Selling tickets, paying practitioners, and experimenting.
Trading love is an experiment in how we sell tickets in the city or arts, music and culture events in the city. As well as how we pay our artists and participants.
I have looked at other models that are used more commonly in other parts of the industry and have put in place an experiment to see how that works for us in this instance.
For example, it is common practice for music venues to give a certain amount of tickets to the bands who are playing for them, expecting the bands to make sales themselves. The venue also sells tickets, and it is general practice to have a verbal agreement on a percentage split, with the venue generally taking the profit from the bar.
Obviously there are variations on this model. If the bar is already open, and an entertainer is invited to bring in a larger audience than might be present during that time, maybe a flat fee, or a percentage taking on the bar may be arranged.
Trading Love has decided to set a price on the tickets available for the show, and then have given a certain amount (5) of tickets to the artists/ musicians / performers to sell or give away.
This is useful for several reasons, because:
· There is no budget to put on the show, and therefore we can’t pay the artists who are involved, upfront. With the art element of the show being a group show and therefore involving artists from different levels in their career, it allows artists to choose whether they give away their tickets or charge for them.*
· it guarantees us an audience. As the curators and producers of the event we are not focused on making a profit from the event, (although it would be nice) and are more concerned with the artists feeling as though they have had a fair chance to be paid for the work that they have produced. whether a painting or a poem or song – and for all to be on an equal footing. (we have found that with some events of a similar ilk that there is a tendency towards paying the ‘entertainers’ and ‘documenters’ leaving the visual artists expected to provide work without payment. – maybe there is a presumption they have been paid elsewhere for there work and it is now an asset)
· it removes an element of a possible uncomfortable feeling, that is sometimes present when you are asking friends or family to attend a paid event to support you, knowing they cannot afford it, or you may feel as though if it were your decision you would charge in this instance. – this does not de-value the work, it is merely giving the individual the empowerment to make this decision.
*When we first discussed this idea with the collaborators there were several questions, one being whether some of the artists giving their tickets away fro free would de-value any of the other tickets? We came to the conclusion that this would not be the case and allowed the artists to make their won decisions about how they shared their tickets. Another was whether there is a saturation of the market in terms of whom would be invited and be the potential audience – would we all be selling to the same people? We concluded that it would mean that individuals would have to try and push the tickets to places that they hadn’t previously.
We are also selling tickets online and on the day, to ensure that we reach the audience we don’t have direct access to.
So far this experiment has been received well , and it just remains to be seen how it will work out on the day!
