‘Making the good stuff happen’ has been at the top of my work schedule over the past year or so. It builds on my work with live streaming theatre since 2008 – and I realise that this has been a 10 year journey to help deliver work to new audiences in new spaces.
This has most recently been seen in the ‘live to digital’ work I have been doing at Theatre Royal Stratford East, and something that I have been leading on over the 18 months for the organisation. We have livestreamed work into hospitals, hospices and adult social care homes.
This year we took the livestream of the Rapunzel panto into Bart’s Health Trust, and we included Newham University Hospital (pictured above), St Francis’ Hospice in Romford, and Richard House Children’s Hospice in Beckton. It was made available online on a closed channel that broadcast the performance in HD with full stereo sound. This was picked up online and shared onto smart TV’s, laptops, projectors, iPads and smartphones. It worked across all devices.
We have been supported by Galliard Homes for the pantomime and the livestream was also supported too, with The Space helping us to to deliver this.
We shot the matinee on 29th December with 4 HD cameras that also shoot 4k. They are BlackmagicDesign units and they are tiny, so there is no audience disruption, to any need to take any seats off sale. We can capture, cut and deliver work fast, live and in the moment with the team. There is a full sound mix and we cut this live between the wide shots and the camera operators picking up the close ups and tighter shots.
The theatre has been on board with this development, and have got how this works. The work between the different departments have enabled the collaboration needed to make this a success.
This is how I think Digital needs to work in Arts organisations. It is about finding the ways to reach and connect with audiences. To help to disseminate the work and to provide opportunities to create a ‘Digital Outreach’ programme of activity.
Digital is about being able to create more opportunities for access points for audiences. So this does not just sit in the responsibility of just one department. More often, digital falls under the umbrella of marketing and communications. This is not the only place this work needs to sit. Digital by its very nature is pervasive and touches and affects all aspects of the organisation, and as such should provide links and synergies across all departments. This will encourage a shift in thinking across the work that is created, the internal systems and all the outward facing aspects of the Arts organisation.
I have been delivering digital strategies for leading Arts organisations over the last year, these have included Chichester Festival Theatre, Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Harrogate Theatre and Kettle’s Yard Museum and Gallery. In all these organisations there is the real willingness to develop and to deliver a new way of working within the digital space in this way.
However, at the moment, there are many obstacles in the way for arts organisations to get on board with this. Hurdles of rights, permissions, and legal stuff. All important stuff, but we surely need to find a way to streamline this and push the tech and opportunities forward.
To help do this I have put together a ‘how to get started’ with all this, for UK Theatre. This was published on their site this year, and I am now attaching my redrafted version here, which hopefully might be useful.
Let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas about how we might develop this work in the future…
Thanks – here is the guide for you
Marcus Romer's work & blog 