2015 REPORT
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CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 04 WHAT IS YOU ARE HERE? 06 OUR PHILOSOPHY 07 OUR AUDIENCE 08 OUR ARTISTS 12 MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS 14 ONLINE PRESENCE 16 MEDIA TEAM 21 2015 PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS 22 ACTIVATING CITY SPACES 24 PARTNERSHIPS 26 DESIGN AND PRINT MATERIAL 30 GOVERNANCE 31 FUNDING 32 FUTURE OF YOU ARE HERE 34 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 36
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5 DAYS. 289 ARTISTS. 9,973 ATTENDEES. IN 2015, YOU ARE HERE FESTIVAL ONCE AGAIN TOOK OVER THE CANBERRA CBD FROM 18-22 MARCH TRANSFORMING THE CITY INTO A HUB OF A R T I S T I C A C T I V I T Y.
2015 ACHIEVEMENTS: »» 73 events or projects presented throughout the Canberra CBD »» Partnership with Noted, Canberra’s first ever experimental festival of words in their inaugural year »» 1,200 printed programs and 2,000 calendar posters distributed across Canberra »» 7,719 website hits over the festival period »» Facebook content seen on 57,521 unique occasions »» 1,000 impressions per day on Twitter »» 20 videos, 340 photos, 180 Facebook posts, 170 tweets and 32 blog posts during March 2015.
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2015 marked the fifth year of You Are Here (YAH) festival and presented an opportunity for the producers to focus on YAH as a platform for artist development, investing more time and resources in supporting artists to develop their work. As a result, YAH was able to present an impressive program of 73 curated projects and events that challenged and delighted 9,973 audience members across 5 days of the festival. In 2015, YAH had the opportunity to partner and support Noted, Canberra’s first ever experimental festival of words in its inaugural year. Noted operated as a subprogram of YAH, consisting of digital and live events, workshops and co-produced events across 3 days. Many of the producers involved in Noted have previously been YAH artists and staff and the partnership was a great opportunity to offer professional development and support to a new organisation.
As an organisation, YAH aims to support the Canberra arts community year round. Over the past twelve months YAH had the opportunity to program events outside of the festival, in order to generate income and awareness for the organisation and ACT artists. These events included programming musicians for ISPT Property Services, Christmas in the City events for Canberra CBD Ltd and events at Canberra Day for Brand CBR. YAH continues to be a key event for the Canberra cultural scene and a space for ideas and projects to be tested, experimented with and presented. YAH provides the opportunity for artists at all stages of their careers to gain professional support and development for their work and the opportunity for audiences to experience and participate in the incredible arts and cultural community of Canberra.
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BEGINNING IN 2011 AS A CENTENARY OF CANBERRA PROJECT UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF CREATIVE DIRECTOR ROBYN ARCHER, YAH HAS FOUND ITS MATURITY AS A COLLECTIVE OF PRODUCERS WORKING WITH THE CANBERRA ARTS COMMUNITY TO DEVELOP AND PRESENT N E W, E X P E R I M E N TA L AND CHALLENGING WORKS TO INQUISITIVE AUDIENCES.
THE KEY OBJECTIVES OF YAH The key objectives of You Are Here include: »» to support and mentor local artists working across a diverse range of new and traditional art forms »» to provide unique forums for presentation of new and experimental work »» to present events and projects with artistic integrity and high production values »» to develop and sustain productive relationships with artists from Canberra’s diverse creative communities »» to create an awareness of Canberra artists in local, national and international communities »» to provide professional development opportunities for emerging curators, production staff, photographers and videographers
WHAT IS YOU ARE HERE?
»» to be a financially sustainable organisation with strong governance and professional operations policies and procedures.
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OUR PHILOSOPHY PRODUCER-LED ORGANISATION YAH is, at its core, a producer-led organisation. The festival is programmed and managed by a collective of independent producers from Canberra’s arts scene. Between them, the producers have a broad experience in event production, artist liaison, curation, venue and stage management, marketing and web publishing. The Producers are supported by a professional Operations Manager who directs budgeting, financial procedures and insurance. During the festival, a team of full-time coordinators are engaged to help deliver the program, including a dedicated Production Manager, Technical Manager and Production Designer.
PROGRAMMING PROCESS YAH is a 100% curated festival. The festival program is developed by YAH’s core team of creative producers in collaboration with primarily local artists. In 2015, YAH launched its first open call out, inviting artists to contact us to discuss their proposal. There was no official application form just a conversation between the artist and YAH. The Producers found this to be a successful method for curating as it gave artists the opportunity to have an informal discussion and receive feedback on the curatorial and production aspects of their idea. The open call out elicited applications from a wide-ranging selection of artists based both locally and interstate, many of whom were first time festival artists. Through these ongoing discussions, the Producers curate a festival program which responds to the unique opportunities and challenges of the city’s arts community. This process allows YAH to challenge and inspire artists and audiences with unusual events which are a reflection of the vibrant ongoing activity in Canberra’s arts scene.
