Swansea Arena House Party: The Fight to Save Grassroots Venues

Grassroots music venues are the lifeblood of our music industry. Without them, would we have our favourite bands, or core memories? Would the UK have its international renown?

The GMV crisis is worsening, and we are losing venues at an unprecedented rate, so it’s vital that we come together to support change.

We’ve had the honour of supporting The Swansea Music Venues Working Group, chaired by Swansea Arena’s Lisa Mart. This is a new collaboration that has enabled the city’s rich music scene to face the industry’s challenges and create opportunities together.

In February, the group which is made up of Swansea Arena, Sin City, The Bunkhouse, Elysium, Hangar 18 and Hippos, held the hugely successful Swansea Arena House Party which fulfilled its aim of raising £10,000 for the Music Venues Trust (MVT) and injected £10,000 back into the region’s creative sector, whilst putting on a banging gig event headlined by Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard with support from  fromKikker, The Fiends, PseudoCool, Mojo Jnr., Monet, Grey FLX, and Rainyday Rainbow.

In addition, throughout the day there were creative workshops to support grassroots artists in the city taking in developing a live show, creating pop art album covers, noise makers taster DJ sessions, graffiti lettering, and drumming, as well as an array of stalls from local grassroots music venues, funders and support organisations, creatives including photographers and videographers, plus much, much more.

Now, the organisation is now petitioning the Senedd (Welsh Government) to improve the late-night transport into and out of the city.

Transport is a huge priority as currently, in Swansea and South West Wales, most transport links East currently finish before 23:00, meaning that music fans attending events closing any later have to make the difficult choice to either drive, or miss the last hour of the event and the music venues across the city have joined forces to address the critical situation that the Music Venue Trust (MVT) warns could result in 10% of grassroots music venues closing in the near future.

Currently on just over 5,300 signatures, the Group has until 7th May 2024 to get the petition’s figure to 10,000 and qualify for consideration for debate. Swansea Arena, with support from the local grassroots music venues, has penned this open letter to the government to state their case and is encouraging people from Swansea and beyond to sign.

The Group has put in a lot of hard work to generate momentum and has had media support from music press, music trade outlets and regional titles including Total Production International, Access All Areas, Access All Areas (again), Mixmag, BBC 6 Music, BBC Wales, Wales Online, South Wales Chronicle and Buzz Magazine

You can sign the petition here.

Sundae gets Manchester buzzing for Bee In The City art trail

After a whirlwind Bee In The City VIP launch at the Manchester Town Hall in November last year, we were absolutely delighted to be taken on by global art producer, Wild In Art to deliver the full press and publicity campaign for this summer’s major Bee In The City art trail in Manchester.

As our friends and clients will know, we are an agency that LOVES art and LOVES celebrating our wonderful city so when we came on board, we were so excited and brimming with ideas.

The bees have all been designed by different artists and include the likes of Hilda Bugden, I Wanna Bee Adored and Hac Bee Enda. One achievement we are incredibly proud of is our collaboration with legendary Oasis singer Liam Gallagher. In the lead up to the trail, we developed a partnership with Liam to create a Rock ‘n’ Roll Bee alongside artist Julie Dodd.  In June, Sundae took a special trip to Parklife festival so Liam could meet and sign his finished bee for the first time which ultimately received global coverage. Press titles include NME, ITV News, Hits Radio, Radio X, Manchester Evening News, Hollywood.com, Female First, plus much more.

From Liam Gallagher to Bez, The Rolling Stones to Sting, celebrities and press from far and wide have been gravitating to towards Bee In The City campaign in more ways than one.

Fast forward to July and here we are having just delivered a huge VIP press launch with the likes of Press Association, The Guardian, BBC News, Manchester Evening News, Granada Reports, Gaydio and BBC Radio all in attendance with some incredible results. To say we are BUZZING with the result would be an understatement and its only just the beginning.

Make sure you catch the bees around the city from 23 July to 23 September, after which they will be auctioned off to raise money for the Lord Mayor of Manchester’s We Love MCR charity.

We are expecting thousands of visitors to be writing, sharing, snapchatting, tweeting and posting about these wonderful creations so make sure you check them out!

MC x

(Images: Charlie Lightening / David Oates)

Shining a light on Pilot Light Festival

2018 started amazingly for us; there was a huge amount of excitement in the office as Sundae Communications was invited to look after the publicity campaign for Pilot Light TV Festival Season 3 at HOME, Mcr.

Anyone who knows the Sundae team well knows that telly is one of our favourite subjects and we even watch the same things at the same times so that we can discuss them in detail over lunch…. so PLTVF3 is was well and truly up our straße.

With talks and panels featuring Julie Hesmondhalgh, Christopher Eccleston, Walter Iuzzolino, Sue Johnston, Kevin Eldon, Michael Cumming alongside leading industry specialists and content from Walter Presents, Sky Atlantic/HBO, Blue Peter, CBeebies, Arrow TV and shortFLIX it really was a hugely diverse and relevant festival. Julie Hesmondhalgh also received the inaugural Pilot Light Excellence in Television Award.

