Effective Networking Events

I’ve blogged before (here, here and here) about the Insights and Ideas Cafe events organised by Creative Scotland and Museums Galleries Scotland. I’m always impressed by these events. One of the things I like is the way they facilitate networking.

When you arrive at an event, you get yourself a tea or coffee (and sometimes cake) then sit at a round table with other people. Most people are very friendly and introduce themselves (Note to self: introduce self before starting to eat cake). There are generally three or four speakers at the event with time for questions and then a break in the middle when you get more tea or coffee and chat with the people round your table about the speakers so far. Then someone from each table is asked to feedback the group discussions to the whole audience.

The focussed format used by Insights and Ideas makes networking so much less daunting for people who aren’t extroverts. You’re not left feeling lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces and can get to know a small group of people, while contributing to an interesting discussion.

I’m much more comfortable with this style of networking than the kind of event where you’re shown into a mass of people standing around, and expected to go and find someone you’ve never spoken to before, otherwise you won’t get your free glass of wine.

What’s your favourite style of networking event?

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As ever, bold text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

No – a film about political campaigning

I finally caught up with No Pablo Larrain’s film about the No campaign in the 1988 plebiscite on the presidency of Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Some reviewers have criticised the film for not showing the messy reality of Chile at the time, but that to me is actually a strength of the film. It focusses right in on the political campaigning, giving a specific view on that era of history, giving the film a focussed narrative. It is also fascinating for anyone involved in charity or political campaigning, highlighting as it does the tension between criticising what you are campaigning against (military dictatorship, political disappearances, censorship) and offering people a glimpse of what the alternative future might be (liberty, freedom of speech and a free press). It’s interesting to watch all the creative ideas put forward by both the No and the Yes campaigns and how they react to each other during the month long campaign. The No campaign are particularly aweare that the people they need to reach are the undecided majority, accepting that some people will never vote No and that those who will definitely vote No, need little persuading.Similar to the position many charities hold, that they need to get their message out to those who don’t yet have an opinion (unlike one charity I know, who will remain nameless, who said to me that their communications was ‘only about talking to the people who already know about our work’ which is in many political or charity campaigns a misguided view to say the least.

Also interesting to see how corporate advertising executives work within a political campaign and the tensions this causes with at least some of the longer standing political campaigners.

I particularly liked the No campaign’s idea of a break in the countryside for the team to go hiking together while discussing their ideas before starting out on the campaign proper.

There’s also humour too, both in the dialogue of the film and in the No campaign itself, which ultimately demonstrates how to create a light-hearted and sometimes humourous idea that still makes a serious point and doesn’t disrespect or betray the suffering that went on under Pinochet.

It’s a great film, thought provoking and entertaining and well worth seeing if you are involved in campaigning.

No is showing at Edinburgh Filmhouse until Monday 6 May.

As ever, bold text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Insights and Ideas – Volunteering

I’ve blogged before (here and here) about the excellent Insights and Ideas Cafe Events run by Creative Scotland and Museums Galleries Scotland. Yesterday’s meeting was on the topic of Volunteering and as ever there were several excellent speakers talking about their experiences of volunteering and volunteer management.

Jemma Neville, from Voluntary Arts Scotland (VAS) talked about the value of the voluntary arts sector and the support that VAS gives to the sector. She highlighted Voluntary Arts Week (11-19 May). This annual event celebrates voluntary arts across the UK. This year the theme is Craftbombing and arts organisations are being encouraged to decorate public spaces with crafts as a colourful celebration of public art. (Participants need to make sure that permission is sought before craftbombing any public space and crafts should be cleared away later or made into a secure exhibition to avoid littering issues). You can find out more about how to get involved on their website.

Diana Morton from Edinburgh Museums and Galleries next spoke about Museums Alive, a volunteer outreach programme that takes museum artefacts and activities into day care centres and nursing homes for reminiscence and arts activities.

Harry Giles then spoke about the ‘creative chaos’ that is  The Forest, Edinburgh’s well known volunteer run cafe and arts space, which recently moved into new premises in the Tollcross area of town. (In it’s previous venue in Bristo Place, it ran the Golden Hour cabaret night of poetry, music and cartoons, which was a highlight of Edinburgh’s alternative cultural scene).