THE PRODUCER’S ROLE YAH’s team of producers are committed to supporting artists to present work of the highest possible standard. Producers liaise closely with their artists over an extended period leading up to the festival, ensuring that artists receive curatorial guidance, production assistance, are working to an agreed time-frame and feel supported to succeed. This is one of the festival’s most vital roles. By providing artists with professional production support, YAH has the capacity to support early career artists presenting in a festival context for the first time, and to challenge more established artists to take risks and experiment with their practice by ensuring that they receive hands-on creative and logistical support.
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OUR AUDIENCE 9,973 PEOPLE ENGAGED WITH YAH ACROSS PHYSICAL AND ONLINE EVENTS AND PROJECTS.
YAH’s audience is engaged, curious, appreciative and outspoken. Through our presentation of a bold, inventive and entirely free program in surprising locations YAH continues to engage a diverse audience and offer them unique cultural experiences that enhance their perceptions of Canberra as a cultural hub. Our 2015 program offered our audience more opportunities to engage with us than ever; through theatre shows in alleyways, participatory exhibitions, experimental music at The Street or critical essays in our printed program. Our post-festival surveys, social media and face-to-face interactions with our audience showed us that they aren’t afraid to share their thoughts. This openness demonstrates that our audience feels a sense of ownership over the event as a key part of their cultural calendar. This year saw greater diversity in the age distribution of our audience than previous years. This is likely due to programming a wider range of artists who we had not worked with before, who in turn brought with them new audiences. It is also due to Noted Festival’s presence as part of YAH bringing a greater range of events into the festival with appeal to new audiences. Our post-festival survey also indicated that the festival is attracting interstate audiences from Sydney and Melbourne - suggesting that national audiences are becoming aware of the high quality arts practice happening in the ACT.
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GENDER BREAKDOWN Female (53%) Male (45%) Non Identifiable (2%)
2%
45%
53%
10%
2% 10%
AGE GROUPS Under 15 (2%) 16-19 (10%)
23%
20-30 (49%) 31-40 (23%) 50+ (10%)
49%
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Big congrats to @YouAreHere_Fest for a super awesome fun time Festival weekend! @CRACK_FEST LOVED THE MORE ‘DISCURSIVE’ A 5 P R O G R A M , A C C O M PA N I E D BY THE A6 FOLD OUT YAH AUDIENCE MEMBER
@YouAreHere_Fest concludes in style. The Phoenix will always be a happy home to art + artists in Canberra. Congrats! @PHOENIXTHEPUB WAS GREAT HOW LOTS OF OUTDOOR AND SITE SPECIFIC STUFF HAD MINIMAL PRODUCTION - MAKES T H I N G S S O S I M P L E A N D Y O U PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT IS THERE. YAH AUDIENCE MEMBER
Am on way home from opening night of @YouAreHere_Fest in Civic. First installment of Zak and Reefa’s Bollywood Funeral was brilliant! #CBR @JCLINDELL
YOU GUYS DO AN AMAZING JOB OF GENERATING BUZZ AND PROVIDING SO MANY FREE, WONDERFULLY ORGANISED EXCELLENT EVENTS. THANK YOU!! YAH AUDIENCE MEMBER
Ticket booked! Travelling in style (read: cheap dodgy bus) to Canberra this weekend for @YouAreHere_Fest @BONANA_HANNAH FREE, WONDERFULLY ORGANISED EXCELLENT EVENTS. THANK YOU!! YAH AUDIENCE MEMBER
As a botanerd & appreciater of the arts, Inflorescence was such a treat. Installation art & music meets pollination biology @YouAreHere_Fest @FEMGREEN T H E A B S O L U T E B E S T P R O G R A M Y E T. YAH AUDIENCE MEMBER
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IT IS THE NIGHT OF THE LAST DAY OF THE FESTIVAL AND I AM GOING THROUGH A POST ART FESTIVAL DEPRESSION! IN AN IDEAL WO R L D, I WO U L D H AV E EVENTS LIKE THESE ON O F F E R A L L Y E A R RO U N D. YAH AUDIENCE MEMBER
Lovely that the old Impact Records site is an event site for @YouAreHere_Fest - great spot #YAH15 #canberra @NTNLCPTLST W E L L P L A N N E D, W E L L E X E C U T E D, A N D W E L L D O N E ! I’LL DEFINITELY BE BACK. YAH AUDIENCE MEMBER
@YouAreHere_Fest the stats are in, 1,697 people accessed #CBRfree from the YAHTemporary access point in Civic, well done guys! @DIGITALCBR
ONE OF THE WONDERFUL THINGS ABOUT THE FESTIVAL BEING ENTIRELY FREE IS THAT IT DOESN’T PUT A PRICE OR E X P E C T A T I O N O N I T S E L F. Y O U G E T T H E CHANCE TO WORK OUT WHAT YOU’RE INTERESTED IN BY EXPLORING LOTS OF DIFFERENT ARTISTIC MEDIUMS, WHICH C O M E S B A C K T O T H E F E S T I V A L’ S G O A L OF BEING ACCESSIBLE, EASY-GOING, AND PROVIDING A GREAT VARIETY OF DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES. JOSEPHINE WALSH HER CANBERRA
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OUR ARTISTS In 2015 YAH featured events and projects involving 289 artists from Canberra, Australia and overseas. Our artists are a diverse group hailing from a wide variety of social, academic and cultural backgrounds. Predominantly between the ages of 20-30 and of roughly equal proportions male and female, most of our artists are Canberra based, with a small proportion coming from other states or overseas. Our artists respond strongly to YAH’s nature as an experimental festival presenting work that challenges and which sees boundaries between art forms as fluid and mutable. This often results in our artists being keen to create new works for the festival, or adapt work to suit the conditions that YAH presents. This year our artists presented 93 individual new works as part of 73 events or projects, around 70% of the total works presented as part of the festival. These projects and events often defy easy categorisation and present challenges to festival staff both in terms of production and marketing. Our experienced staff rose to these challenges, ensuring high quality production and engaging, accessible marketing.
