Regenerate: exploring the potential for a Virtual Touring Network
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On 2 February 2023, our first in-person Regenerate event was hosted at the Association of British Orchestras (ABO) conference in our home city of Leeds. The event continued our future-focused platform for discussion and debate that the Regenerate Series has evolved over the past three years; exploring new ideas and challenging ourselves and the sector.
Our aim for this Regenerate session was to create an environment that would support creative discussion about the potential for made-for-digital productions and a sector Virtual Touring Network to support distribution. We were keen to open minds to these new ways of working that are exciting and have creative integrity in their own right.
The concept of a virtual touring network developed from Orchestras Live’s pandemic experiences and thinking around increasing the accessibility of orchestral music for audiences year-round and outside of the big cities.
We opened the session with a snippet from Orchestras Live’s first creative endeavour in orchestral film – Breathe with music commissioned from Daniel Kidane, performed by Manchester Camerata, and film produced and directed by River Rea Films.
The focus of this piece is an event cinema offer designed for the screen, where audiences come together for a collective experience in a space of any size. It’s about creating a dramatic, theatrical, visual and sonic experience for the screen.
To kick off, we heard from four expert panellists each of whom shared their own perspective on the topic up for discussion.
- Tony Followell, Managing Director, TRG Arts who acted as Orchestras Live’s digital consultant during the development phase of Breathe
- Mathew Beckett, River Rea Films – the film director for Breathe
- Jeanette Edgar, Marketing and Communications specialist based in Cumbria
- Rachel Williams, Head of Digital, Sage Gateshead
The film is the art, not the medium.
~ Tony Followell
Their contributions prompted energetic breakout group discussions about what a Virtual Touring Network could look like for the sector.
Key themes which came out of the discussions:
- This could break a barrier – what is exciting about it is the exploration of music and how we can articulate that visually and vice versa.
- Working with different art forms can allow better understanding of each other and themes explored (e.g. dance facilitating exploration of music).
- A VTN allows us to change the rules of engagement in terms of how, when and where work is curated and shown. The audience can have a different place, as well as the orchestra.
- A need for musicians’ contracts to evolve to support new and mixed media ways of working.
- Explore how a range of shorter content can be effectively packaged up for film festivals. Film festivals offer a rich programme to inquisitive audiences, usually including films in short format. They dovetail well with arts festivals, with potential for shared audiences and referral marketing.
Orchestras Live is committed to exploring the concept of a Virtual Touring Network for the sector; seeing it as a multi-year vision that will take time to evolve. This is not about distributing live streaming standard concerts but creating and curating made-for-digital experiences. This will be a long-term audience and promoter development programme in collaboration with orchestras.
It’s important to reassess our approach to risk and moderate expectations when we are working in a creative R&D mode.
~ Rachel Williams
We’ll be sharing updates as our work on this evolves. Please contact us if you would like to be involved or wish to find out more about it.
Comments from each of the Breakout groups are summarised here:
‘What is the creative potential of a Virtual Touring Network?’
- Creative workshops in order to make the work
- Crossing boundaries into other artforms
- Open call to gather artists together to draw out qualities for all those involved
- Comment about form and space, and that music allows you to see a space differently
- This could break a barrier – what is exciting about it is the exploration of music and how we can articulate that visually and visa versa
- Different art forms allow better understanding of each other and themes explored (eg dance facilitating exploration of music, film a medium to understand music in different ways etc)
- A VTN allows us to change the rules of engagement in terms of how, when and where work is curated and shown. The audience can have a different place, as well as the orchestra
- A comment made about orchestral musicians not sitting behind music stands
- The notion of taking away the “proscenium arch”
‘What could a Virtual Touring Network offer audiences?’
- Audience experience needs to be central to the offer
- Are marketeers championing the audience enough?
- Look at what digital content has ‘stuck’ post pandemic and what has fallen by the wayside to identify audience interests
- Potential to continue to reach new audiences digital content has started to access
- Schools audience, a musician presenting live in a school using a film of the orchestra is effective in reaching a wider audience easily, as multiple musicians can do this at the same time in different places
- A need for MU contracts to evolve to recognise mixed media ways of working
- Explore how a range of shorter content can be effectively packaged up for film festivals
‘How can we set about developing a sustainable model for this?’
- Film festivals offer a rich programme to inquisitive audiences, usually including films in short format. They dovetail well with arts festivals, with potential for shared audiences and referral marketing.
- Libraries represent strength in numbers, with opportunities to tour a district with programmed screenings and the animation of public spaces. People could share the experience with other people.
- Village halls could host screenings for local audiences.
- Care homes may be interested as something to support mindfulness and wellbeing.
- Outdoor pop-up events and use of large screens in town centres.
- Pre-performance or opening item of a programmed event, prior to the main feature at a cinema or a live arts performance at a theatre.
- Museums screenings as a way of interpreting other arts.
- Art galleries combining a screening with curation and/or live work by young artists.
- Spaces for young audiences, creating an ambience and focus for social engagement and impact.
- Opportunity to present orchestral work in spaces which an orchestra can’t otherwise access.
- Hospitals through integrated broadcast network and screens in suitable departments and spaces. To be affordable it would need to be on a licence basis rather than on a fee-per-screening basis.
- Film schools and universities with opportunities for emerging professional talent to have a stake in the evolution of the VTN.
