Once we got going we were lucky that Beth managed to blag us some free posters, which when they finally arrived looked amazing and we had been given A3 posters instead of the A4 that they offered which was even better. We struggled with getting any free drinks, so that was a job that had to be left to fundraising to try and gain some cash to pay for it. The posters have been put in various places from student areas, general public places and some even in the art gallery to encourage people from the art world to attend which should hopefully make for a full and fun opening night.
It was decided to have luggage tags as something to hand out as a marketing device, effectively as a flyer. It was my job to source all the luggage tags and I found a really useful website which delivered them quickly and efficiently which was great. I ordered 250 to be used as flyers and a further 1000 which will be used as a window display at the exhibition.
Screen printing the flyers was quite difficult. A group of us helped out creating almost a production line so that we could get all 250 printed quickly. I think that the red ink on the brown luggage tags work really well. The main issue was getting the consistency of the ink right so that you could read the information properly. These flyers are unique and can be tied to trees and left in places which makes them really useful. We cannot just hand the flyers out because I looked into getting a flyer licence and it was going to cost £75 for one person to have a pass!
My job was also to contact the main players of the art world and try to get them to the exhibition. I spent a lot of time on the internet searching for contact details of artists, tutors, curators, arts groups, gallery people and many more and then sending them the details and an invite to our show.
It was useful that we were able to have a website to direct people to and on that website you can view everyone’s work. Ruth did a really good job with that and Emily’s piece of writing on there is great too.
Now the exhibition is on the horizon and its all now up to logistics to get everything to the site safely and curators to get it all looking fantastic. All that’s left for marketing is to push our online presence on facebook and get the invite sent out on LVAF again the day before the exhibition. Booze has been purchased and bubble wrap is on hand, so fingers crossed it’ll all go well.
In conclusion, putting on this exhibition has not been without its problems. Our main issue has been communication, making sure everyone is on the same page. The most annoying thing has been when people have not attended a meeting and then have a lot of things to moan about afterwards when things have already been decided. Actually getting people to help has been another main concern, the same few people have actually had an input in this show and that’s not because they wanted to but due to necessity because a lot of people had no interest or care in the whole thing. It makes me feel angry that they are actually allowed to exhibit anything in this show when they contributed literally nothing to the making of it (the actual hard work). We have learnt a lot from this exhibition which will help us next year when it comes to putting on our end of year show. We know who will and won’t help and we know when things need to be done for so that we aren’t left waiting to get other parts started. So because of these lessons that have been learnt… the whole Lost Property exhibition has been useful overall.
As for blogging, it has been quite a good experience because I tend to go to these exhibitions without paying too much attention but I have learnt how to look properly now and think about how the whole thing has been put on. By writing about what I’ve seen it gives me somewhere to collect my thoughts and images for future reference so I might consider blogging again.
I have created a gallery blog for my work which is here: http://lauracarterart.blogspot.com/
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