We also worked with a higher proportion of artists presenting work at YAH for the first time, a change driven by our new call out process, further highlighting the importance of our model which avoids formal applications that can be off-putting for first time festival artists. A new process of developing project plans with our artists resulted in positive feedback about the level of engagement during the development period and the high quality production of events. In our post-festival survey our artists told us that they want and need more support throughout the year and more opportunities to present work with YAH. Combined with the ever present and valid desire to receive higher remuneration for their work our artists tell us they find YAH an invaluable source of support and opportunities to develop and showcase their practice.
11% 8%
AGE GROUPS 289 artists Total Canberra based (81%) Canberra ex pats (8%) No prior connection to Canberra (11%)
81%
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ARTIST FEEDBACK
I’d like to say a big thank you to the producers and organizers of You Are Here. Pretty beautiful to see all the innards and weirdness, all the crazed and defunct beats, all the experiments. You guys are all smooth and eye catching, thanks for having me! HANNAKA JOHNSON
Thrilled to have been a part of You Are Here and Art, Not Apart again this year, thanks to wonderful producers, collaborators, audiences and arts ACT who have made it WORK! ALISON PLEVEY
My experience with the producers of You Are Here has grown over the past 3 years as a participant, to undertaking a festival residency and most of all becoming friends. I have found that You Are Here work on a personal and intimate level, catering for each artists needs to enable the best possible outcome. DANNY WILD
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MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS In 2015 YAH received significant attention from local and national publications and media outlets including the Canberra Times, ABC 666AM and Arts Hub. This attention is in no small part due to YAH being able to employ a Media and Marketing Manager for the first time, who worked to develop a comprehensive festival communications strategy that brought in a wide range of media attention and appreciably boosted our social media presence. Overall we saw strong media interest in a dynamic and exciting program which was complemented by media coverage received by Noted, bringing YAH into contact with a wider and broader audience. YAH was also featured in a range of articles published on artform specific platforms building our presence and reputation within the national arts community.
COVERAGE »» Canberra Times (feature article, news article and photo gallery) »» ABC 666AM (live to air interview and news post) »» Her Canberra (feature article) »» ArtsHub (news article) »» BMA (feature article) »» City News (article) »» Canberra Weekly (article) »» Spook Magazine (news article) »» Peril Magazine (interview) »» Books + Publishing (news article) »» Dance Informa (news article) »» Out In Canberra (news article) »» 2XXFM (pre-recorded interview) »» Scissors Paper Pen (reviews) »» Express Media (reviews)
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Now in its fifth year, You Are Here is a free event that occupies theatres, galleries and disused shopfronts throughout the CBD. It has also been a launching pad for hundreds of local artists who might otherwise toil away, unseen and unheard, in the rabbit-warren of the capital arts scene. SALLY PRYOR CANBERRA TIMES
One of our favourite events in the autumn calendar is ‘You Are Here’; an experimental festival that is all about bringing art to the people. JOSEPHINE WALSH HER CANBERRA
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ONLINE PRESENCE YAH prides itself on having an active, vibrant online presence that engages a local, national and international audience. Strong documentation of events and a unique voice give people the opportunity to have a real experience of the festival whether they are in Canberra or London. In 2015, we continued our focus on providing an accessible and comprehensive source of information about the festival program and artists across online platforms including our website, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo, Twitter and Instagram. For the 2015 festival our Media and Marketing Manager developed and implemented a media and marketing strategy which focussed on maximising YAH’s reputation for a high quality, active and engaging web and social media presence.