As part of our strategy we created a bespoke publicity campaign based around the festival’s individual strands including Talks, Panels, Web Series, International, Culture, LGBTQ, Pilot Light Awards, Industry and, the inspired, In-Memorium and Anniversary Celebrations strands. We pitched screenings and events to titles within the media sector appropriate to each strand, as well as targeting traditional film, events and Manchester based press.

Sundae delivered a huge spread of quality, targeted coverage with key highlights including i-D Magazine, i Newspaper, BBC Radio Manchester, Manchester Evening News, Northern Soul, Emerald Street, Custard TV, Dr Who Magazine, The Skinny, Aesthetica, Prolific North, I Love Manchester and Manchester’s Finest.

The spread of coverage was phenomenal with previews, listings, reviews featuring heavily alongside interviews with Festival Producer Greg Walker and talent such as Sue Johnston and Julie Hesmondhalgh.

We were proud to achieve an op ed in i-D Magazine from Grace Barber-Plentie, the brains behind the innovative Sex and the City: The World according to Woke Charlotte, an event in collaboration with London’s Reel Good Film Club that examined the impact the show had on women of colour, and the progress in on screen representation made during the last twenty years, through a live script writing of the pilot recast entirely with people of colour.

We even hosted our own panel, New Voices in TV & Film, hosted by our MD Fiona McGarva, looking at the steps being taken to improve on screen representation, in particular shortFLIX, a short film initiative led by Creative England in partnership with National Youth Theatre and Sky Arts, featuring young filmmakers and champions of new voices in television and film.

One of our favourite projects ever here at Sundae and we can’t wait to get on board with Greg and his team next year for Season 4.

 

 

 

Making Contact

One of Sundae’s first missions for Contact, Manchester’s critically acclaimed, trail-blazing theatre and arts venue, led and programmed by young people, was to help launch the final phase of its Capital Redevelopment fundraising campaign, with a target of 500k, after raising over £6m of its £6.65m target. 

The rousing campaign was launched with Making Contact, an event at Manchester Art Gallery introduced by Contact advocate Julie Hesmondhalgh, Contact’s Chief Executive & Artistic Director Matt Fenton, and an inspiring performance from Contact Young Company’s radical 5* show She Bangs The Drums.

Front and centre of the campaign was Con:Struct, the dedicated team of young people aged 13-30 leading the project to transform the building for the next generation of audiences, artists and young people. They revealed the plans for the building, which is looking to reopen in Summer 2019, along with a new film to introduce Contact to a wider audience.

A new arts and health space has been funded by a Wellcome Trust grant of £500,000. This will provide a dedicated space to develop new partnerships and relationships with NHS, patient groups, young people, local communities and artists. Additional funding will support a three-year post of Health Producer to lead on projects and produce new theatre shows that explore health inequalities and other current issues.

Support from trusts and foundations follows initial grants from Arts Council England and Manchester City Council.  In addition, Contact has received in kind support and with Contact’s own funds and individual donations this brought the total secured to date to £6,161,133.

They had already achieved an incredible and inspiring amount, so our job was to shine a light on their work, whilst helping put Contact in front of new people, to grow their audience and fanbase, as well as introducing the company new possible sources of funds.

We shared Contact’s news with broad spread of press from the regional Manchester media, national arts press, theatre, architectural and business press. We achieved key coverage including news and features, plus interviews with Contact ambassador Julie Hesmondhalgh, in Architects Journal, Northern Soul, Manchester Confidential, Manchester Theatre Awards, Manchester’s Finest, Manchester Evening News, VIVA Magazine and British Theatre Guide.

We also delved into our own little black book and invited our favourite creatives, influencers and business owners along to the event. The turnout was amazing and despite a very sunny day, the event was packed to the rafters with new and existing fans  of Contact.

The Contact team are well and truly on their way to achieving their fundraising target and this event was the first step on a very exciting road and a journey that we are honoured to travel with them.

 

 

Be//Longing at the PR Moment Awards

Tonight team Sundae are off to the PR Moment Awards at the Hilton Hotel with our clients, collaborators and friends from Be//Longing; a project that we are so very proud of and a campaign that has been nominated for the Best Use of Creativity Award.

As well as Caroline Boyd and Dr Tanja Müller from the University’s of Manchester’s Migration Lab we will be joined at the table by the inspirational Take Back Theatre collective; actor Julie Hesmondhalgh, writer Becx Harrison and visual artist Grant Archer.

Manchester Migration Lab was formed in January 2017 and brings together more than 70 researchers across the University’s Schools and Research Institutes that focus on migration issues as part of the University’s research expertise in addressing global inequalities.

The Lab came up with the amazing idea of using writing, theatre, and live events to ignite and inform debate in local, national and global communities to support and communicate its work. After a lot of work and planning from ourselves, Take Back and UoM, Be//Longing came to life.

