Kati London
The In(ter)ventions Festival
The In(ter)ventions Festival is a multi-day event that provokes critical inquiry on the part of consumers about the impact of their behaviors. Through interventions, the festival will present new interfaces to reshape and evaluate the impact of conscious-consumer behavior at the individual and social level in the context of everyday life.
http://www.theinterventionsfestival.com
Mission
The In(ter)ventions Festival provides a forum for new modalities of personal and public interaction within consumer spaces. The Festival wants to bring together a general public being called upon to re-examine their relationship to personal and group resource use, with inventors and in(ter)ventionists who are building new technological and cultural means to do so. Public site specific installations, walks, workshops, and panel discussions will promote conscious-consumerism through direct and indirect action.
About the Festival
The In(ter)ventions Festival is the first festival dedicated exclusively to questioning consumerism through in(ter)ventions. It is a multi-day experience of public site specific in(ter)ventions, walks, workshops, and panel discussions. The festival will feature a variety of projects in public locations around New York City, from small group curated walks to public installations and do-it-yourself workshops. Participants and artists will have the chance to interact and jointly conceive of the future roles of individuals and society in relation to consumerism.
The festival will feature roughly twenty (20) different in(ter)ventions for three (3) days during the Fall of 2007. Most events will take place outside of the festival headquarters but will be tracked with live video feeds so that participants can join in-progress walks and in(ter)ventions, in hopes of capturing the gallery going crowd as well as local residents. This is meant to encourage participation that transforms urban public spaces in meaningful ways. In(ter)ventions invite spectators and participants to recontextualize places and transactions in unconventional ways.
The In(ter)ventions Festival is premised on the observation that inventions create interventions. The influence of invention is often a driving force behind change: often a will to change exists long before the wide adoption of the ability to manifest change appears in popular culture. Within the contemporary cultural context of global warming, natural resource competition, and heightened interdependencies ranging from economics to religion to culture, many activists have turned to building change from the ground up at the same time as large international bodies are searching for the means to do the same. From the success behind Make Magazine, Home Depot, World Changing, and the recent partnership between the National Resources Defense Council and utility giant TXU, people are beginning to embed small changes into their everyday lives not just in terms of using new technologies, but also re-purposing old ones in radical ways. The In(ter)ventions Festival will nurture and capitalize on a growing interest in and awareness of conscious consumer options and reconfigurations for everyday life.
Audience Development
The festival intends to reach the mass consumer vectors, this being consumers as they are generally understood as shoppers; as well as speaking to invested communities in conscious consumerism.
By applying guerilla marketing tactics, we will go after a broader, more general public. Current targets include: inserts in free consumer flyers at chain stores, placing ads on Craig’s List, and using Google Adwords. Placing inserts into free flyers at chain stores nearby to festival headquarters, like Home Depot, Western Beef, and Gristedes will pose the opportunity to catch potential festival-goers off-guard by an unexpected designed festival advertisement that speaks to relevant concerns. For Google Adwords, we will buy keyword ads for the festival, such as “shopping nyc.” When a user types those keywords into Google or if the phrase appears on a page, the festival ad will appear. If clicked, the festival pays what we have bid, for example: $.10 per click thru. We can limit the amount we spend per day by setting up limits for example, when ten people click through and go to the festival site, no more ads will be shown that day.
In order to reach out to younger audiences, we will contact school groups and after school programs working with teenagers. If partnered with Eyebeam we might tap into their established programs such as, After School Atelier, Girls Eye View, and Digital Day Camp.
We will alert like-minded individuals of the coming festival by targeting the media that already serves the community of individuals invested in sustainable consumerism, as well as academic and non-profit institutions.
PR & Marketing
Branding context was an important but difficult part of designing the festival. The problem of differentiating an informed vs an uninformed audience brings up the age old issues of top down or bottom up strategies for change.
The festival will develop an audience through press and blog coverage, outreach to relevant academic and school groups, and through an integrated email list (including participating artist’s lists) that receives limited festival updates. We are hoping to partner with the already established ‘Swap-o-rama-rama’ organization for an event during the same weekend, we will also include email outreach to this large community.