HIGHLIGHTS IN 2015: »» During the festival our Facebook following grew by over 480 people to 2,755. These fans are active users, sharing YAH content widely, resulting in our content being seen on 57,521 unique occasions. »» 4,726 people visited the YAH website, maintaining strong numbers that have grown since 2011. »» Roughly 42% of website visitors (1,968) were based outside of Canberra, the majority from Sydney and Melbourne. The size of this interstate audience demonstrates that the festival has a growing profile with a national arts audience. »» 20 videos of festival events have been watched over 2,000 times in the March period alone. The videos have been viewed by audiences in over 70 countries, the most popular after Australia being the US, Brazil, Israel, Italy and the UK. »» Our tweets received an average of 1,000 impressions per day on Twitter, with 59,600 impressions of our tweets over the entire festival period.
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WEBSITE OVER THE PERIOD OF THE FESTIVAL THERE WERE 7,719 VISITS TO THE WEBSITE BY 4,726 USERS. The YAH website remains a central hub of information about the festival and the organisation year round. Engagement with the website continues throughout the year and between April 2014 - March 2015 there were 13,452 recorded visits to the website by 9,876 unique visitors. 28,314 page views were recorded during March 2015 and the average number of pages viewed by each user was 3.67, with an average visit to the website lasting 2:58 minutes. This means that on average each visitor to the website saw 3.67 pages and stayed on the website for almost 3 minutes. This is a higher than average visit length, indicating a high level of engagement with YAH’s content and specifically the festival event listings.
USER LOCATION Canberra 58% (2,725 users) Sydney 28% (1,321 users) Other 14% (647 users) The majority of our website users are located in Canberra (58%), while the remaining 42% are located interstate or overseas.
14% 28%
58%
REFERRALS Social media 33%
23%
Organic search (Visitors were referred via a search engine such as Google) 32% Direct (Visitors used the YAH URL, or had saved the website as a bookmark) 23%
33% 32%
YAH has a strong focus on integrating our social media channels and encouraging audience members to interact with YAH across these channels. As a result, 33% of our referrals were from social media, this means that 33% of our visitors got to the website by clicking on a link on social media. 88% of those visitors were referred from Facebook and 10% from Twitter.
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FACEBOOK Facebook continues to be YAH’s key social media channel linking together content from all our channels including Flickr, Vimeo and the website. Our content including photos, videos and updates was viewed on 57,521 unique occasions during the festival period. 7,273 Facebook users engaged with our content by sharing, liking, clicking or commenting indicating the wide reach of our content beyond our core group of 2,700 followers (an increase of 480 new followers since 2014). Of those engaged users 26% are over of the age of 45, demonstrating the broad appeal of the festival. Our strongest demographic continues to be people between the ages of 25-34, who make up 48% of our Facebook audience.
The majority of users who saw our content were based in Canberra, followed by Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Internationally we reached users in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Thailand and New Zealand.
6K
POST REACH
4K
The number of people your post was served to.
2K
Organic feb
mar
DEMOGRAPHIC
31% 11%
11% 7%
0% 13-17
18-24
0%
4%
25-34 13%
4%
7%
34-44
45-54
55-64
65+
4%
4%
0%
0%
WOMEN Women (72%) Men (24%)
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TWITTER Our engagement with Twitter increased significantly from previous years with the introduction of Media and Marketing volunteers present at events. These volunteers were responsible for live-tweeting and social media photography, presenting the festival in “real-time� to our online audience. As a result our tweets had 59,600 impressions over the festival period. Our tweets averaged 1,000 impressions per day, peaking at over 10,000 impressions on 21 March.
IMPRESSIONS
At the conclusion of the festival YAH had 1,734 followers, an increase of 343 followers from 2014. Of our followers, 90% are from Australia with the highest proportion from the ACT (46%), followed by NSW (27%) and VIC (12%). After Australia, our highest audience for followers and Twitter users reached was from the UK and USA. Interestingly, 20% of our organic audience (these are Twitter users who do not follow YAH, but have seen our tweets) was from the UK. This is a very high percentage and demonstrates the international reach YAH has.
10.0k
feb 1
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feb 15
feb 22
mar 1
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INSTAGRAM This year we posted 62 photos and videos on Instagram across the festival and increased our following to 194. Instagram is a fast growing social media platform and we are still developing our audience, but YAH saw a significant increase in engagement in 2015. With the introduction of Media and Marketing volunteers at events we were able to post more photographs and videos of events as they happened, just as we did on Twitter.
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FLICKR Flickr is an excellent resource for the storage, management and viewing of YAH event photographs. This year 340 photos were uploaded to 32 photo albums. Since YAH started our Flickr account in March 2012, our photographs have been viewed 141,000 times. In the last year alone there have been over 59,000 views of our photographs. This visual content has great utility for festival artists and invites audiences to experience the festival after the events have concluded.