Over tea and biscuits, there was time for discussions with the people we were sitting near. At our table, Steve from Strange Town Theatre Company compared the challenge of getting young volunteers to turn up to regular rehearsals to the seeming ‘turn up when you feel like it’ ethos of Forest volunteering. I mentioned that Water of Leith Conservation Trust patrol volunteers commit to regular volunteering (generally once a week) but as long as we meet our commitment, we can turn up when we want. We then discussed keeping in touch with young volunteers, who often seem to ignore emails and only want to communicate via Facebook.

Then it was time to hear from Paul White from Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) who talked about the support his organisation gives to the voluntary and community sector across Scotland (including excellent training courses). He shared some statistics, including the fact that 68% of all Scottish voluntary sector organisations are grassroots groups with incomes of less than £25 000 per year.

The final speaker was Violet Dalton from National Trust Scotland, who spoke about the support networks for volunteer managers in the heritage sector (Heritage Volunteer Organisers Network and Forum for Environmental Volunteering Activity).

All in all a very insightful discussion of volunteering in the cultural and heritage sectors in Scotland.

Cross posted to Crafty Green Poet

As ever, bold text contains hyperlinks that take youi to other webpages where you can find out more.

Some Things I’ve learned from my Etsy shop part 2

I posted recently about some things I’ve learned from running my Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop over the past year. Since then I’ve thought of a few more things I’ve learned (plus I’ve had my first sale to someone who didn’t already know me through other social networks, which felt like an important milestone).

So here are some ideas to add to the last post:

a) Be patient. It takes time to establish a shop on Etsy. Particularly now that it’s been going for so many years. New shops can be lost in the crowd, specially small shops run as a hobby (like mine is). It was six months before I sold anything (at which point I was wondering how many months to give it before shutting down shop) but since then I’ve had sales most months.

b) Great photos help sell products. However, as long as your photos aren’t blurred or otherwise really bad, they’re not necessarily going to prevent people from buying your goods. Great photos certainly help, but if you’re only running your shop as a hobby, you probably don’t need to invest in a light box and a fancy camera. If you’re hoping to make a living out of Etsy (and some people do!) then you probably should invest in this equipment.

c) Focus on only one line of products. This almost certainly helps, but so far I’ve sold: a selection of sea pottery; a beaded bookmark; a fabric chopstick bag; a collage inspiration kit and a greetings card. So my sales, apart from the slow start, haven’t suffered from my shop being so diverse. Again, it may be different if you’re wanting to make a living from your shop.

d) Have a Unique Selling Point. This is probably more important than c). I think if your products are held together by a philosophy (in my case recycling and repurposing) or by a theme (for example crafts inspired by rabbits) or by a unique style then diversity won’t hold you back.

e) I mentioned Give and Take in my last post. The most important part of this is networking. Join in the team discussions on Etsy. it took me a while to get involved in teams, because I’m not naturally a fan of online discussion groups but those on Etsy are a great mix of genuinely useful and fun ways of networking and getting to know other sellers, while subtly (or not so subtly) advertising your own products.

f) The other part of Give and Take is to buy from Etsy as well as sell. I mentioned in my previous post that it can seem unfair that you are more likely to sell your items on Etsy if you buy products there. It is unfair in some ways, but there are so many lovely things on sale on Etsy, that it really is a great place to find gifts.

g) It’s fun! I’m running my shop as a hobby, so I don’t need to worry about whether it makes huge amounts of profit. Luckily it hasn’t made a loss and is slowly moving towards making a small amount of money, but that’s not the point. It’s great to see people buying my crafts and crafting supplies. Knowing that I’m doing my small bit to repurpose materials that would otherwise become waste and helping other people to appreciate the whole ethos of reuse. Again, if I were running the shop as a proper business, then it would probably be less fun, and money would be more of a motivator!

As ever, bold text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

 

Collaborations between Arts and Science

Earlier today, I attended the latest Insights and Ideas meeting, jointly run by Creative Scotland and Museums and Galleries Scotland. The topic this month was Art and Science and the meeting explored ways in which artists and scientists can work together to help communicate science to awider audience and to help bring new insights into science.

