Regional touring champions community, empowering local selection of artistic programs. At the same time it can champion theatre-makers, helping fulfil the desire to take art to new audiences.
Sometimes these trends pull in different directions; a regional tour might not be the best platform for an ambitious contemporary work; a community’s artistic decisions can appear unfamiliar to outsiders who lack local knowledge. Happily, more often than not, touring projects succeed in marrying these two causes.
Your show on tour?
Theatre makers are now invited to submit productions for inclusion at Long Paddock National Touring Forum. Hosted by the Blue Heeler Network of Touring Coordinators and Regional Arts Australia, Long Paddock is a biannual event that brings together presenters and producers of the performing arts from all over Australia to generate national tours with a focus on regional and remote communities. Long Paddock will be held during the Brisbane Festival in September, managed collaboratively with a host of organisations, and aligning with Kultour’s Multicultural Gathering. The Long Paddock program is selected via the Cyberpaddock website, where you can register and find out everything you need to know about the process.
Why Regional Touring?
For me regional touring addresses two simple but vital ideas:
1) Folk who choose to live and work in regional locations are vital to the country and have the right to access incredible artistic and cultural experiences.
2) Artists and theatre makers need to consider touring, and to a degree regional touring, as part of their business strategy to ensure they can access new audiences.
Clever folk have created sophisticated courtship mechanisms for these compelling, sometimes competing, trends. Tour funding helps to ensure that communities are not penalised by distance. Touring events and organisations are established to facilitate interaction between communities and artists. Producing organisations have forged strong connections with venues, nurturing touring programs core to their businesses. The net result is an extremely healthy environment.
By way of example Regional Arts Victoria’s 2012 program included 542 days on-road, 223 seasons and 345 performances, employed 76 artists, and attracted over 100,000 patrons (with Regional Arts Victoria’s program being just one part of a large eco-system). While Long Paddock is one of a number of touring mechanisms, the last two Long Paddock events embraced over 200 venues and 80 arts companies, resulting in approximately 40 planned tours.
Should I submit my show for Long Paddock?
Perhaps a better starting point is a more sophisticated question-set. Touring is competitive, difficult, expensive and you’ll need more than just a great show. Those who do well develop a clear vision of the role of touring in their artistic and business strategies. They understand who their audiences are and where they live and gather. Often a series of festival shows, or a tour to metropolitan locations, is best suited to the company audience demographic. Ultimately success implies collaboration.
Support agencies exist to remove real or perceived barriers to touring, but none can play substitute for industry connection. A great project can start from conversations with regional venues and a dialogue geared towards a relationship, rather than a sales pitch. There are numerous touring support organisations offering different and specialised services. Selecting an appropriate touring partner, or choosing to go it alone, is a vital decision. It’s important to know the funding environment well so the project can reflect this aspect at every stage. Simply participating in tour selection without the rigour described above can place one on the road to frustration.
What about Wild Cards?
While Long Paddock selection is geared towards venue interest the event also invites producers who offer a particularly innovative or under-represented art-form to participate as Wild Cards. This allows theatre-makers who are yet to develop connections to participate. Wild Card spots are excellent professional development and have often been very successful. The most recent Long Paddock featured two Wild Cards and both have planned 2014 tours.
What are the keys to success?
• Is the show is technically tour ready?
• Is the show is eligible for funding or can it proceed without?
• Will the budget cover costs while remaining reasonable within the market limits?
• Is there a comprehensive package of resources compiled including excellent images, video, excellent posters and flyers and education resources if appropriate?
• Has the show earned testimonials from appropriate industry leaders?
My pet peeve with Cyberpaddock submissions is the use of standard audience marketing language. Use your own, best words! Venue managers need your programming notes – they need your complete picture of what will happen from when the company arrives to when they leave, notes on who the show will appeal to and what has worked previously in connecting with them.
What will a successful regional tour look like?
I’ve witnessed success in many ways, on every project I’ve worked on. Every tour is unique so blanket measures of success can be unhelpful. I have observed universal features, including: performances in spaces from the well-equipped to the rustic; communities eagerly purchasing tickets to attend events and participate in workshops; engaged audiences who may hold a bake-off, or even give a dancing ovation; individual and organisational growth that fuels future artistic and touring/presentation activity. Summed up, regional touring is a celebration of place and the people who make places special. Touring empowers communities to participate in an ongoing national festival of performing arts.
Submissions for regional tours can be made to Cyberpaddock and close 28 June.
Long Paddock National Touring Forum will be held on September 12 & 13 at QPAC in