VIMEO This year, 20 new videos were placed on the YAH Vimeo channel throughout the festival, which received 2,614 views in the March – April 2015 period. This professional quality video content then becomes available for festival artists to use for documentation purposes and for future audiences to gain insight into the life of the festival.
VIMEO 250 200 150 100 50
mar 1
mar 13
mar 25
apr 6
apr 18
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MEDIA TEAM YAH provides local, national and international audiences with a genuine experience of the festival through its online media presence. This includes high-quality photographs and video highlights of all events, and reviews of selected shows. These photos and videos are then uploaded to the website, shared through the festival’s social media platforms and are available to YAH artists for online use as support and promotional material. This high quality documentation also contributes to the archive of Canberra’s flourishing creative scene and highlights to interstate and international visitors that Canberra is a unique and vibrant place to visit. In 2015, YAH’s media team produced 340 photos across 32 photo albums, 20 videos and 17 reviews, all of which were published during the festival itself. The YAH 2015 media team consisted of one full-time photographer, Adam Thomas; one part-time photographer, Martin Ollman; and one videographer, Shane Parsons. As well as a team of reviewers coordinated by Scissor Paper Pen’s “Papercuts” emerging arts reviewers program.
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OPENING NIGHT
THE RECORD STORE Our Hub Space for YAH 2015 was the former site of Impact Records, an independent record store which was a cultural nexus for generations of Canberrans. We re-named it The Record Store in honor of this history. The Record Store was our largest shopfront space to date and we took full advantage of its size and prime location in the centre of town. As well as our main performance stage, The Record Store featured the following installations during the festival: »» East Row Museum: a professional quality museum exhibition presenting exhibits that subverted and critiqued the very nature of museums in a playful and interactive manner. »» Festival Confessional: an intimate installation work that encouraged audience members to anonymously share personal secrets and listen to those of others. »» Intimate Sound Immersion: a unique experience in which sound artist Aviva Endean created 15-minute personalized soundscapes for one blindfolded audience member at a time. »» A home base for Noted Festival, Canberra’s independent festival of experimental writing. »» Pop-up shop run by Veganarchy, selling vegan cupcakes and other sweets. As proven in previous years, having a central festival headquarters made it easy for a wide range of audience to engage with the festival regardless of their prior awareness of YAH.
We designed the festival’s opening night (Wednesday March 18) as an accessible moving feast. Inviting audiences to come to The Record Store from 6pm, we presented a series of short performances occurring around the immediate city area. Ranging from pop-up theatre in small local businesses, to dance and music in Garema Place, Opening Night demonstrated what we pride ourselves on - an accessible multi-arts experience. In The Tree, Part Of The Tree, an aerial dance acrobatics performance was a highlight of the evening. Rigged from a tree in Braddon, the performers created another world on a street corner drawing in an enthusiastic audience and surprising passersby.
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NEON NIGHT RIDER Now in it’s second year, Neon Night Rider has taken its place in the festival as a much anticipated community arts event. Taking place at dusk, riders are invited to make themselves glow and join the festival on a celebratory lap of Lake Burley Griffin. This year the ride was conceived and staged as a progressive dance party with the riders demounting and conga-lining through locations such as Reconciliation Place and Aspen Island. This type of unique experience gives Canberrans an opportunity to experience their city in novel and playful ways. Community cycling groups such as The Rat Patrol have become major supporters of the event, which has broken YAH attendance records since its inception.
GENERATE: INDIE GAMES SHOWCASE
PRIMAL SCREEN Primal Screen was a satirical game show created by writer/ poet Aaron Kirby and artist/designer Cohen Gum and presented at The Phoenix on the closing night of the festival. Presented as an audience-judged live version of a social media debate, the event lampooned the problematic nature of social media as a forum for debating important ideas. The piece was both an uncompromising critique and a fun and silly celebration of human foibles, and was received enthusiastically by a capacity crowd.
Canberra has the most vibrant and influential independent game development scene in Australia. Reaching out to this scene for the first time YAH partnered with Canberra Museum and Gallery to present games in development from local companies to a new and curious audience. The event was a huge success, giving local games developers access to new audiences to test their works and has great potential to open the door for greater communication and collaboration between the arts and gaming communities.
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ACTIVATING CITY SPACES A CENTRAL PRINCIPLE OF THE FESTIVAL IS THE INNOVATIVE U S E O F S PA C E S I N T H E C A N B E R R A C B D. EVERY YAH EVENT IS CONCEIVED WITH AN EYE TOWARD ACTIVATING A M O R I B U N D S PA C E OR UTILIZING P U B L I C S PA C E I N AN EXPERIMENTAL WAY THAT ALLOWS AUDIENCES TO EXPERIENCE THEIR CITY WITH A FRESH PERSPECTIVE.
