Welcome to Episode 11 of the West Park Park Bench Podcast. If you're new welcome if you're coming back, I hope you've had a good week.
So, all the way to Episode 11. I'm just going to put the little spoffly bit on the end for the microphone because it's a little bit windy. Here we go.
So much technology!
So the Edinburgh Fringe is over for another year. We've got another... 11 months. I had think about it then! until the Edinburgh Fringe comes back round again. And things do come round cyclically in any industry in any business and the Edinburgh Fringe is no different. There are lots of marker points that you can pick to give you targets in your year that aren't necessarily your deliverables. You can choose to put a deliverable in it but I really like having those markers in. Edinburgh this year has been one of those for me.
So the other reason that this podcast exists, if you're curious because you may have listened and gone, "it's a bit random". It's about accountability to my own media making. I need to be able to regularly make a podcast. In this instance, where I can go through that process of knowing which bit of tech I'm using, which software I'm recording to which software I'm extracting it from and to and publishing it. As well as doing the graphics that go around that. A regular routine of making sure that I'm not taking up too much time on the components that aren't about the media making and aren't about the engagement with the audience. And ultimately for a client, the reason for publishing it, being the return on investment for the content of it.
So a lot of social media is very transient. You make it, it goes into your Twitter feeds. And unless you've got a repurposing mechanism of being able to reuse that or put that on your website, it could be a lot of work for a very small amount of time window.
So audiences, absolutely vital but also just being able to flip out your technology, record something that is quick and in the moment. I love having those conversations over the last three weeks with the Edinburgh Fringe. I've done a series of live streams but some people didn't want to go live so they were pre recorded and then I published them, but just having the opportunity to say to somebody, we're going to meet for an hour. We're going to chat for 15 minutes, and then we'll have a five point bulleted recorded session. And then we'll have 15 minute catch up afterwards. And what that does for me as well is allows me to look at what my friends have been up to. I can look into their social media, I can look to see what some of their history was before I met them and be able to pull that into a bit of a podcast a bit of a showcase a bit of a show and tell so that I can create a piece of media that that if somebody wants to know what they're about, there's something for them to look at because often the person you don't promote is yourself very well. And I know I'm not very good at promoting myself so by doing these bits of media, I can talk to others. And the mechanism in which I'm talking to them through is what I do podcasts and live streams and websites and events and the construction that goes around those events, bringing in speakers. Yes, there's all sorts of lovely stuff that I love to do and it's all a little bit chaotic, but I'm trying to bring some structure so accountability podcast is recorded at regular times so that I can also, as I bump into people and as I network, I can say oh, are you free at this time, because I know that I will be here in the park recording this podcast, and someone can come and join me. And that is an invitation to anyone who's listening to this either as a proof either as a podcast that's recorded when you're not in the park or coming to the park.
So Edinburgh Fringe is coming to an end. And I think what has been highlighted as is every year is, what a microcosm of the entertainment industry and especially the independent sector of the industry, with some commercial overlap to some of the big venues, especially in comedy, but what a microcosm of the industry is for those of us that work in it and the stories that have a filtering to the top as we conclude with Edinburgh, particularly as the cost of accommodation.
For people coming to the fringe, the audiences were down 25% because people couldn't couldn't get up and the accommodation was too expensive.
But for people who are actually performing in shows where often the motivation to get to Edinburgh is not to make money and and shows don't make money. Finding that accommodation is finding a way of supporting yourself without being paid, and be able to get to shows and do the shows and do your job but also maintain your mental health and your physical body and promote the show and go out... it is an endurance exercise. And some of the things that are coming up around digs and accommodation, food and cost of living relationships with producers expectations on venues, expectations on audiences marketing, capabilities to actually find an audience and bring them in.
You've got lots of people at the Edinburgh Fringe, getting them to see your show, massively difficult if you are just singly focused. However, if you're collaborating to bring an audience to a venue, because there will be performance in a venue and you will be aligned with a venue that having that kind of drive. Not just when you go up to the fringe. Of course there's the preparation. There's the rehearsal, there's the marketing, there's the logistics of getting there. There's the logistics of being there. There's the logistics of wool. What what happens after you spend all this time and all this work getting there and being there that often with events themselves, just even if it's even if it's a conference event fatigue is very real. And by the time you get to the part of your performance where they've ended often you have nothing left. And that is another experience to be learned that you have to you can't go all out.
You can't go all out and have nothing left. Because life continues the world continues to turn after Edinburgh. The world continues to turn after curtain down. The world continues to turn after your conference event that takes place over a weekend that you've spent a whole year preparing for, which is if you've listened to any of my previous podcasts I did talk about my event strategy or my events cycle, which is planned prepare, produced deliver, reflect and report. And and those once you're producing and you're delivering it you're actually only in the middle of your cycle. I think it's really really important. To remember that and knowing that after you finish this, you've all got to move into a reflection phase and that might be to do nothing for a week but you still need to know what what is that reflection. You want to look back at what you did you want to pull your media together you want to look at updating your website, you might just want to use that to plan the next three months because you just didn't have a plan. So that reflection period is really, really important. And then of course reporting all of what you've just done, making sure that it's tied up. It's written about so that it can be tidied up, put in a box ribbon tied around it, so that you can move on to the next project.
