Evaluation of the Winter’s Tales Radio Drama Festival 2015

  1. Introduction

The Winter’s Tales radio drama festival took place in Herne Bay in the last week of February 2015. As the first ever UK international radio drama festival, it was run as a pilot. We specifically wanted to test;

  • The feasibility and viability of a winter festival
  • The extent to which the local community would embrace it and the scope for embedding it within that community
  • The potential for building a sustainable local partnership around it
  • The response from producers
  • The response from a local, regional and national audience
  • The scope for widening it beyond “listening sessions” to include other activities and an outreach programme
  • The theme (radio drama with some connection with the live stage) and categories (full length and short form)
  • A range of practical and logistical questions including venues, equipment, accommodation, marketing, management
  • A range of issues around systems including adopting the European model of a “jury”, receiving entries, communicating with entrants, regulations, prizes etc.
  • The prospect for sustainability
  1. The Context

The UK is one of the world’s largest producers of radio drama. It is home to an enthusiastic and committed audiencenumbered in millions. The arrival of online radio stations and the opportunities offered by digital technology have significantly widened the opportunities available to independent radio/audio drama producers. And yet, there is no outward facing showcase for the art form in the UK. Nor, despite the increasingly diverse character of the UK’s population, is there any structured opportunity for UK producers and audiences to access international drama, especially that produced in languages other than English. The UK’s Radio Academy promotes debate and networking around radio issues but is focused almost entirely on UK professionals; its award programme, whilst recognising drama and readings, celebrates the individual professional not the work and so, in making awards, does not offer a platform for an audience to appreciate the drama itself.

By contrast, there are a number of international radio drama festivals in Europe and beyond. These take a variety of formats. For example;

  • The long established Marulic Festival in Croatia, takes place on the Mediterranean island of Hvarin May andis themed around the interpretation of “old texts”. It welcomes producers from around the world to open air listening sessions when all work accepted for the festival is heard in full. Written translations in English are provided. Anybody attending the full week of sessions is welcome to become part of the jury which then decides the awards. Each listening session is followed by a discussion in which anyone may take part. Members of the public are welcome but the festival is not actively marketed to them.
  • The Prix Europa is cross media (including television). Its base in Berlin is an important element in bringing a “European” feel to the event which enjoys the support of EU institutions and which attracts over 1000 attendees.
  • The New York Radio Awards involves a large, appointed jury who all listen individually to the submitted work. Work is submitted in many languages. A prize winners’ dinner is the only “live” element of the festival.
  • The Hear Now Festival in Kansas offers three days of listening sessions, workshops, talks and other interactive events – but all in English. It is targeted at a broad based audience of both professionals and interested individuals.

The Winter’s Tales sought to synthesise elements from a number of these models to create a new festival with a distinct character.

  1. A Winter Festival

The Marulic Festival takes place in May, in the spring sunshine on the island of Hvar. The Grand Prix Nova in Romania takes place in Bucharest in June. In planning our festival, we deliberately chose to hold it in the winter months, recognising that English weather cannot be relied on at any time of year. This gave us an opportunity to make a virtue of winter and, in particular, of the English seaside in winter. We chose to brand the festival so that it was reminiscent of the early days of collective listening to the wireless – in cosy, intimate settings, round the fire, eating scones and drinking tea (see below).

Feedback from those attending for the full duration of the festival was that the timing of it was good. A February festival did not clash with any other important events, did not come at a holiday time for most participants and meant that accommodation and travel were less expensive than they might have been. The fact that it coincided with the UK half term meant that most businesses in the town were operating.

Conclusion

The winter festival worked well in terms of dates. The winter theme – in terms of venues and ambience – was appreciated and enjoyed by participants and gave the festival a distinctive and more intimate feel.

  1. A partnership with the local community

Our vision for the festival was that it should eventually come to be identified with its host town in much the same way as Hay-on-Wye is identified with the literary festival. We recognised that this was a potentially ambitious vision, given that there is no tradition of radio drama festivals. We would be asking a community with no particular connection with radio drama to identify with an event that might be difficult to visualise.