The festival will promote itself through established connections in the blogosphere, and through the PR Coordinator’s concentrated efforts sending relevant press releases to the appropriate institutions, organizations, schools, community groups and media outlets. The festival will be promoted at ITP’s Spring Show through a presentation and festival mailing list sign-up.
The In(ter)ventions Festival provides a forum for new modalities of personal and public interaction within consumer spaces. The Festival wants to bring together a general public being called upon to re-examine their relationship to personal and group resource use, with inventors and in(ter)ventionists who are building new technological and cultural means to do so. Public site specific installations, walks, workshops, and panel discussions will promote conscious-consumerism through direct and indirect action.
About the Festival
The In(ter)ventions Festival is the first festival dedicated exclusively to questioning consumerism through in(ter)ventions. It is a multi-day experience of public site specific in(ter)ventions, walks, workshops, and panel discussions. The festival will feature a variety of projects in public locations around New York City, from small group curated walks to public installations and do-it-yourself workshops. Participants and artists will have the chance to interact and jointly conceive of the future roles of individuals and society in relation to consumerism.
The festival will feature roughly twenty (20) different in(ter)ventions for three (3) days during the Fall of 2007. Most events will take place outside of the festival headquarters but will be tracked with live video feeds so that participants can join in-progress walks and in(ter)ventions, in hopes of capturing the gallery going crowd as well as local residents. This is meant to encourage participation that transforms urban public spaces in meaningful ways. In(ter)ventions invite spectators and participants to recontextualize places and transactions in unconventional ways.
The In(ter)ventions Festival is premised on the observation that inventions create interventions. The influence of invention is often a driving force behind change: often a will to change exists long before the wide adoption of the ability to manifest change appears in popular culture. Within the contemporary cultural context of global warming, natural resource competition, and heightened interdependencies ranging from economics to religion to culture, many activists have turned to building change from the ground up at the same time as large international bodies are searching for the means to do the same. From the success behind Make Magazine, Home Depot, World Changing, and the recent partnership between the National Resources Defense Council and utility giant TXU, people are beginning to embed small changes into their everyday lives not just in terms of using new technologies, but also re-purposing old ones in radical ways. The In(ter)ventions Festival will nurture and capitalize on a growing interest in and awareness of conscious consumer options and reconfigurations for everyday life.
Audience Development
The festival intends to reach the mass consumer vectors, this being consumers as they are generally understood as shoppers; as well as speaking to invested communities in conscious consumerism.
By applying guerilla marketing tactics, we will go after a broader, more general public. Current targets include: inserts in free consumer flyers at chain stores, placing ads on Craig’s List, and using Google Adwords. Placing inserts into free flyers at chain stores nearby to festival headquarters, like Home Depot, Western Beef, and Gristedes will pose the opportunity to catch potential festival-goers off-guard by an unexpected designed festival advertisement that speaks to relevant concerns. For Google Adwords, we will buy keyword ads for the festival, such as “shopping nyc.” When a user types those keywords into Google or if the phrase appears on a page, the festival ad will appear. If clicked, the festival pays what we have bid, for example: $.10 per click thru. We can limit the amount we spend per day by setting up limits for example, when ten people click through and go to the festival site, no more ads will be shown that day.
In order to reach out to younger audiences, we will contact school groups and after school programs working with teenagers. If partnered with Eyebeam we might tap into their established programs such as, After School Atelier, Girls Eye View, and Digital Day Camp.
We will alert like-minded individuals of the coming festival by targeting the media that already serves the community of individuals invested in sustainable consumerism, as well as academic and non-profit institutions.
PR & Marketing
Branding context was an important but difficult part of designing the festival. The problem of differentiating an informed vs an uninformed audience brings up the age old issues of top down or bottom up strategies for change.
The festival will develop an audience through press and blog coverage, outreach to relevant academic and school groups, and through an integrated email list (including participating artist’s lists) that receives limited festival updates. We are hoping to partner with the already established ‘Swap-o-rama-rama’ organization for an event during the same weekend, we will also include email outreach to this large community.
The festival will promote itself through established connections in the blogosphere, and through the PR Coordinator’s concentrated efforts sending relevant press releases to the appropriate institutions, organizations, schools, community groups and media outlets. The festival will be promoted at ITP’s Spring Show through a presentation and festival mailing list sign-up.