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When my wife and I launched our little ensemble... well, we hadn't really realised how much of a job it would be to do the administrative, publicity, and all the other stuff that wasn't related to actually playing the concert!

Thankfully, I am more than a bit of a tech-nerd, so much of the back-end stuff has been relatively easy to set up... and my wife and my older daughter are good at adding that little flair for colour, visual, and tweaking some of my less "funny" jokes and sense of humour in my writing.

I am quite thankful for my time here on HIVE, where I have sort of honed my writing skills so tat I have been able to write a decent enough media release, programme guff, and other website/publicity related things. And having the practice of doing this every day on a wide variety of topics means that when it comes to writing a little one page press release... well, I'm not completely and utterly daunted... and the same when it comes to writing emails for cold-contacts and all of that sort of thing. Still, the cold-contacting is still always going to be scary... but the worst that people and festivals can say is a "no"! And given that we are only half way through our first season of concerts... there have been many people commenting on how fast we have been going...

... but that is sort of me... once I get focused on a passion project, I'm all in... and I will push it through to the best of my ability! And I have sort of come to enjoy learning all the behind the scenes things that go into running a musical ensemble! Even if I would prefer to just play music... but by running my own group, I get to play music that I like, with people that I like!

So, we have hit the publicity phase for our next concert in our main series... that means that the publicity photos, media release, poster design, and blurbs are all now ready and complete. In the coming days, we start the Web2 advertisement scheduling... and start to reactivate the activity on the accounts... the logistics were set in place last week, and we have some lessons that we will be gifting to local students so that they have a chance to learn from the visiting guest artists.

Digital calendars are updated at the various sites where we advertise, and the coming couple of weeks will have the sneaker-net runs to distribute the flyers and posters. We had a fortunate local magazine interview that got us a little bit more publicity last month... and then we have to send out the media releases to see if we get included in more suggestions of what to do on the weekends... and if we are lucky a few more interviews or publicity opportunities.

In between, we have a private concert to learn music for and prepare... but we don't need to run any admin or publicity for that, just a show up and perform sort of thing. Then two education projects that have been requested... and then I also have a tour with a different group. And not to forget... one of the more important things...

...the arts funding application for 2024 that will be due at the end of this month. We are aiming a little bit bigger this time around, which will be great if we manage to get it... but if we don't we have a second smaller round that we can apply for with a slightly altered 2024 programming... and then, we are self-sufficient and should be able to run a similar programming to this year based on ticket sales alone. Still... it doesn't hurt to aim high... and have contingency plans for different levels of funding, including zero.

I have heard of other groups thinking that funding is "owed" to them... and they collapse when they don't receive it. We won't be that sort of group... we are designed to run light and flexibly... lean and mean if you will, and if you feed us more, we will just run hotter and brighter for a year! But we will always stay lean and focused, and never reliant!

Studying music at a conservatory never prepared you for this... this is a great learning experience! I'm really enjoying it, even if it can be a touch stressful at times!

I can also be found cross-posting at:
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Publish0x

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