Our first meeting today was with one of the people that works to organize the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Oliver Davies. The Festival is so involved. There are hundreds of venues featuring a range of groups and performers. Audiences can find performance art, ballet, musicians, comedians and pretty much anything that you can imagine.
The logistics and promotions for this are extremely intricate and detailed. We did not get as much detail about this year’s promotional efforts as we would have liked because they will be doing a big reveal of the campaign in early June! I am absolutely blown away by sheer scale of this event!
What I appreciated most was their attempts at inclusivity. They are working to make it as accessible as possible. Whether someone is in a wheelchair, hearing impaired, visually impaired, on the autism spectrum etc., there will be something for them. Despite all of this effort, they know they still have a long way to go to make the whole event truly accessible. However, their commitment to it is admirable.
Our second visit was to WhiteSpace. Our presenters were David and Chris. The focus was David’s photography, but we also learned a lot about a 5-day photo shoot in Norway for a Whiskey company. The photos that came out of the shoot, the strategies they used for shooting and the overall approach was really interesting.
Overall, with all of our media visits in the UK, I am just so impressed with how hard people work and how much they really seem to love their jobs.
We had free time after. The grownups all ate dinner at a restaurant called The Last Drop. It featured a lovely hangman’s noose hanging on the wall behind my head!