WORK IT An outdoor contemporary dance and multimedia piece by renowned Canberra dancer and choreographer Alison Plevey, in collaboration with Caitlin Welch, Yohan Iddawela and Adam Deusien. Work It explored the connection between our workplace and identity in the centre if the city, taking over Garema Place with an interactive video and dance piece with live sound mixing and recorded interviews.
ROLL WITH ME Roll With Me was an ambitious yet playful interrogation of architecture as a social control and political tool. Part podcast, part walking tour of the Parliamentary Triangle, Roll With Me highlighted the delight that can be found in an irreverent and subversive use of our revered spaces.
RESERVING TIME Reserving Time was a street art project by Rosalind Lemoh, who recreated reserved parking signs with new humorous, ironic and contemplative messages. This series of signs installed across Civic and Braddon were official in format but intimate in tone, questioning the idea of reserved public space and asking the viewer to take a moment to ponder how that space could be used to simulate conversation of self reflection instead.
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DANGEROUS TERRITORY YAH’s most ambitious engagement with city spaces yet was this years Dangerous Territory program. It consisted of six site-specific theatre shows, where ACT theatre-makers were commissioned to create their show specifically around an unusual space in or near the CBD. These shows included: »» Zac and Reefa’s Bollywood Funeral: a two-part show which examined the same issues of ethnic and cultural identity from two different perspectives. It was staged in Landspeed Records, an independent record store in Garema Place, and also the foyer of the Tenant’s Union, a community legal centre.
»» A Krewd Chorale: a confronting exploration of gender politics and cultural intersectionality that took place in Civic’s Bible Lane. This event saw an overwhelming yet respectful audience response and was amiably received by the surrounding businesses and attending authorities including the Australian Federal Police.
»» Eucapocalypts Now: an interactive exploration of the realities of climate change staged at the new Westside Village.
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PARTNERSHIPS NOTED Noted is Canberra’s first experimental festival of text. An offshoot of YAH, Noted provided writers, readers, publishers and literary experimenters with opportunities to engage audiences and artists in the unique spaces of Canberra. The festival notably took writers to a cemetery, on a literary hop through the streets of Canberra, generated exceptional online content, and included an array of well attended quality workshops. Noted was a success due to both the drive of the producers leading it and the publicity and venue support provided by YAH. The Noted Producers have each previously produced events for YAH, and drew on this experience and with the support of YAH produced a series of high quality events that drew on the best of Canberra’s experimental and emerging writers alongside artists from across Australia. Noted received consistent positive feedback from audiences and artists, and complemented YAH by adding and extending the writing component of the annual festival. Work is underway among the Noted Producers to ensure the festival continues and collaborates with YAH. “I would also say that the vast majority of people who are part of Noted had produced events for You Are Here, and it was really great in giving us confidence in our abilities as producers,” YASMIN MASRI, NOTED PRODUCER
CANBERRA MUSEUM AND GALLERY Since our inception in 2011, Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) have supported YAH more than any other public institution. Our annual overnight event in the CMAG foyer has become a flagship event for the festival and ran successfully in 2015 under the name You Are Here’s Ill-Advised Night Out. CMAG also hosted Generate: Indie Games Showcase and we continued our tradition of utilising Gallery 4 as a truly unique live performance space for experimental dance and music. Above and beyond their excellence as a venue, the CMAG staff and management have become mentors to YAH, and their experience and knowledge adds value to every event we stage there.
AINSLIE AND GORMAN ARTS CENTRES (AGAC) The YAH office has been located at Gorman Arts Centre since late 2013, and our partnership with the organisation has grown since then. After successfully hosting our independent publishing fair in 2014, AGAC expanded their support this year providing residency and performance space to multiple festival participants and hosting multiple events for both YAH and Noted. In particular, AGAC provided a studio space for Studio Connect, a group of artists with experiences of disability and mental health issues over a 10 week period. YAH will continue to pursue a deeper level of cooperation with AGAC for the 2016 festival.
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NOTARAS GROUP
EVENTS ACT
Activating vacant shopfront spaces has been a key feature of YAH since the festival began in 2011. From our first year the Notaras Group has been key patron of the festival, allowing us generous access to excellent, centrally-located spaces and going to great lengths to assist us in meeting our logistical and production requirements. In 2015 they provided us with our most effective hub space to date, and as usual were unfailing in their support in both the lead-up and during the festival.
Events ACT have been a key funding partner in 2015, allowing us to significantly develop our media, marketing and promotional activities, skills and resources. Funding support allowed us to employ our first ever Media and Marketing Manager, as well as create a targeted and refined media campaign. Our crowd and social media statistics reflect what dramatic difference this made to our development as an organisation and a festival.
CANBERRA CBD LTD Canberra CBD Ltd have been key partners since the festival began, supporting us financially and undertaking the vital work of facilitating our relationships with Canberra business and property owners. Their assistance continues to be invaluable to the festival and our relationship with them has been furthered through production of events for Canberra CBD Ltd outside the festival period, including for Christmas In The City.
