view full page →

Lincoln Book Festival 2010

The Lincoln Book Festival Steering Group were looking for someone to devise, manage and deliver all aspects of Lincoln Book Festival 2010 and appointed cultural solutions uk to take on this role.

Visit Lincolnshire, as the lead organisation, contracted and liaised with cultural solutions uk on behalf of the strategic group.
Lincoln Book Festival 2010
cultural solution uk were tasked with the following:


The structure was flexible offering the necessary fluidity in which to deliver a festival starting very late in its planning. However, the structure was very flat, with all roles and responsibilities ultimately being dealt with by cultural solutions uk. There was considerable pressure to deliver LBF2010 within the timescale and budget constraints, from the position of starting the planning for the May 2010 festival on 1 January 2010. This inevitably impacted on various aspects of the Festival’s performance.

Volunteer Workforce

Over the years the festival has been fortunate to have secured the loyal services of a group of interested and enthusiastic volunteers, committed to seeing LBF evolve into a major player on at least the regional cultural landscape. The volunteer workforce has become a highly-trained, fully competent festival team offering a professional advice and support service and providing excellent customer care during the festival.

Programming

There were four programme strands to LBF 2010

Main Festival

The success of a festival is very much down to its programme. cultural solutions uk is well connected in the publishing world and has many useful author and artist networks to draw on. Due to the late start on the planning of LBF 2010 many publishers had already committed their spring 2010 authors to other festivals. LBF2010’s late start limited who was available in May 2010. It placed additional pressure on both cultural solutions UK and LBF’s budget in regard to devising the programme.

The main LBF2010 programme consisted of a mix of authors on national publicity tours for their book and authors and artists invited and paid to attend.

The Schools Programme also consisted of a mix of authors on national publicity tours and those invited, and paid to participate

It is important to highlight both programmes as there were a total of nearly 100 events over a two week period with the main programme running over five days – May 12-16 2010. The mix of high-profile names, emerging authors and high-concept events offered LBF2010 audiences wide-ranging events to attend. It is testament to cultural solutions UK’s networks and connections that it was able to generate a festival with such breadth and quality; one that had appeal across demography and age.

Schools Programme

The relationship between LBF2010 and CfBT, Lincolnshire's School Improvement Service, is a long and strong one. CfBT provides funding for the devising and delivery of a schools programme that spans across the age range from five to 18. For 2010 the Schools Programme was extended to last ten days in the week before and during the festival. This was to take into account feedback and avoid Sats testing in schools. It comprises of creative writing workshops, readings by authors, debates and storytelling and offers children and young people access to some of the UK’s finest and emerging writers, helping them to develop confidence and literacy skills. The Schools Programme is seen by CfBT as a way of stimulating schools (both teachers and pupils) to reflect upon the written and spoken word within the context of their teaching and learning. The 2010 programme saw 16 events at 12 schools.

In addition to these, 11 schools bookings were taken for Anthony Horowitz as well as the CfBT News Award team event.

There were additional opportunities for the Lincs2Stage Theatre Academy project. This included young people helping with lighting and stage management working with Upstage Left Theatre Company during the production of Look Back In Anger at Lincoln College. There was also a nursery programme for 2010 working with 0 to five-year-olds and soundLINCS music development agency to run four rhyme and story time sessions.

‘The children who went to the Drill Hall to listen to Anthony Horowitz came back full of excitement and eager to read his books. Both the Year 5 classes were inspired to want to become authors after listening to Colin Bateman speak about his life as a writer... we look forward to working with you again during next year’s Book Festival’

— Monks Abbey Primary, Literacy Co-ordinator

Secondary Programme

Over the past three years LBF has worked with promoters who wish to devise and promote their own events whilst being associated with the festival.

This is good news for a festival as it can offer an even wider range of events and activities. What is important when accepting Secondary Programmers is to maintain an understanding of a minimum standard of LBF quality; quality in the actual authors attending, and quality in the management, publicity and realisation of the events. To this end LBF2010 introduced a Secondary Programming Policy. This outlined what was expected of a Secondary Programmer and what the promoter could expect from its association with LBF 2010.

Fringe Programme

The concept of a Fringe programme is simple: The opportunity of raising LBF2010’s profile at mainstream venues and locations before and during the Festival as a way of developing audiences and demystifying the public’s perception of book-related events being high-brow and inaccessible. The LBF2010 Strategic Group had commented on the need to create more of a sense of occasion throughout the city centre of the up and coming LBF2010. Various ideas were explored with one being the setting up of a pre-festival fringe programme. This saw the creation of a ‘Stalls in the Street’ programme on 1 May in Lincoln High Street. This day ran from 10am to 4pm with a selection of book-related stalls; a Festival stall containing all publicity; a maypole with dancing; stilt walking; Bookstart Bear; a programme of entertainment with many buskers throughout the day; and tastings from partner cafes. This was staffed by LBF volunteers, authors and Friends. The event also began to create a sense of something going on or about to happen in Lincoln.

An exhibition by one of the world’s leading experts on photographic printmaking (and a poet) ran from 24 April until the end of the Festival on 16 May. Terry King’s work was exhibited at the Kodak Express Gallery in Lincoln. Terry also ran two workshops and gave a reading of his poetry. This broadened both the audience base of LBF2010 and introduced another art form.

The festival played host to one of the world’s most popular authors on 3 May as yet another pre-Festival fringe event. Jodi Picoult read to 285 people at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. The event brought a lot of publicity to LBF2010 and also attracted new audiences.

More than 100 people attended the LBF Literary Pub Quiz on the eve of LBF2010, which was held as 2009 at the Dog and Bone pub, Lincoln.

Fringe events leading into and during the festival do connect with non-festival audiences. They embrace a wider constituency and this increases the reach, demographic and effect of LBF upon a wider, unsuspecting city.

Media and Marketing Review

cultural solutions uk more than doubled the LBF 2010 budget it was presented with in late 2009 in order to deliver a festival of comparable stature to those held in the past. cultural solutions UK devised and embarked upon a funding strategy that saw it secure funding from the private and public sectors and revenue from advertising.

External Funding and Support

This was the most successful year ever in terms of range and diversity of media coverage achieved. More than 20 press releases were issued locally, regionally and nationally in the run-up to the festival, together with listings information for national papers, information sheets for partners’ websites and background briefing notes for radio presenters. LBF2010 achieved coverage in print, online and on air.