Public engagement: to control or not control?
Public engagement: to control or not control?
By
Matthew Lawton
Meg Pickard
Transcript of a discussion on whether retaining full control of public engagement when managing community groups online is necessary.
Today I am going to talk a little bit about how we have let our brand run, and how we have let our community members, digital online, and offline really help shape and shift the National Theatre Wales brand.
We’re a non-building-based company, we don’t have a venue, our first year season of work is our theatre map of Wales, twelve shows over twelve locations, each in unique spaces, sometimes we’re on beaches, sometimes we’re up mountains, sometimes we’re in traditional theatres and traditional venues.
The idea of this twelve month season came from a research and development phase where we asked our online community and offline community through travelling around Wales, where they would want to see shows and from this came a really rich and diverse programme that was tailored to different communities and different geographic locations.
We launched our programme online via a live worldwide webcast, so it was really open. We decided not to have a big fancy party – you can still see some of that launch where we've developed our programme on YouTube and you can watch that there. So, why did we choose online community, why did we choose that to go forward?
