ideas!

Looking forward to seeing lots of you tomorrow.

Alex's work experience post

Just a quick intro from me - we offer work experience placements all year round, and have been fortunate enough to have some really great people in of late. Alex, our most recent work experience student, came to us for a week from St Bart's and was kind enough to write the following summary of his time here. Hope you enjoy!

My work experience has been amazing. I have been involved with a wide variation of departments here in the Corn Exchange. In my time I have been here I have picked up so much and gained some experience in the working world. The Corn Exchange is an amazing place you can experience so much and my favourite bit is the technical side, however I love every single department and have enjoyed myself to the full extent. Through out the week I have learnt about marketing, development (ideas), box office, technical (control room) and many more.

In the technical side of the Corn Exchange I think is the most interesting part. My reason for saying this is because you get to help with the lights, setting them up, putting different colours in to them and just to position them to. Also you get to go into the control room and get to put the right code into the control desk to make sure the right light turns on at a particular time. I think working on a stage is an amazing job and you learn so much because there is so much to learn but it’s not extremely hard you just have to be determined to learn. If you can adapt to learning and understanding the way of working as a team and setting up light for the stage then this is for you.

Saturday 24: launch day

Over the last few weeks we've been trying to get the word out as much as possible - the first Take Over meet up is going to be Saturday 24 October, 2-5pm at the Corn Exchange. We're going to be talking about what events you want to see in the festival, how you can organise it, whether there's anything you'd like to learn about in preparation for the take over... In short, anything and everything to do with the festival.

We'd really like to see as many young people there as possible, so if you can make it along, please do! To sweeten the deal, everyone who comes along will get a free ticket to a performance at the Corn Exchange. If you're not sure about the take over, do come along to find out more about it - this is an opportunity to ask questions as well as having your say, and to meet some of our lovely Corn Exchange staff.

If you can't make it along on the 24th, don't worry! There will be plenty more opportunities to get involved - just drop me an e-mail (sams@cornexchangenew.co.uk) and I will keep you up to speed with what's going on. You can also check back on this blog or join our Facebook group to find out more.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

The hills (of Berkshire) are alive with the sound of music

There are some fun things going on for young people at the moment that you should all look out for. The Download are running a competition for bands and solo musicians in West Berkshire. The entry deadline is Friday 9 October, so if you're part of a band or you're a budding singer-songwriter do check it out. The prizes include headlining a gig at the Moorside Centre in November and getting airtime on local radio, so worth looking into. If you haven't come across The Download before it's a website for young people in West Berkshire run by an editorial team who mainly seem to come from St Bart's at the moment. They're always looking for new recruits so do have a look around and if you're interested drop them a line.

Staying on the music theme, we've got a couple of gig nights coming up. The Dead Cities Club are presenting a gig night here at the Corn Exchange on Friday 25 September featuring Televised Crimewave, Four Dead in Ohio, Elliot to Hong Kong and The Circus Sands. We're pretty excited about having a 'proper' gig here for the first time in a while, and the bands have certainly got our feet tapping and heads nodding. Come join us to see what it's like!

We've also got the Newbury Electric Proms on Sunday 18 October. This will be an evening of music and dance performed by young people from the area, and should be pretty darn cool. There's a Facebook Group you can check out for updates. The whole event is in support of the Community Furniture Project, which is a great local charity. Best of all, the evening is being organised by Josh Smith, a student at Trinity school - kudos to him! Empowering people to run their own events like that is one of the main aims of the Take Over, so he's ahead of the game in that respect.

Other than that little lot, Take Over things are still going on behind the scenes. We're currently trying to get out to schools to give workshops and talk in assemblies, and setting up for the event on Saturday 24 October. If you've got any requests or want to let us know what you've been up to, do get in touch!

11 Million Takeover

11 Million, the office of the Children's Commissioner for England, recently announced their aspiration to have 30,000 children and young people from Britain take part in their 11 Million Takeover Day, Friday 6 November. They co-ordinated the event last year and had a lot of uptake from organisations.

Should we try and take part in this as well? Take Over the Corn Exchange! is intended as a long-term project rather than something that happens for a single day, but the idea of young people all over the country running businesses, councils and the like at the same time is rather attractive. Something to discuss in the near future, perhaps.

Roots

For the last several months, we've been throwing some ideas around in the Corn Exchange to do with youth participation, bringing young people into the programme and engaging better with young communities. The more we talked, the more interested and excited we got, and the more we realised that we wanted to do something quite big.

Various different ideas came up, from the sublime to the ridiculous, but after talking about guest editors for newspapers we settled on trying to duplicate the idea with the theatre. Basically, we want to hand over the Corn Exchange keys to a group of under-25 year-olds to do what they will for one weekend in April 2010.

And so Take Over the Corn Exchange! (TOCEX) was born! Lots of details for what's actually going to happen haven't been threshed out yet, largely because we don't want to run it - we want you to run it! (And by 'you', I mean under-25s living near the Corn Exchange).

There are some things set up already - we're going to host a meet-up on Saturday 24 October to start planning the event, we've got some ideas about how to contact people - but we really want your input.

Hence this blog. This will be the online home for the project, and we hope that everyone interested in taking part will join in the discussion here, either by contributing to the blog (see the side panel for info on how) or by leaving comments. We'll keep posting updates, including all important dates and other news, here in the meantime.

We hope to hear from you soon...

The people who make it possible

Take Over the Corn Exchange! is generously supported by Creative Junction. Check out their website for heaps of handy resources and exciting projects.

All about Take Over the Corn Exchange!

Ever wanted to run your own festival? Well, what are you waiting for?

Take Over the Corn Exchange! is an opportunity for under-25s to plan, programme and run your own festival weekend in the Corn Exchange. We’ll give you a budget and as much support and advice as you want, and the building is yours to do what you will for the weekend of 17/18 April 2010.

You can set up gigs, shows, film screenings, workshops, clubs and anything else you can think of. This is your chance to put on the event that you’ve always wanted!

Who is it for?

Anyone under the age of 25. We can’t put it more simply than that!

What’s going to happen?

We’re having a big meet-up at the Corn Exchange on Saturday 24 October to kick off the process of planning your event. Before then we’ll be getting out into schools, youth groups and the community at large to tell people about the project.

From October to April there will be enough time to plan your event and learn any new skills you’d like to pick up. If you’ve always wanted to see how the backstage bits of theatre work, or you want to learn how to market events, or you want to know what exactly a development manager does, this is your chance to get some experience and put it into action.

How can I get involved?

Come along to the meet-up on 24 October!

Before then you can also start talking to us and other young people about what you’d like to do. Comment right here on the blog, or contact Sam to write your own blog post. All information about the project will go up here, so it's worth subscribing to our feed or becoming a Follower.

You can also check out our Facebook group, or join the Google Group to receive information by e-mail.

If you’ve got any questions, get in touch with Sam Sampson, Learning and Participation Officer on 01635 582666 ext 206 or at sams@cornexchangenew.co.uk.