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!
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Friday, 13 November 2009
Third meeting summary
Meetings are rumbling on, and we now have dates confirmed for the rest of 2009:
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:
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...
- 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...
Thursday, 5 November 2009
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:
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.
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.
Monday, 2 November 2009
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.
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:
- Future meeting dates should be decided at each meeting, to ensure that they are as convenient as possible.
- At the next meeting we will look into setting up a ning network for the Take Over, as a private forum to discuss ideas.
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):
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