Hi! I want to organize something like a rainbow lights project for one of Harry's shows maybe, but I've barely seen anyone on tumblr who's going, and I'm afraid it might not reach a lot of people and will ultimately flop. I assume I'm not the only one in this case, sooo... Any ideas? Should I try Twitter? Oh and thank you so much for what you do! 🌈✨
Aaaaah, rainbow lights projects - not the easiest thing in the world to make them succeed! But that’s exactly why they are so wonderful.
You can’t be succesful if you’re not willing to take the risk of failure.
In terms of tips and tricks, here are a few - we are working on a full length HOW TO post (anyone has tips, feel free to share and we’ll put them in):
- solo shows are better than festival type shows, it’s difficult when half of the audience is not there for the same artist - you’re good there
- time to prepare is needed - you can’t do this on a whim/in a week - harry’s tour is not for ages
- venue with majority seated tickets (otherwise people don’t know which section they should be in)
- step 1: look for a map of the venue - in the layout for that particular concert (this is crucial) - divide it up in colours - stick to existing sections - the clearer the better
(this one’s for Louis’ Poptopia by the way!!!) - Also make sure you know what to do with the general admission/floor - as you can’t easily divide that up - in Milan they did miniprideflags on the floor instead of lights, in Bologna they did flowers - really beautiful both.
- step 2: pick a moment in the show when you want to do this (first song or a particular song that you know is going to be on the setlist) - ideally pick a song that’s linked to rainbow projects - like SoTT for Harry ( like the people in Paris & Oberhausen did) - if you don’t pick SoTT, be aware that during HSLOT 2018, Harry would always ask people to turn up the flashlights for SoTT so people would usually do the rainbow again then.
- step 3: make it known to everyone who wants to listen that you are organising this and this is the layout, this is the song - the sooner people know and the louder you are - the less chances of “competition” for a different colour schedule or a different project during the same song - we’ve seen it happen - it usually kills both projects a bit - for maximum loudness: use us, use update accounts (the Paris rainbow, the first one that was successful, was organised by an update account), use big accounts, ask everyone for help, use existing tags ( #rainbowlights, and #rainbowdirection ) and create your own (#turnforestrainbow was very successful with that, little followers but the tag went wild) - be on tumblr AND twitter, and IG if you can. create a new account for the project if needs be. (examples: https://twitter.com/NHforestrainbow @RainbowHProject @msg_rainbow) that makes it easy for people to find all information easily. tweet often, search people out to rope them in, ask them for help to retweet and reblog and spread the word. search the tags for your show regularly. talk to everyone who is going to that show. talk to everyone who is or ever has organised a rainbow lights project, that will help too
Oh, and it helps to have 1 single picture with all the information on it - so everyone just needs to retweet reblog regram or share that (include your blog your twitter your Ig your FB, your every handle on there
- step 4: little pieces of paper or little stickers work best - so get moving with producing as many little pieces of coloured paper as you will need to hand one to every person in the venue - people have tried with the colour app - you can promote that - but it doesn’t work as well. People don’t download an app on the spot - while holding a piece of paper they’ve been given on the spot in front of their phone flashlight is easy. so you are going to need to bring all those pieces, and hand them out
- step 5: get in some help preparing the pieces of paper, because you cannot do that by yourself. reach out to people early - you can ask us for help in finding other rainbowminded people going to your concert - but for this you don’t strictly need people going to the concert rope in your friends and family - you’ll be cutting pieces of paper for a lot of your evenings. What has worked wel is little pieces of paper with the instructions on them - or stuck to them.
- step 6: hand out the pieces of paper on the day - there are several ways in which you can make this work - contacting the venue beforehand is always a good idea - they can allow you access between sections if you cannot find enough people who are going to the concert who are in different sections of the venue. you’ll need to arrive way too early to hand out pieces of paper to everyone separately so it helps if you put the pieces of paper in plastic bags per row and ask the first person to take one and pass it on to the rest of their row.
You cannot start too early because a lot of people will not yet be there, and so on, and so on… What we’ve also seen that works are posters on poles along the way from public transport/parking to the venue and on the walls at the venue (again something you may be discussing with them beforehand) with the explanation of the project and pieces of paper/stickers that people can take
Best of luck and ENJOY THE RESULT!!!!