Since the coronavirus pandemic broke out, show business has been the perhaps most heavily stricken professional sector, with film and theater productions, as well as music events, being put postponed or cancelled due to imposed measures. As a result, many performing artists have started generating their own content from their home and promote it themselves on the Internet, in order to keep being active and have chances for generating income. Unfortunately, this is not the case for their colleagues who lack basic filmmaking and digital marketing skills and therefore rely solely on live events and official film/tv productions in order to keep working. The Performers Go Online project aims to cover this knowledge gap and help performing artists keep being professionally active from their homes, even under the most strict lockdown conditions. This will be achieved through the 2 creation of 2 e-learning courses: The Performing Digitally course will focus on the technical aspect of creating audiovisual content under “quarantine conditions” in particular. The creation of such content requires only basic filmmaking knowledge, affordable equipment, little to no crew and its filming location can be a house, a yard or any other limited space. The lessons will comprise the basics of film equipment, lighting design, sound recording, video editing and storytelling while at the same time taking into account the limitations of a filmmaker in a quarantine setting. The pilot delivery of the course will be delivered by filmmaking experts to 30 performers per participating country, who will cover a wide spectrum of performing arts, ranging from actors, singers and dancers to instrument players, comedians and any other type of performer. The Promoting Digitally course will complement the first one, and will be focused on how to successfully pitch and promote this type of content through social media, YouTube and other Internet channels. It will comprise a set of methods, techniques and tips on how to properly advertise an audiovisual creation and how to successfully interact with audience and potential buyers. The pilot delivery of the course will be done by digital marketing experts to the same 30 performers per country that attended the previous one. After the theoretic part, performers will have to put their knowledge into practice, with each student selecting an organisation for which he/she will create and promote a homemade video. Participants can choose between 4 types of organisations to collaborate with: Private companies for which there will be produced a homemade advertisement of its products and/or services. NGOs where the performer will have to create a social awareness video that will disseminate the organisation’s ideas. Schools for which the participant will produce a short educational play that will be watched by its students (as an alternative to cancelled theater trips). Cultural organisations and film festivals where the film produced by the participant, will be added into the organisation’s or festival’s repertoire. In all cases, performers themselves will also have to create an online promotional strategy for their work, based on what they learned from the course. They will also receive 2 certificates of attendance, one for each course, after their successful completion. The produced videos will be uploaded on the project’s official YouTube channel, promoted through its social media accounts on Instagram and Tik Tok, and parts of them will be screened during the project’s multiplier events that will take place in the participating countries. The materials of these courses, after being fine tuned through their pilots, will become available on the project’s official website where all interested parties will be able to view them for free. They will also come under an open license for adult trainers who wish to incorporate them into their curriculum. The project will be implemented by a team of 5 educational organisations coming from 5 EU countries, namely Sc’Opara (France, also the project’s coordinator), IDEC (Greece), CESIE (Italy), La Xixa (Spain) and VHS (Germany).
- Train performers with low digital skills into producing and promoting in-home, artistic digital content. - Support performers in developing skills that can considerably help them during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. - Create an educational context for artists and technicians to work and cooperate together. - Create networking occasions among performers, cultural organizations, schools and companies. - To create a transnational cultural discourse across Europe, specifically across participating countries. - To raise awareness of the current problems of the entertainment industry.
Implementation of widespread lockdowns affected many sectors including creative sector and entertainment industry in Europe, which are always heavily relied on live performances, omething that the virus has made almost impossible to carry out. Due to this, many performers across Europe and the world have seen their shows being cancelled or postponed to an unforeseeable future. In light of this situation, a massive digitalisation has occurred in this sector to continue producing and sharing homemade artistic content, for example via streaming platforms. However, many performers found themselves not fully prepared to digitalise their activities. Due to this, it became incredibly important for the entertainment industry to adapt to this new situation. In this context, Performers Go Online project aimed to boost the opportunities for the entertainment sector to continue carrying out their work even in the most confined circumstances by providing the tools and the knowledge to the performers to face the difficulties of the pandemic, in an inclusive and sustainable way.