Herne Bay came with a number of advantages;

  • It has a distinct identity as a place but also benefits from being administratively part of Canterbury City and geographically close to it – this means that it benefits from the proximity of the city’s universities and other resources
  • It is small and tight knit with strong local networks – everyone knows everyone
  • The majority of local businesses are independent; this may in some senses reduce capacity for eg sponsorship but also means that decisions about eg support in kind are made on a personal and immediate basis.
  • It is experiencing something of a renaissance – the new clocktower, new events to pull in visitors, new development – the town is becoming open to new ideas and supportive of them
  • The Town centre manager and the town centre partnership, made up of local business leaders, have an agenda to support the town to grow economically and are imaginative in how they pursue that.

This small scale pilot received an enthusiastic welcome. We met the town centre partnership on two occasions and were able to cite them as formal partners. The town centre manager was helpful with introductions and personal support. We were offered access to resources such as the mayor and the council run events space. Local businesses offered in kind support (eg furniture loan, donation of equipment) and were helpful about displaying posters and flyers. The local MP gave his active support by formally opening the festival. Reservoirs of interest in radio and radio drama were discovered amongst the local business community which could be further exploited. We developed a very positive partnership with Beach Creative, the local community arts centre.

The town is very close to Whitstable which has enjoyed a higher profile and greater affluence than has traditionally been associated with Herne Bay. Whitstable is also part of Canterbury City Council. We did not have the capacity to explore the potential for engaging the community of Whitstable more extensively with the festival.

We made approaches to a number of locally based trusts and foundations. As is often the case, most did not respond at all and those who did and declined to fund us did not give any specific reasons. Our expectation is that with the experience of the pilot behind us, we will make more effective applications in the future.

Conclusion

The town is open to becoming a partner in this festival. The festival is not in competition with similar events, certainly at that time of year. We laid the foundations for a lasting partnership which now need to be built on; specifically we need to

  • Explore in greater depth the potential for financial support both through the developments beginning to take place and by strengthening the connections we established with local businesses. We need to allow sufficient time for this process and maintain a relationship which goes beyond the event itself. We might usefully develop the partnership by involving local organisations in other partnership based work undertaken by Moving Theatre.
  • Develop a relationship with the town centre partnership and other stakeholders, especially the voluntary and community sector and local universities to engage more volunteers in a variety of roles. This also needs to have a long lead in.
  • Establish a relationship with local councillors and with key officers at Canterbury City Council.
  1. The Response from producers

We wanted to attract international producers, producers from national radio stations but also independent producers. We also wanted to achieve a balance of English and other languages.

We promoted the festival primarily using;

  • Our own existing networks and contacts
  • Contact lists for other established festivals such as the Marulic
  • Umbrella groups of various kinds such as national associations of independent producers, writers’ guilds
  • Twitter

We extended our call to African and middle and far eastern countries. We eventually attracted eligible entries from 12 different countries (in 15 languages). These were primarily European but also included the US and Russia. We had strong representation from middle and Eastern Europe (Germany, Czech Republic, Sloveniaetc). We received two entries from the BBC. We also received six entries from entirely independent producers. All works entered had been broadcast; the stations involved ranged from the major national broadcasters to small community stations and specialist online broadcasters.

Although we gave ourselves the opportunity to pre select entries, for this first festival we accepted all entries provided they met the eligibility criteria. This ultimately resulted in only a very small number of exclusions, primarily for being outside the timeframe for first broadcast. Accepting 30 entries (of which 7 were short form dramas) for listening sessions over three days put considerable pressure on the timetable.

Eight of the twenty four producers were represented in person at the festival – some by more than one representative. A further four sent their apologies due to conflicting diaries. One would have come had funds been available to cover the cost of travel.

Conclusion

The festival attracted a strong response given the relatively short lead in time and the fact that this was a new festival, itself sponsored by an independent producer. For the future, we will

  • Extend the submission period
  • Target producers in Southern European countries and beyond Europe
  • Seek to widen awareness amongst independent producers in all countries including the UK
  • Set an upper limit for the number of submissions to be included in the listening sessions and construct a process for pre selection.
  1. Audience response

We specifically intended the event to be open to and welcoming for a general audience as well as for a professional audience. Both listening venues were public spaces; the public was invited to all listening sessions at no charge. We promoted the festival to a local and regional audience by

  • A poster and flyer campaign with information about the festival on display in a large proportion of shops, cafes , pubs etc in Herne Bay
  • Promotion on Radio Kent
  • Extensive coverage before the event and during it by local newspaper in both their online and print editions
  • A launch by the local MP and former actor, Roger Gale.