ARTS ACT Arts ACT’s program funding represented the majority of YAH’s operational budget in 2015. The support of Arts ACT has been the biggest deciding factor in the ongoing existence and development of the festival, and having a funding body with a real understanding of our goals and sensibility has been key to our development. This support has allowed us to position ourselves as a distinct and important part of Canberra’s arts landscape, in a way that strongly reflects the intentions and aims of the program funding model.
BRAND CBR In 2014-15, YAH partnered with Brand CBR for the first time. Part of the Events Directorate of the ACT Government, Brand CBR’s role is to shape the image of Canberra and to promote the people, events and lifestyle of our city. YAH partnered with CBR on producing a series of events for Canberra Day in March 2015. We devised the events to be experimental in their staging while also being accessible to a broad family demographic. Our events included 10-minute dance parties inside a mini-marquee and the launch of the Women Of Canberra photography project, which collects images and stories from ACT women from all walks of life. Our events added an experimental aesthetic to the day and provided a new platform for some of our established festival artists.
DIGITAL CANBERRA Digital Canberra provides CBR free WiFi across the Canberra City and partnered with YAH in 2015 to provide high speed internet access in our Hub Space for our audiences and also allowed our Media Team to quickly and efficiently upload all our digital content daily, including photos and video. Digital Canberra were an invaluable partner this year and YAH looks forward to expanding the partnership further in 2016.
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THE GREEN SHED
THE STREET
In 2015, YAH continued its partnership with The Green Shed, the ACT’s resource management centre. The Green Shed again generously donated all the furniture used in our Hub Space. This partnership was beneficial for both parties, allowing YAH to present a comfortable and attractive Hub Space and giving the Green Shed the opportunity to extend their business into the festival.
YAH was thrilled to be approached by The Street regarding collaborations for the 2015 festival. The Street is one of Canberra’s prestige arts venues and their support allowed us to present high quality works to a broad audience including their regular patrons who may not have encountered YAH before. The Street acted as a venue, as a full support team of staff, as creative producers and as professional mentors for the YAH team, and their in-kind support provided thousands of dollars worth of value to the festival. Works presented at The Street included: »» YAH 2015 Program Launch: the official launch of our 2015 program and the first official event of the festival »» Inflorescence: an installation piece in which visual artist Dianne Fogwell collaborated with experimental musician Reuben Lewis »» 10 Years of HellosQuare: a celebration of Canberra’s most successful independent record label »» F*ck Decaf: a site specific theatre show set in a coffee shop and staged in The Street’s As You Like It Cafe
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STUDIO CONNECT Studio Connect is a group of 8 artists who identify as having a disability or experiences of mental health issues. They have been part of the YAH family since 2014 and we have continued to support their work in 2015. Studio Connect works with community arts facilitator Nicola Lambert to develop their artistic skills and present work at arts festivals and events. This is an important aspect of our partnership with Studio Connect, offering the artists an opportunity to create and present art without being pigeonholed as “artists with disabilities�. Over 10 weeks in the lead up to YAH, Studio Connect participated in weekly workshops, and a facilitated studio space. Supported by our partners Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres and Canberra CBD Ltd the project culminated in an incredibly high quality exhibition of works by the group in the Centrepoint arcade.
BIGHART AND BELCONNEN ARTS CENTRE For the first time, YAH partnered with arts and social change company, BighArt and the Community Cultural Inclusion program at Belconnen Arts Centre to present an interactive workshop on community arts practice. Exploring what the acronym means through to developing the beginnings of a community arts project, this event is part of our emerging focus on community arts and engagement with the small but active group of socially engaged arts practitioners working in the ACT.
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DESIGN AND PRINT MATERIAL
YAH has continued to work in partnership with design company New Best Friend who provide significant in-kind support for branding and design. In 2015, New Best Friend developed a new print material concept for YAH; a standalone poster that functioned as a calendar to complement our traditional program booklet. The poster was designed to be an “on-thego� guide to the festival with a calendar of events and spotlights on feature events. The program booklet continued to be one of the most recognisable and iconic aspects of the festival and it functions not only as a means of communicating the program to our audiences, but also as a potential future support material for artists applying for opportunities and grants. The program booklet was both a practical document and artistic artefact, including the descriptions of events and a number of commissioned essays by local and expatriate artists, as well as poetry from new and established writers with a connection to Canberra. These twin marketing tools allowed us to explore the potential of the program as a vehicle for artwork and as a means of providing audiences with unique ways to experience the festival. In 2015, we also worked with New Best Friend to re-design our website incorporating the key elements of our overall branding, keeping our image consistent across print and online media. The new website features a cleaner design and has functionality which allows us to display a program of events with greater ease.