Be//Longing was an immersive production at Hope Mill Theatre with proceeds going to migration charities, it used installations, an exhibition, music and video alongside scripted theatre, to create an experience that boldly addressed perceptions of migration and expose myths.

So as we get dolled up for the evening’s events in the office, we are nervous, excited yet hopeful that we will bring the award home for a project and a subject matter that is so close to all of our hearts.

Fingers crossed x

(Images: Sebastian Matthes)

Manchester Animation Festival

The Manchester Animation Festival launched in 2015, and in 2017, we were delighted to deliver the festival’s press and publicity for the first time. We’d met the team through our work with our animation clients and with a team of huge animation fans at Sundae, we were delighted to be part of such an up and coming event.

The festival is a three-day celebration of all things animated. From short film competitions, feature films, retrospective screenings, workshops, networking events, panel discussions, masterclasses and talks from the industry’s best and brightest.

With animation really taking flight in the North West with the likes of Factory, Mackinnon & Saunders, and CHF producing and creating a huge chunk of the UK’s animated output. The BBC and ITV have now moved to the thriving Media City, making Manchester a significant UK hub for creativity and media.

We wanted to really capitalise on both the strength of the festival’s incredible programme, and the emergence of the North West as an animation powerhouse with our messaging. We spread the word about the Manchester Animation Festival UK wide, and were able to amplify the 2017 festival, with an impressive national broadcast campaign.

Key national broadcast activity included an interview on BBC Breakfast with Will Becher, Animation Director of Early Man, who hosted a talk at the festival, and brought two of the puppets direct from the set for an exclusive view.

We also achieved a piece on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row around the Ivor Wood retrospective event. Ivor Wood expert Joseph Wallace, and Ivor’s widow and sometime animation partner Josiane Wood both appeared for a talk through the magic of the late animator.

This was bolstered by a fantastic regional broadcast coverage, with a TV piece going out on ITV North West Tonight, exploring the relationship with sponsors (and another of our clients!) Factory and the festival. Additionally, we had TWO interviews on BBC Radio Manchester, with Will Becher, and festival director Steve Henderson, plus A Week in My Life for Steve on Prolific North.

We also secured a profile of The Simpsons writer Josh Weinstein in print, with Broadcast Magazine, one of the major television trade outlets. Josh is responsible for Strange Hill High, a CBBC programme that we also had the pleasure of working on and is currently working on Disenchantment.

The festival’s lineup announcements was covered in the bulk of the animation trade outlets, including Animation World Network,  Creative Boom and Animation Magazine, amongst others, and we had listings coverage in the Manchester Evening News, Sight & Sound, and many more.

The festival teamed up with the BBC to host a family day the weekend ahead of the animation festival’s launch, which we announced and was covered by Manchester Evening News Online, as well as parenting bloggers What To Do With The Kids and Daddy Daydream.

We generated almost 65,000,000 opportunities to see, and we helped cement the Manchester Animation Festival’s reputation as the go-to for everything animated, and the biggest and best animation festival in the UK.

The Railway Children steams into town

We are very proud to be working with our friends at Genesius Pictures to promote the theatrical release The Railway Children (2016), a film of York Theatre Royal’s Olivier award-winning production performed in summer 2015 at the National Railway Museum, Yorkshire.

There has been huge anticipation for the film so, last night, it was incredible to finally run the press screening at London’s The Courthouse Hotel with the full cast and some very key national media present.

The response to film was incredible.  Produced by Genesius, it captures Mike Kenny and Damian Cruden’s imaginative stage adaptation of E. Nesbit’s cherished novel on its return to its Yorkshire roots, and features the original locomotive from the much-loved original 1970 film.

Filmed with seven cameras by an expert team, who navigate the unique staging including moving platforms, props and rail carts, the film captures every moment of the fast-paced production and is a completely new experience of it.

The Railway Children follows the story of Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis, three sheltered siblings who suffer a huge upheaval when their father, who works for the Foreign Office, is taken away from their London home and (falsely) imprisoned. The children and their mother, now penniless, are forced to move from London to rural Yorkshire near a railway line. The story deals with themes of justice, the importance of family and the kindness of strangers.

The countdown to national release is now on and it will hit over 400 cinemas on Easter Monday – 28th March and we honestly can’t wait…

Tom x

(Images: Anthony Robling)

Maxine Peake as Hamlet

As huge fans of Maxine Peake, the Royal Exchange AND Hamlet, we are delighted to be leading the publicity campaign for Maxine Peake as Hamlet, filmed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, and distributed by Picturehouse, which will be showing in 300 cinemas across the country from 23rd March.

The Telegraph Online exclusively revealed the trailer on Friday, and today the Guardian ran an exclusive interview with Maxine abut the role, her interpretation of the character and the feminist shift in theatre today.

With follow up coverage on the Independent and Red Online, this is a taste of the full campaign to be revealed in the coming weeks. Watch this space!

Fiona x