Category: Our Creative Journey

One vital contributor to our marketing strategy was the amount of networking we did as a company. From the very beginning we wanted to establish our place within the arts community in Lincoln and in doing so meet some extremely valuable contacts. We immediately signed up to attend the WITA event on the 8th of March 2018 and that was the beginning of a great relationship! Through WITA, we have since formed relationships with poets, musicians and other artists who have inspired our process and performance. This networking has allowed us to become involved within many community groups and given us a wider base to promote through. I believe this involvement with other artists and collaboration with Women in The Arts would allow us meet Arts Council England’s criteria on Public Engagement as we are forming relationships within the community. Through these relationships we are striving to bring art to the community on a larger scale through hosting events and campaigns to promote performances on a larger scale. We have also commissioned other artists and photographers to contribute towards our marketing materials which I believe would demonstrate to Arts Council England that we are committed to spreading the awareness of work of local artists within the community. The relationships we have developed have provided us with options to continue our theatre company post graduation. We have received invitations to perform at the next WITA showcase and have welcomed a tremendous amount of support throughout this process. This partnership would also be a contributor to our ACE funding risk assessment as they question whether “appropriate partnerships in place to support the activity” (Arts Council England, 2016). WITA are a fantastic networking group that have allowed us the opportunity to meet fellow artists and supporters of the arts. This extended marketing platform also offers a more sustainable approach towards our future campaigns, standing us in good stead with ACE’s marketing policies. We are hugely appreciative for all the support we have received and are excited to see where this takes us in the future.

 

E.L.

 

Cited

Arts Council England (2016) Appraisal Process For Grants For the Arts. Available From: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Appraisal_process_for_Grants_for_the_Arts_AUG2016.pdf [accessed 3rd May 2018].

Liddle, E. (2018) I Support WITA.

When deciding on how we want to be viewed as a company and considering how we want our externally facing materials to reflect us, it is important we bare in mind the style of theatre and audience we are trying to appeal to. I have recently sat down with our company director and stage manager to get a better sense of what their aspirations for the company are and from there I have begun drafting our Manifesto and Mission Statement. My intentions are to create a manifesto that articulates the importance of audience and reality within our company. I hope to demonstrate the level of engagement we are hoping to encapsulate within performance and present the fundamental basis of our companies future work. Our mission Statement is slightly more colloquial as I intend on using this to portray the relaxed environment we intend on creating throughout our companies productions. We want to create theatre that is easily accessible to those who wouldn’t normally visit a traditional theatre space. It is important to us that we can create an environment where participation and audience reaction is encouraged and embraced. We intend on creating a theatre environment that allows our audience to relax and go back to the basics. Our mission statement encourages our audience to consider what is truly important to us as humans, the things we cannot live without, and take some time to stop clouding their day to day lives with the worries and stress of ‘living’.

 

Sherbet Lemon Theatre Manifesto

We are Sherbet Lemon Theatre. We are a group of artists who devise performance incorporating verbatim techniques to portray the reality of our day to day lives. We take the sweet and sour of being human and address the aspects we cannot live without! We invite our audience to take a step back from the complications of life and instead acknowledge the essentials. We create a comfortable and relaxed environment where our audience can feel immersed in our performance. This is vital to us as a company as we want to involve real people through their words and experiences.

 

Sherbet Lemon Theatre Mission Statement

Life can be overwhelming sometimes. The complications that fog our day to day lives can get in the way of what we truly need as humans. We invite you to take a step back from the complications of your everyday life and focus in on the essentials.  

We are an all female collective inspired to create original performance. We want to tell the stories of real people using their own words to add a sense of authenticity to our performance. We take the sweet and sour of being human and address the aspects we cannot live without! We want to create a relaxed atmosphere where everyone can feel comfortable and involved in the action around them.  

Our style of theatre is inclusive, relatable, sweet and a little bit sour. We are Sherbet Lemon Theatre!

 

E.L.

 

 

SO,

The first step to making our presence as a company known involved creating a name that would stand out and reflect our attitude towards performance. We knew from DAY ONE that we wanted to create work that was playful and explored topics that were easily relatable to everyone. We wanted our name to be familiar and universal. Our company aims to devise performances that highlight the sweet and sour of our everyday lives. And so, Sherbet Lemon was a perfect fit!

 

We experimented with multiple name ideas and nothing seemed to capture the essence of our theatre style like Sherbet Lemon Theatre does. From here we have created a couple of logo designs that can be used in different formats for our branding. Figure a). shows our full logo that will be used on our social media and company promotion materials. Figure b). shows our font only logo that will be used for all ‘show-related’ marketing materials as the colours are more compatible with other schemes. The designing of the logos was another trial and error process, there were multiple designs that were discussed between Amanda and myself before deciding on these two. Many of the logos we discarded were quirky and bold but didn’t quite fit in terms of the aesthetics of the company.

 

The next steps in promoting our company will lie in the creation and development of our social media platforms.

I best get busy!

EL

 

Cited

Sherbet Lemon Theatre (2018) Figure a). Logo.

Sherbet Lemon Theatre (2018) Figure b). Text Only Logo.