Planning and delivering a Festival Hub - Cardiff University

Why did you apply to organise a Festival Hub?

Alongside the festival’s objectives, the strategic partnership between Cardiff University and National Museum Wales | Amgueddfa Cymru at the core of the Hub programme was developed to explore key themes, which were:

• inspire creativity and learning for life
• wellbeing through appreciation of heritage and place
• everyone represented: make individuals feel they belong, that they can share in creativity and curiosity and participate
• digital cultures and adaptive technologies.

The festival was a way to collaborate, champion and prioritise these key themes.

Our motivations were to codevelop ideas and research together, prioritising engaging beneficiaries that both organisations were interested in developing relationships with.

Through the strategic partnership, both organisations have learnt about collaborative working, and are developing practice working with other organisations. You can read more about the strategic partnership with Amgueddfa Cymru on our website.

Could you tell us a little bit more about the different cultural and community partners involved in your programme?

In addition to the core partnership with Amgueddfa Cymru, we worked with a wide range of community and cultural partners on our Hub programme including Re-Live; Bloedd (Young Producers group); National Trust Cymru; Tiger Bay Heritage and Cultural Exchange; and Portable Antiquities Scheme. All partners were key in developing individual events. In terms of our partnership with Amgueddfa Cymru, understanding how both organisations work and their approaches to internal communications was an important learning curve. Assumptions on both sides were made about the flexibility and agility of the structure and resource of each organisation. However, establishing the partnerships was an opportunity to test, strengthen and develop potential for future collaborations.

You reached a range of audiences through your programme. How did you think through the different audiences for your events, and could you give a couple of examples of how you tailored activities to your audiences?

The event and festival leads ensured all events had a specific target audience to assist the development and structure of the content and communications. These ranged from local young adults from the LGBTQ+ community, local metal detectorists, year 7 pupils from a local high school and families with young children in Cardiff. The aim for all events was to have interactive elements that were suitable for and communicated appropriately with the target audience.

For example, event leads on the family friendly event Archaeo-Animal Art co-created their content working with Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru, to benefit from each organisation’s experience of engaging children and families. We promoted the event through museum sites, and web and social media activity to target specific groups.

The Coming Home Exhibition Tour and Workshop, which took place at St. Fagans National Museum of History, had a group discussion space allowing time for participants to reflect, share and contribute their own lived experiences. These activities explored the mental health stories of veterans and were aimed at those with connections to the military, so it was very important there was a safe space for the audience to feel connected to the artwork and reflect on their personal connection to the sensitive themes being explored.

Could you tell us a bit more about the team involved in planning and delivering your Hub programme?

We had a dedicated member of Professional Services staff responsible for co-ordinating and organising the logistics of the Hub at both Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru, and one person in each organisation responsible for marketing and communication. In hindsight, we would have benefitted from working more closely with the Exhibitions and Events teams within both organisations, to assist with scoping and planning. Externally, it would have been great to engage more with local organisations and charities that supported our target audiences, so they could have influenced the event at an earlier stage.

Our researchers across both organisations are incredibly busy, so we tried to ensure that information was easily accessible – to do this we created a “Padlet” of information, set up Zoom recordings of information and expectations, and were available for regular catch ups. We learnt a lot about the festival process, and this has given us a clear structure of managing the delegation of work for future festivals.

Did you face any challenges when planning and delivering your festival Hub programme?

Expectations of some event leads of what they had to do, versus what the festival leads would do for them, combined with the timeline of the festival, meant that there were some conflicting priorities for colleagues.

We learnt that being proactive and getting information confirmed as soon as we had confirmation of funding would have been a much better way of navigating the planning process.

If we were to host a Hub again, we would start with a meeting earlier in the year with all organisers involved, confirming communications, roles and responsibilities, event logistics and ironing out any issues.

With regards to delivering the festival, we somewhat underestimated the amount of work and time the festival organisation would take. We learnt that having a team of people around you with capacity, flexibility and the skills to deliver the festival is essential to help tackle some of the challenges.

Are there any legacies or outputs from your Hub activities?

Through our partnership with Amgueddfa Cymru, festival events succeeded in opening up subjects, collections and spaces not normally accessible to or visited by our target audiences.

Being Human Festival presented an opportunity to demonstrate the power and impact of diverse and meaningful collaborations that are not only beneficial to each partner organisation, but also to the communities that we serve in Cardiff and the surrounding areas. All our festival events engaged researchers and broader communities in making a difference and helping us better understand ourselves and our relationships with others.

Do you have any top tips or advice for future Hub organisers?

• Ensure you have buy-in from communications colleagues to help promote the events. They should also be invited to input into writing event titles and descriptions. Academics and researchers who are leading events or new to public engagement may need support with writing accessible copy for a non-specialist audience.
• If you’re a Wales-based HEI, factor in time for translation. It is a legal requirement under the Welsh Language Act that all copy in the public domain must be published bilingually. Get sign-off on the English version before translating to ensure accuracy and consistency of copy across marketing and ticketing platforms.
• Find existing relationships – What relationships do your organisation already have with community audiences? Consider how the festival can help you to build opportunities for those audiences.
• Continue creative thinking – Once the application has been submitted, keep considering how you can embed creativity across your events to produce the best event for your audiences.