[mplpost] Ontario Contact/Alberta Showcase

[Doug Baker]

Hi Folks,

Jory did such a great job of letting us all know about Ontario Contact, I 
thought I'd give a few comments about Alberta Showcase which was held at the 
Banff Centre from October 25 to 27.

It sounds like it was very similar to Ontario Contact in the way it ran. 
There were 5 showcase sessions each with 5 artists from a variety of 
entertainment forms, mostly music but also dance, comedy and magic. Music 
ranged from classical and opera to country and roots. Folk and roots 
performers of note were Tanglefoot, Eileen Laverty, Steve Pineo, Vance 
Gilbert, Fiddlestix, Jim Reader and John Reischman. As in Ottawa, the talent 
level was incredibly high across the board. After each showcase, the contact 
room was open for an hour during which time there were no other activities 
going on. Each showcasing artist had to have a booth in the contact room. 
You could tell which artists had presented great showcases by the buzz 
around their booth right after the performance.

There were around 200 delegates of which over half were presenters from 
theatres and volunteer arts councils across Alberta, mostly from small 
towns. All the presenters I met were very friendly and approachable folks. A 
terrific feature of the conference was that all meals were provided and the 
whole group ate in one room. This allowed for great opportunities to sit 
with different people at each meal to meet and chat with many folks over the 
weekend. It was also great because the food was delicious!

An interesting aspect of the conference were the Take Five Spotlights. 
Before supper on Friday, ten artists had 5 minutes each to do their thing 
and wow the audience. It all happened in about an hour and gave artists who 
hadn't won a showcase spot a chance to perform for all the delegates. There 
weren't any informal showcases so this was the only chance for other 
performers to show their stuff. Aengus Finnan did a wonderful performance of 
his "O'Shaughnessy's Lament".

Three workshops of 1.75 hours each were held concurrently on Saturday 
morning. Topics were Communication by Design, Risk Management and Marketing 
Your Programs. I attended John McLachlan's presentation on designing better 
print and web promotional material and it was excellent. I heard the others 
were also very good.

Alberta Showcase has been going for 25 years so this was a big anniversary 
celebration event. It was my first one so a First Timer breakfast like at 
Ontario Contact might have been helpful. However, it didn't take too long to 
get the hang of things and it was very easy to meet people, especially 
because we were all together on the campus of the Banff Centre.

Like Jory said, you really need to showcase at the event to make any sort of 
impression on the presenters. I would suggest to artists that it's 
worthwhile for you to invest in attending the provincial showcase/contact 
sessions to raise your profile. A good showcase will definitely get you gigs 
- I saw dates being set in the contact room.

All in all, it was an enjoyable and valuable event. My congratulations to 
the Alberta Touring Arts Alliance who organized it and to Kurt Bagnell and 
the folks from the Banff Centre who hosted a great conference.

Please feel free to contact me off-line (doug@frontofhouse.ca) if you have 
any questions.

Yours musically,
Doug Baker
Front of House Entertainment
www.frontofhouse.ca


>On Mon, 04 Nov 2002, Jory Nash wrote:
>
>Hi Folks:
>I attended Ontario Contact this past weekend,  ....

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