“Falkirk producer secures lottery funding”

Thank you to the Falkirk Herald. After 8 months of trying to get some news coverage for the creation of the CGO Institute and the first cloud-based Diploma in Creative Producing, the Herald has covered the story with a special focus on being a local.  Albeit a local who has only been in the area for 3 years.

When I started CGO Institute in March, the UK arts industry papers, bloggers and reporters were not interested. This was too much a good news story I guess.  The Scottish national papers didn’t see it as worth attention at that time.  But with the award from Creative Scotland to extend the work of CGO deeper and wider into the Scottish producing and creative community, we have got our first press mention.

It is surprising how powerful a mention in a regional or national paper can be. Print still matters. I’ve been approached by other regional producers who saw the article. It has been shared on Facebook and commented on by other producers and friends across 3 continents. It gives the kernel for a short promotional push for some of our programmes by our Edinburgh based marketing & comms assnt Emily Ingham.   People write nice things, and go exploring to find out what we’ve been up to.

Thanks to the announcement of the award, there’s a bit of a flurry before Christmas with two events slotted in on Tues 15th December.  The first, one of my regular career/coaching workshops entitled ‘Producing – Proper Job – Honest’ . We look at the need for producers to get busy and make stuff happen, and various pathways for people interested in the career.   And then at 6pm there is the 2nd meeting of Producers’ Pool (Scotland) which Creative Scotland have helped to give me £time to grow. A network and conversation between aspiring and established producers, across all performance and exhibition artforms, across all of Scotland.   

Experience suggests that it takes time to grow, but it does grow. The original Producers’ Pool which is rather London and International focussed now has 600 members. The private Facebook page has grown by 45% in membership since April this year.  It started 5 years ago with a conversation which fitted snuggly around a couple of pub tables at the Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden. 

I’ve suddenly realised that it too has never had any press coverage – it is a quiet, good news, steadily growing, non-celebrity, supportive network which flies below any radar. 

But this blog is to thank the press team at Creative Scotland for creating the targeted announcement of their grant awards so that a regional paper spots a local interest story and helps to spark interest across the world.  Thank you.

Now to prepare for Monday’s interviews for the 2nd international cohort for this Falkirk /cloud based CGO Institute Diploma in Creative Producing.  [And immensely pleased that the first cohort of 9 producers, just coming to the end of their first term with us does include a Falkirk based producer as well as New York, Manchester, London, Cornwall and Netherlands based producers.

Thanks to Allan Crow, Editor of the Falkirk Herald

1 Comment

  1. This is great news Chris, so much hard work. I worked with newspapers for many years tracking press coverage for clients and I know the impact of anything that makes it into print. Here’s to exponential[ness]

    added the missimg word!

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