Take Part is a brand that I invented to cover Canberra Theatre Centre's extended experience initiatives Like most theatres we had been doing pre show forums, post show Q and A's and ad hoc dance workshops for years but it took the case studies described in the book Counting New Beans and and the experience of watching the work of Big hART to crystallise into something more.
The genesis was that, and I think I have covered this before, Canberra Theatre Centre doesn't really make or commission any new work. We are, in strict marketing terms, a re-seller or a retailer of pre-existing product.
So in terms of contributing culturally to the community our primary function is then in the art of curating. The trouble with that is that because the work is created elsewhere there is little additional impact for our local community other than the social inclusion and aesthetic appreciation and perhaps for particular work various intellectual or social/political messages that patrons are left with.
So how to take what is effectively re-sold product but more actively engage with our community?
The answer was Take Part. Where other theatres could trumpet certain works being "live and local" we now had a program that said "come and be part of what we are doing, actively take part in the stories we are telling". As we all know the impact of a two-way participative experience versus a one way passive experience is much greater.
A simple message that worked wonders. what was previously an amorphous concept, suddenly became a sea of opportunities waiting to happen. The question "could this be a Take Part opportunity" became common place within our office walls. The answer was usually 'yes, of course!'.
Now twelve months on how is it going?
The answer is great.
We started in March last year with 20 odd people watching a free movie screening of Summer of the 17th Doll after our season of the same play, and 30-40 attending a social history seminar. We progressed towards a sold out (30-40) language workshop with Big hART for Ngapartji Ngapartji and now three shows into 2013 our three major Take Part programs all sold out. 60 people for an intimate morning tea with John Bell, 100 tickets booked for the Secret River social history talk and 250 people to hear Gill Hicks ahead of the play Thursday.
The program now has the capacity to attract an audience ten times the size of what we started with in just one year.
Crucially all the programs aim to add value and insight into the work on stage and all aim to give the partons the chance to engage actively with the work, Gill Hicks was most generous with her question time.
Having seen audiences grow to the point where this is now a project that has serious sustainability, the next step is to hopefully measure the intrinsic impact of those who attended
Take Part functions and saw the shows and those who did not. But as always these things take money so it's an ambition just now but we'll see,
I am very happy to discuss this initiative with those in the industry and nothing would pleas me more to see this model, shift us all out of post show Q&A land (but still keep doing these) and into wide new range of Take Part opportunities across the board.
It can work, we've seen it work, we now just need to show exactly what the impact is.