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GOVERNANCE You Are Here is an Incorporated Association. Each year the membership of the Association appoints a committee with the required skills to run the organisation in that year. The committee works year round on a primarily pro bono basis and is responsible for managing the organisation, fundraising and strategic planning. For production of the YAH festival in March, the key staff members are hired from the committee and externally on a contract basis, including 2 Managing Producers, 2 Producers, an Operations Manager, Production Manager, Technical Manager, Production Designer and Coordinators on a contract basis. Each staff member has a clearly defined position description and adheres to an agreed work plan as negotiated with the Managing Producers. At the commencement of each festival development period the Managing Producers set the artistic vision for the next year’s festival. A project plan is then developed with a clear time-line and budget in liaison with the Operations Manager.
The Managing Producers work closely with the Producers and other technical staff to seek advice on production, technical and design aspects of the festival and to ensure events will be produced to a professional standard. Throughout this period the Operations Manager provides advice and assistance to the Managing Producers on legal compliance, risk management, budgets, insurance issues and financial procedures. In 2014/15, with funding from Events ACT the organisation created a new position of Media and Marketing Manager who has worked closely with the Managing Producers to develop communications plans to significantly increase the quality and reach of our marketing activities.
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FUNDING YAH is dedicated to long term financial viability. In our five years of operation we have refined the scale, procedures and aims of the festival such that we maintain a high level of production relative to our operational budget. We have been able to advance the profile and outcomes of the festival despite an almost 50% reduction in funding between 2013 and 2015. Due to a significant decrease in sponsorship funding in 2015 ($40,000 reduction in cash sponsorship), YAH had to seriously consider the future and direction of the festival. The producers took into consideration the key objectives and priorities of the organisation, choosing to focus on supporting and mentoring local artists and presenting a festival with high production values and artistic integrity. As a result, YAH made the decision to reduce the number of days of the festival from 10 days to 5 in 2015. This also roughly halved the number of events in the festival, allowing the team to be able to offer the support and mentoring to our artists that we consider incredibly valuable and an aspect of what makes YAH unique. The future of YAH relies on a greater diversity of revenue and funding streams. In 2016 we will explore ways to increase private sponsorship and launch a paid membership and patronage model.
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FUTURE OF YOU ARE HERE
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2015 marks the fifth year of YAH and a time of significant change for the festival. For us this presents an opportunity to celebrate and also take stock of what we have achieved. We will be having our first post-festival forum, which will be a chance for artists, audiences and stakeholders to discuss their experience of YAH in an open and public environment. We will also be holding a birthday party event later in 2015, to celebrate our fifth year and to launch our new membership program. In 2015/16 we will be exploring alternative options for funding, not only a membership program but also private sponsorship, philanthropy and partnerships. The membership program in particular is an exciting development for the organisation as it will provide an opportunity for our audiences to engage with the festival more directly and participate in it’s development and its future. In trialling a paid membership model, YAH hopes to make our organisation more accountable to the community that it serves, and to fulfil one of our key objectives - low barriers to entry for our audience. We want our audience to have first-hand and intimate understanding of how art in Canberra gets made. We want them to know the artist personally, to know us personally, and to have real influence on what is created. In 2015 we consolidated the organisational structure of YAH and put more emphasis on working with our artists, supporting them through the development process. Going forward, we will continue to refine and investigate our curatorial process, continually improving the ways in which we work with and for artists. We want to be able to spend more time with our artists, working more closely with them with longer lead times and be able to provide more financial support as well as curatorial and production support. We will also undertake significant planning in order to address our challenges and opportunities with practical strategies focused on achieving our key aim of supporting artists.
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CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Managing Producers Vanessa Wright Nick Delatovic
Producers
Adelaide Rief Andrew Galan
You Are Here is presented with support from the ACT Government through Arts ACT, Events ACT and with sponsorship from Canberra CBD Limited.
Technical Manager
You Are Here is supported by Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres, which are ACT Government Arts Facilities managed by Gorman Arts Centre Inc. a not-for-profit association.
Media and Marketing Manager
Thank you to all our artists, venues and supporters, particularly‌
Operations Manager
Karmin Cooper
Production Manager Samantha Barrett
Nick McCorriston
Zoya Patel
Lonsdale St Roasters 23 The Hamlet City West Carpark ACT Writers Centre QL2 Dance QIC The Childers Group National Capital Authority ACT Government Territory and Municipal Services Jane Easthope Bruno Garreffa
Ainslie + Gorman Arts Centres
Shane Breynard
George Rose
Canberra Museum and Gallery
Michael Bailey
Coordinators
The Street
Bianca Jones
BMA Magazine
Vivienne Rolfe
2XXFM
David Finnigan
Smith’s Alternative
Yolande Norris
The Phoenix Pub
Adam Hadley
Production Designer
Morgan Little Yasmin Masri
Photography and Videography Adam Thomas Shane Parsons
Sound and Lighting
Dirty Deeds Event Sound
Designers
New Best Friend
Sarah Kaur