Author: Sam Freeman
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A New Storytelling Show
Over the last 6 months I’ve been writing, creating and then filming a new storytelling show. If you saw my last show Every Little Hope You Ever Dreamed (But Didn’t Want To Mention) then the style and feel will be familiar. The story however is a bit different. I wanted to try something a bit…
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Arts Marketing: Are Offers Always Bad?
A continuation in my current series of posts on pricing, offers and ticketing with a robust aim of allowing to to procrastinate long enough to avoid thinking about the thing I’m definitely meant to be doing (new show). As always, tweet me, like, share and message if this is useful! Best, Sam A Whimsical Opening…
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Arts Marketing – Pricing Solutions for Potential Problems
This is another of my slightly shorter blog posts about arts marketing – again, time dictates I can’t write the mega 5k word epics that I used to churn out semi-regularly. After my last pricing post was hawked around the internet by TRG I thought I’d write something even more niche to really quell any…
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Arts Marketing: The Potential For AI Images
I’ve been writing a lot of long, long, long blog posts recently about arts marketing (see A Beginner’s Guide To Theatre Pricing and 50 Easy-To-Do Tips). They take me a while to write, partially because I like to write stuff that I think will genuinely be of value, but mostly because they’re rammed full of…
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A Beginners Guide To Theatre Pricing
I’ve not annoyed as many people as usual recently with my theatre blog posts – this one however will infuriate so many people because it’s a beginners guide and doesn’t mention a huge amount of complexity and data that underpins what I’m talking about. So, if you’re reading this and thinking “this is utter bullshit…
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Arts Marketing: Winter Is Coming
***Long shot, slowly zooming in*** A winter day, a barren scene, nothing but desolation. A man trudges through the snow. He wears the armour of a knight, but it’s battered and filthy, he’s been through battles and mostly lost. But against the odds he’s still here, still breathing. He’s cold, breath visible in the ice-tinged…
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Tour Autopsy: Every Little Hope You Ever Dreamed (But Didn’t Want To Mention)
A Slightly Long Pre-Amble I’ve been writing notes for this blog for a little while – that’s unusual – usually I write blogs in a flurry, desperately hoping they are cohesive, informative and funny. I think the only post I’ve written in the past year or so that have had some modicum of planning was…
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Tour Blog – Part 10 (Lancaster)
Audience: 32 (ish) Technical: Really great – I had the brilliant Jos (closely supervised by the amazing Katy) doing his first ever “looking after a show solo” – he did an admirable job – professional, helpful and good humoured – as good as all the other technical staff who’ve looked after me throughout the tour. Marketing: Dukes went…
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Tour Blog – Part 9 (Wigan)
Audience: 9 Technical: Really great – a very different space to all the others with a high stage – a little adjustment to the show layout and how it works was required. It’s a challenging space to do lighting in because of where the bars are, but Matt did a really great job! Marketing: Hard again. I think…
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Tour Blog – Part 8 (Cardiff)
Audience: 25 (Thu), 7 (Fri) & 7 (Sat) Technical: Really lovely again. Dan’s a bit of a genius – really reassuring, knowledgeable and calm – also shares my obsession with testing everything in good time to check it works. Will (who also is a Duty Manager and Box Office and Gallery Technician) was brill too and multi-talented!…
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Tour Blog – Part 7 (Huddersfield)
Audience: 13 (Tues) & 9 (Weds – but thank you to the LBT staff for coming along!) Technical: Utter legends. Both technicians were utterly wonderful – incredibly patient, kind and professional. The get in and set up was simple and both nailed all the cues absolutely perfectly. Marketing: Hard but we had an audience and the venue worked…
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Tour Blog – Part 6 (Aberystwyth)
Audience: 8 Technical: Paul the technician was great. By far the best dressed technician I’ve ever seen. Black shirt, black braces, black hat – far too stylish. Easy get in, a bit of a school hall-feel venue but it was quite nice when we’d played with it and for the first time performing with cabaret tables. Marketing: Again…
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Tour Blog – Part 5 (Wolverhampton)
Audience: 5 (of which 2 were staff, to whom I am eternally grateful. Technical: Amazing. Genuinely brilliant, supportive. It was such a lovely easy experience – they also win the award for the tidiest cables so far. Marketing: Hard work. The venue (and Sam Fleming in particular) worked their socks off but to no avail. It’s got me…
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Tour Blog – Part 4 (York)
Audience: 38 Technical: Again really good – Nathan was brilliant – it’s a very simple show and we simplified it even more for the lighting so that we’d have less of a rig and focus to do. The show can now be ready, from scratch in around an hour now. All the team at York were brilliant…
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Tour Blog – Part 3 (Halifax)
Audience: 8 Technical: There wasn’t any communication beforehand so I was a bit apprehensive. I got there far too early (12pm) with the technician called at 4:30pm. However, the venue is a dream, Scott the technician was brilliant – calm, friendly and reassuring – the grid has a trampoline on it (a mesh you can walk on)…
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Tour Blog – Part 2 (Harrogate Theatre)
Audience: 15 (sold 21) Technical: Ludicrously easy set up – Harrogate’s staff were outstanding – the show is dead simple, but it was just a nice easy enjoyable process. The venue was a pop up space, so it means you can be much more simple that I think I’d imagined and still get a nice atmosphere. Marketing: Again…
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Tour Blog – Part 1 (Liverpool Everyman)
I’ve decided to blog about my shows on the tour of Every Little Hope – a record for myself as much as anything else, so that I can make sure I remind myself of what I’ve learnt, what was great, what worked and what didn’t. Show #1 at Liverpool Everyman in the Bistro was technically…
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Arts Marketing: 50 Easy-To-Do Tips
First things first – 50 tips, easy-to-do or otherwise, is a fuck-load of tips. I’ve been wanting to write a big tips list* for ages – I’ve a draft folder which has around 40 arts marketing articles in, all at different stages of disarray. I thought about combining them in this article, instead, reading them…