So so important.
So what remains for this week is... I have of course last week's show with DD Deborah Davis to illustrate that whilst the Edinburgh Fringe is going on the world continues to turn and Dd had exhibited her installation called hostile in Wells Art Contemporary at Wells Cathedral.
I went down there this weekend or last weekend to record a walk and talk.
So she walked around a selected collection of installations which really have spoken to her in various ways and not because she really liked them. Some of them she really liked some of them she really didn't know whether she liked some were just great illustrations of the wells topic, the the spirituality meets Christianity meets modern day ecclesiastical non-secular engagement. And I recorded the audio while she was walking around, created, recorded some video. And I also had a a little mini camera on her that would show me what she was seeing. So I kind of got it tied up and I've been putting all that together.
And that's another thing this is accountability, doing things like that. Gathering the content and then ingesting it into your computer, to be able to make sense of it to edit it into a piece is in itself a workflow practice that if I wasn't doing this as part of my practice when I'm not working full out with clients or on productions, I wouldn't have the skills or the skills would be rusty. So I'd be using the time that someone was paying me to be brushing up my skills whereas actually when I'm working with a client or working on a project and I want to be full out, knowing that I need to work out which bits of workflow and by being able to plug into a set of workflows that I already have running and just flipping out my content and putting their content in. That's the sort of thing that I that's the kind of mindset that I want to be in so that I can live the rest of my life around it. So I've got that. So hopefully in Episode 12 I will be able to tell you how that went. That might be what it what it's always difficult.
I'm never quite sure what these park bench podcasts are going to be because I am trying to get into a routine of getting a bit of fitness and agility into my physical body. I'm also on top of that, hoping that I'll lose a few stone over the next couple of years now. It's a gradual thing, but also it's a time for me to have something solid in that day.
So Tuesdays have a particular layout, and then that way I can break it up once I'm kind of in control of my own time. Its a way of me being able to recover when the world falls apart because that's the other inevitability is that doesn't matter how organised you are maybe some people aren't but no matter how organised I am, there comes a point where my mental health is not perfect. The people around me need more than I have the time to give so some of my work needs to fall by the wayside or a project comes up that consumes me because I need the income. But having this structure to plug back into is something that gives me it gives me reassurance that I've got a way back to move forward again.
So I would love people to come and join me. So if you're listening to these in succession, to comment, do let me know that you've listened. I'm @pcmcreative on Twitter. I would love to hear from you.
Being in this audience is more special than any other because this is my media. This is the media that I make when I'm not being paid. And to know who's interested means more to me than the paid projects because the paid projects don't belong to me and I think this is the thing about me being a media maker that makes me different the people. Once I've made a series of podcasts for a client or for production, they don't really feel like mine and to promote them and share them through their media. I want their audiences to engage with them. But if it's not relevant to my audience, I don't want to bombard you with random projects that I get engaged with you can always go and find them.
So it's always difficult to bring things to a close, I think. Doing these podcasts gives me a sense of shape to a conversation especially a one sided conversation because this is me talking to me hoping that you're listening. I don't know who you are. I would like to and I'd like you to be I would like you to be East Midlands based. So if your East Midlands based in you are do get in touch because I can probably travel for a conversation I would love to have a coffee and podcast. I would like you to be across Europe because I did a I was with audiences Europe for a while I would love someone who was part of the audience's Europe days to be listening in to some of these podcasts. That would make me happy. Then of course there are people who are just interested in immersive tech and being able to use social media tech to engage an audience and perhaps be interested in being a guest on one of my other streams because going into the autumn. I've got a bit of a structure that I'm going to try and follow which I'm not going to go into now because I probably am hitting my 15 to 20 minute mark.
So it's just the end of August. We'll see what's gonna happen. There are some really struggling times. I want to talk to people about the struggles I want to talk to people about their art. I want to talk to people about their successes. I want to talk to people about what it is about the successes that keeps them going. Even though they look at the cost of living and think How on earth am I going to get through Christmas? There's conversations to be had and there's conversations that I want to have. So hey, it may be that episode. 12 through 20 will end up being me talking to myself on a park bench.
But if you've got to the end of episode 11, Thank You so much. I'm Caron Lyon, @pcmcreative. This West Park Park Bench Podcast is recorded in Long Eaton's West Park every week on a Tuesday after I've been for swim in the West Park leisure centre. So thanks very much for listening, and I hope you tune into more
