Digital Case Study #4: Vancouver Comic Arts Festival
As part of our Consultations with members of the arts and culture community, we’ve prepared a series of case studies to help you better understand how to find the solutions to your own digital problems, as well as provide you with resources you may not have considered. In this case study, content expert Shannon Emmerson consults with Vancouver Comic Arts Festival.
Vancouver Comic Arts Festival (VanCAF) is a two-day celebration of comics and graphic novels and their creators, including an exhibition and vendor fair featuring hundreds of creators from around the world. They’d like to serve their community by planning, hosting, and promoting an online series of workshops. How can they move these formerly in-person offerings online?
This project sets out to create and facilitate a free, online education opportunity for those interested in comics and comic creation. VanCAF plans to host a series of live Zoom workshops, an hour long each, with one instructor teaching a skill involved around making a comic for up to 100 participants. The key questions: how to get people to a) sign up for the event; and b) engage with each other as well as with the content.
Goals
Going into this consultation, VanCAF named its priorities as:
Getting up to 100 people to register for this workshop.
People posting/sharing comics they’ve made because of the workshop.
Getting more people making comics.
Giving everyone a voice, knowing that comic-making is a place for underrepresented people.
Building an open community that anyone can join.
Building VanCAF’s reputation in the literary community.
Clarifying Questions
The consultant asked VanCAF the following questions, with VanCAF’s response in italics.
● Which organizations do you know that have done this well?
○ The Believer is doing online workshops really well.
● What have you thought of trying so far, and what have you already tried?
○ Last year, workshops were held in person during the festival. This year we did some pre-recorded sessions along with panels. But there wasn’t a lot of interaction among participants, or with speakers. It used to be (in person) that you could see the demand for the workshops, which were all free — we had 20 spots you could register for, always at least 20 people in line — but online with the pre-recorded sessions, the community and social aspect was really missing. Many artists only wanted to do pre-recorded sessions, but there was little engagement, even in comments afterwards. So we want to try something different.
● Who exactly will this project help the most?
○ Amateur cartoonists, people who have been thinking of making comics but haven’t.
● Is there anything that’s standing in your way when it comes to doing this now? biggest roadblocks?
● Small staff, limited time, and limited knowledge about social media. Needing help in learning about best practices for online events and promoting them, developing community.
Resources
We created this tactical event planning checklist for VanCAF that includes resources and references as well as a time-bound checklist for what to do, when, to plan and promote a good online event.
Other References
Guide for Facebook advertising
Excellent Eventbrite guide on hosting an online event via Zoom
Second Review & Outcomes
Follow-Up
We reviewed VanCAF’s progress on setting up Eventbrite, questions about whether to dedicate a small ad budget to the series of events or individual sessions (deciding on the series information, hosted on a landing page on VanCAF’s website), and refined the checklist a little, adding in points about how and why to continue the conversation about starting a comic after the event. We also agreed on a totally awesome hashtag and name for the series: #StartAComic.
We agreed to follow up one more time the week before the event for a quick check-in.
Changes based on Shannon’s advice
Using Eventbrite for registration.
Featuring a landing page on the organization’s website and directing all online traffic to that landing page.
Creating social media assets for instructors to use to advertise on their own social media.
Using a small budget for advertising.
Engaging individually with the instructors online before and after event.
Following up afterwards online and reiterating lessons learned in each workshop.