Olivia from Black Country Touring received a bursary from Film Hub Midlands to attend Film Camp 2018.
I took 3 of our promoter groups and four members of Black Country Touring (BCT) staff along to the Film Camp in April 2018 in order to get new ideas and in particular to introduce promoters to new ways of programming and using different content. After the event I then debriefed with all attendees to get their feedback and see what they could take forward and how BCT could support them.
Overwhelmingly all attendees gave fantastic feedback on the Build Your Own Marketing Campaign workshop particularly with regards the speaker who talked about utilising paying for boosts on Facebook and the use of algorithms. There was also fantastic feedback about the Cine Soupe workshop where it was noted that the focus was on the environment created rather than specific film titles (short films) with food and conversation being at the heart of the events. The apprentice here at BCT was really interested to see and learn, from Cine Soupe, about promoting to a community who wouldn’t usually connect with cinema outside of the mainstream.
One of our promoters in particular really valued and enjoyed the workshop about programming for young people. He thought it was a fantastic idea and really loved that youngsters gave their feedback on ideas as they ‘always tell the truth’. He has been inspired to include young children in programming archive film in the future and he also really appreciated having the opportunity to visit the Mockingbird Cinema as it was somewhere he had never been before and he had ‘a really lovely day’.
The data workshop was brilliant for seeing how to utilise the data we collect past comments of feedback. Being able to use data collection to look into strategic marketing is definitely something we can do here at BCT and one of the promoters is really keen to learn more as it will help with her job in the CVS not just with community cinema.
For BCT, attending the event along with promoters was fantastic as we can now go forward to confidently look at programming more adventurous content and creating exciting and well attended community cinema films.