We also made full use of twitter, the festival website and the Moving Theatre facebook page.

The listening venues were always full. The sessions we held at the Beach Creative arts centre were able to use the in house café as an additional listening space. This proved very successful. A number of local people specifically sought out the festival, attending either to hear particular plays or to hear work in specific languages or because they were general radio drama fans. In addition, the festival attracted a number of students and professionals not associated with the festival, primarily from London or Whitstable.

We wanted to establish some community listening venues – bars/cafes/shops etc – where the public could listen in a more informal way. In the end we focused on taking the festival to a couple of residential care homes whose residents would not have been able to visit the festival in person. This approach proved very successful. We had also intended to develop a partnership with a local community radio station to enable us to “broadcast” the festivalto local people. However, the Herne Bay Community Radio station was not broadcasting at the time of the festival.

Conclusion

A radio drama festival is not easy listening for a general audience. Following a long play in an unfamiliar language with an English script demands concentration, however enjoyable and brilliant the play. But the festival demonstrated very clearly that there is a UK audience hungry for this experience; that they are willing to travel to experience it and to seek it out.

In building on the achievement s of this year, we specifically want to;

  • develop the marketing to ensure we reach more of the enthusiasts who attended this year
  • target our marketing to reach linguistic communities within the South East of England who might enjoy hearing drama in their own language
  • undertake an action research programme to understand how best to work with local community broadcasters and online broadcasters to take the festival into individual homes

as well as a wider range of community venues

  1. The scope for an outreach programme

We did not have funding to deliver a full outreach programme this year. However, we were able to engage an adult creative writing group who later attended some of the listening sessions. Some of the members would have been keen to have been involved in a radio drama writing project. We had positive contacts with other potential partners in the area. There is scope for an outreach programme to look at writing, acting producing but also at the technical dimensions of radio drama production and dissemination. For next year, we will seek funding to enable us to work with

  • Older people in residential care homes
  • Young people both at school and involved in community arts activities
  • Adults with an interest in creative writing
  • Young people outside the education system

We also considered a programme of additional events such as talks about individual plays. It became clear that there was little appetite for this during the evenings from professional participants. However, with an expanded festival, there may well be interest from a general audience for participatory sessions of this kind, perhaps at the weekend.

Conclusion

The small steps we were able to take towards an outreach programme this year translated directly into engaged members of the audience. We need to build on this work both in audience development terms and to promote the partnership with the Herne Bay community more generally.

We will explore further – funding permitting – the interest in participatory events associated with radio drama on one day of the festival.

  1. The theme and entry categories

We chose a theme for the festival - plays with some connection with the live stage – to give it focus, to make clear the association with Moving Theatre as a theatre company and to help us make selections. We asked entrants to describe in their own words how their entry met the theme.

The theme produced a wide range of entries and some imaginative approaches to linking plays to the theme. As expected, many entries were adaptations of works originally written for the live stage. Some saw the connection in the fact that the writer more usually wrote for the stage; others in that their work had also been produced on stage. There was evidence that some producers did not enter because they felt they did not have a work to offer which met the theme but, in general, we thought that a broad theme achieved the objectives we had in mind. That does not mean that the theme cannot change from year to year; indeed that may be necessary to keep the festival fresh.

We included categories for short form and full length dramas. The majority of entries were in the full length category. Short form seems to be more of a feature of some nations’ radio drama culture than others. However, it did also provide an opportunity for at least one UK independent producer. Short form dramas were enjoyed by both the professional and general audience and were useful as an introduction to listening to drama in another language – we included them, for example, on the CD we provided to the residential care homes.

Conclusion

We will continue to define the festival with a theme. We will review that theme each year. We will also continue with the two categories but may look to promoting the shorts category more specifically to independent producers.