Jane Magill of the Scottish branch of the British Science Association talked about projects she has been involved in. She has worked with Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, relating science to the artefacts and paintings in the collection. Projects have included exploring how art works are dated and how they can be conserved. She talked about the Cosmic Way Roadshow which celebrated CTR Wilson, the inventor of the cloud chamber, with an exhibition that toured Scotland from Peebles (Wilson’s birthplace) to Fort William, where he did his first experiments. Cloud chambers are not only important scientifically, but the trails of the atomic particles are beautiful to look at. She also talked about the music that was composed specifically for the Cosmic Way Roadshow, which wasinspired directly by the physics involved.

Andrew Ormston of the art science collaboration ASCUS spoke next. He briefly mentioned a lot of projects where artists and scientists are collaborating together, including on an international scale. He focussed on one project that really interested me. Thisis the Grow Wild Project (still a pilot project at the minute), which will encourage people across the UK to plant wildflowers in unexpected places. Artists and creative people will be valuable in this project in helping communicate its aims and in choosing some more unusual places for planting the wildflower seeds.The project will work closely with the Kew Millenium Seed Bank to ensure that the flowers planted suit the local ecology and will offer guidelines to participants to understand enough ecology so that they know where is probably a good place for their wild flowers.

After a coffee break, Ninian Perry of the Paragon Ensemble talked about their project Torque. This interdisciplinary music and dance piece devised by dancers, musicians and scientists uses ideas from renewable energy, inclusive contemporary dance, and sonic arts to create a stimulating theatrical experience. The Ensemble also take ideas from this production into schools, using music and dance to encourage children to think creatively about science.

Finally, Professor Tom Stevenson of the Museum of Communication in Burntisland, Fife, talked about how their collections offer a very thought provoking insight into how communication has changed and how those changes affect our lives.

All in all a very stimulating and inspiring event!

As ever, bold text contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites, where you can find out more.

This post will be crossposted to Vrafty Green Poet tomorrow.

Some things I’ve learned from my Etsy shop

Just about a year ago, I set up the Crafty Green Poet shop on Etsy.  It’s a place to sell some of my recycled crafts and craft supplies and it’s always been intended as a hobby, rather than a business. (I don’t have the capacity to produce crafts at a commercial rate and nor would I want to!).

Judging it as a hobby and comparing it to a few Etsy shops of similar size and age, sales haven’t been too bad and although it’s hardly making a real profit, it’s not making a loss.Here are just a few things I’ve learned from Etsy so far:

Existing contacts are vital. All the sales have originated from people who either follow me @craftygreenpoet on Twitter; follow my Crafty Green Poet blog;  follow me on Pinterest or are facebook friends.

Give and Take. Etsy is a real community, it can be difficult to break into (specially now, when it’s already become a mature market and network). Making new contacts on Etsy, joining the teams (many of which have lively discussion forums) and naking treasuries of your favourite items made by other Etsy sellers can all help to publicise your work to other sellers and potential buyers on Etsy.

Everyone is a Customer as well as a Seller. More than anything  I think if you bought loads of stuff on Etsy yourself, then you would see a reciprocal increase in your own sales. (This can seem unfair in some ways.)

Help and Advice is never far away! Etsy itself is very useful, offering lots of advice for crafters wanting to ensure that their shops are successful and lots of ways for crafters to connect with each other.

Etsy sells handmade and vintage items and recycling and reuse is often part of the sellers’ ethos. There is a wonderful selection of upcycled and repurposed items on Etsy and there are teams that cater specifically for crafters who recycle.

Making new contacts! Etsy is a friendly community I have made some new contacts there who I have then also connected with on Twitter or Facebook.

As ever, bold text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Climate Week 4-10 March 2013

It’s very easy to talk green but to be effective and trusted you need to also act green! If your organisation talks a lot about the environment and climate change then you really need to be doing at least the obvious green things, like recycling and reducing the amount you travel.

4-10 March 2013 is Climate Week in the UK. According to their website: Climate Week is Britain’s biggest climate change campaign, inspiring a new wave of action to create a sustainable future. TheNews pages of the site shares updates about climate change projects. You can find local events or submit details of your own event. There are plenty of resources to help you!

So what have you got planned for Climate Week?

And remember, it really should be Climate Week every week so what long term plans do you have for how you will reduce your personal or organisational carbon footprint?

As ever, bold text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.