Reflecting so far...

Things have deteriorated again in my personal life, to the extent that my work is affected. On the 14th and 16th I am in communication with Claire and Peter, who offer sympathy and support. As an organisation, Skimstone also offers personal support which I look to take up. Work-wise though, things are on hold essentially until New Year.

 Looking back again on what I have already done though, progress is going well on the factual research I am doing on social media, though we are now looking at doing an animated songbook with the help of the in-house animator at Skimstone, instead of using issuu. I am now in the Comms Team, and while it is a bit difficult as I still haven't met a couple of the others involved, and Cristina is only working about one day a week at the moment, it gives me more chance to run with my ideas and cover more ground. I would like to see stronger engagement with the stories feature on Instagram, and am reassured that we will do this in the run up to the next project.

I have also been in the planning and developmental stages for the next project, planned to be in February or March. Working in a company like Skimstone, the reports and evaluations are so important to secure funding, so much of the timetabling is dictated thus. It's a bit like trying to fit in different books to read for different modules on my degree! The next project is to be a festival, and we decide to plan as if it will still be online. I venture that later is better, if we want to host in-person, but that online is still the safest call.

We are preparing to blitz socials starting in January, to promote the HMD event, and after that I want to try and keep up momentum for the next festival that is being planned after that. It is important to maintain followers in an actively engaged manner wherever possible.

While I have maintained my research and planning, I am not in the right headspace to much further my own creative project. After the latest creative sessions, I had planned a freestyle poetic style spoken word piece, over chords prepared in collaboration with another artist (maybe Nicole), but my creative process is somewhat halted no due to my personal circumstance.

I have though been giving serious thought and preparing plans for where to take the marketing strategy. Where Claire wanted a universal message, I wanted more targeted advertising to specific age groups (like mine). After pitching as much, I'm under the impression that now this will be carried forward but more-so by the varied outcrop of marketing content creators, than targeted strategy. I resolve to create content myself for social channels like Instagram that my demographic use more. I agree with the preference that there be no barriers to entry represented in any of the content produced, however. With this in mind I propose a three point strategy of 'ACTIVE', 'LISTENING' and 'CELEBRATING'. Building on Sascha's pitching tips, this concise pitch helps shape policy!

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