Working With Folk Festivals: Bridport and Swanage Folk Festivals

About This Document

This document describes how the Morris Federation worked with two folk festivals in development videos resources which could help promote the featured morris sides and the morris community in general, as well as the folk festivals. The document initially focusses on the “Five Morris sides who will appear at Bridport Folk Festival 2024” video on YouTube and the accompanying playlist which include short videos the the sides and then describes more recent experiences supporting the Swanage Folk Festival 2024 and the accompanying playlist.

The goals of the work are described together with the stakeholders, how the implementation challenges were addressed and how the final products were delivered. 

Background

The goal - to attract new audiences

YouTube playlist (click for larger view)

The goal is to enhance access of videos of morris and other forms of traditional dance to new audiences, especially younger audiences, and provide them with ways of following up their interests by making contact with specific sides which may appeal to them or means for finding other sides which may be local to them.

It was recognised that potential recruits may attend folk festivals, so working with folk festivals was identified as potential collaborators.

It was also recognised that folk festivals may welcome video content on their websites to provide a user experience which complements photographs of morris sides. And if the videos provide information about the festival, the festival would benefit from the featured sides (who may promote the video across their networks) and the sides would benefit from the exposure the festival’s website (and other digital channels) could provide.

A win-win situation, this arguments suggests! But we need to try out this approach. The solution is illustrated in the image (click for larger view) – but perhaps more important is a description of the approaches taken to making and delivering this.

Initial experiment - Swanage Folk Festival 2023

Two videos were made which featured a total of six of the sides which would appear at the Bridport Folk Festival 2022.  This work provided an initial opportunity to gain experience of editing videos (which were hosted on the side’s YouTube channel or Facebook account). The two videos also provided an opportunity to learn how to make a video lasting 90 seconds which featured 3 sides!

Click for larger view

Building on this work three videos were made to support the Swanage Folk Festival 2023. All three videos were shared on social media and one was also hosted on the Swanage Folk Festival web site – and this video proved particularly popular, being the most viewed new video on the Morris Federation YouTube channel in 2023. In order to highlight the festival for this set of video the festival name provided a backdrop with clips appearing through the letters.  A final video montage was created (thumbnail shown) which featured the dance sides dancing simultaneously, as illustrated below (sound was played from only one of the clips!). 

Bridport Folk Festival 2024

Background

The Bridport Folk Festival is my local festival and the event’s website manager, who dances with Wyld Morris, is a friend.  And as the festival was not held in 2023 it was decided to help to promote this years event by providing short videos – and the experiences gained could be used in using this approach for other festivals in the future. And documenting the approach would be helpful if others would like to support festivals they have links with.

Reflections on previous experiences

Descriptions and timestamps (click for larger view)

Looking back over initial experiences the following decisions were made:

  • To focus on the location:  Since the videos were intended to remind potential visitors to the festival it was decided to make use of videos taken in Bridport in previous years.
  • To encourage videos to be embedded on relevant websites: Experiences with the Swanage Folk Festival videos showed that the video embedded on the festival website had many more views than the videos shared on social media. As well as the main video being embedded on the Bridport Folk Festival website we will look for other websites which may wish to host videos (e.g. local newspapers, what’s on guides, tourist information, folk listings, etc)
  • To maximise use of meaningful descriptions, hashtags and metadata: We will provide a meaningful readable description in the YouTube description field, which will provide a summary of the folk festival and the featured sides, including relevant links to websites. In addition we will provide relevant hashtags including the event’s hashtag (#BridportFolkFestival), the sides’ hashtags, hashtags for the dance styles (e.g. #CotswoldMorrisDance, #NorthwestMorris; #LongswordDance) and location hashtag (#Bridport). [see image – click for larger view]
  • To provide timestamps in the videos: For the longer 2 minute video this enables people to jump directly to a side of interest. The timestamp link can also be indexed by Google.
  • To encourage sides to promote the videos: We contacted the sides to provide suggestions on dates for promoting the videos and suggestions for channels they could use e.g. local Facebook groups such as, in Wyld Morris’s case, Bridport Banter, Bridport What On, etc as well as other social media channels.
  • To allow sides to host copies of their video (and provide a tailored version after the festival is over): Copies of the video (MP4 format) can be provided to the featured side which they can post directly on their social media channels. In addition we have offered to make available a version without the event branding after the event is over which they can use freely. 
  • To provide videos in a timely fashion: Coordinating this work (and acknowledging that sides do no necessarily check emails regularly, especially during the dance season) means that planning is needed!
  • To promote other Morris Federation sides: Since the work is being carried out by the Morris Federation we provide a ‘call for action’ which enables viewers to easily find other morris side, in addition to the featured side(s).

Making the videos

We know that people have a short attention span when viewing videos online. We therefore decided to:

  • Include short dance sequences (typically about 10 seconds)
  • Use music throughout the video so videos have an audible impact.
  • To provide a ‘angle’ for opening sequence(s) which may interest local viewers (‘which location is featured?’) as shown below.

The featured video clips were taken by myself, so I did not have to find relevant and download videos on YouTube. The DaVinci Resolve video editor was used for making the videos (note although it is free it is also very complicated to use). However it did allow the ‘dancing in the event name’ feature used for the Swanage Folk Festival videos and the ‘dancers appear from an empty location’ feature used for the current set of videos.

Videos on the Bridport Folk Festival website

Click for larger view

A number of the videos have been added to the Bridport Folk Festival website as shown (click for larger view).  The screenshot shows the main video (which features all six sides) together with shorted clips for three of the sides).

The main video features three key aspects which are also replicated in the shorter videos (which lasts for about 30 seconds):

  1. Information about the folk festival
  2. A clip of the side dancing, with brief details of the side’s name, location and style of dancing.
  3. A ‘call to action’ providing short information on how to find out more about the side or find details of all Morris Federation sides.

 

The aims are to promote the folk festivalthe featured sides, the wider morris and traditional dance community and the local town, Bridport.

Use of Other Digital Services

Facebook

As well as ensuring the video is available on the Folk Festival website links to the YouTube video have also been posted to the the following morris-related Facebook accounts :

Also a number of the featured morris sides share a link on their own Facebook accounts:

Links to videos were also posted to a number of Facebook groups related to activities in Bridport including:

Twitter

And although Twitter (X) is no longer very popular, the following tweets were published on the Morris Federation’s X account:

Nextdoor

In addition to these morris-related Facebook groups the links to the video was also posted to the Nextdoor.com hyperlocal social network, so that others living in Bridport would be aware of the folk festival and the morris dancers who would be arriving. As shown in the viewing statistics below there was a steady increase in the number of views up to over 370 until there was a plateau during the night – there have now been over 800 views in 48 hours.

 

Swanage Folk Festival 2024

Following the experiences with creation and use of videos for Swanage Folk Festival 2023 and Bridport Folk Festival 2024 we decided to create a larger number of short videos to promote Swanage Folk Festival 2024 and the Morris Federation sides who would be dancing at the festival. 

The playlist of “Morris and sword sides who’ll dance at Swanage Folk Festival 2024” is shown below. This features 5 short videos and 17 dance sides. 

Next steps

We have monitored the effectiveness of this approach in order to inform practices for future festivals.

We found that the “Three Northwest Clog sides who will dance at Swanage Folk Festival 2024” video was the most viewed video on the Morris Federation’s YouTube account for the 2 months between 1 August – 30 September 2024 – and there has been a total of 6.8 hours viewing time for this video which lasts for 1 minute 20 seconds.

Using This Approach By Other Folk Festivals

We feel this approach would be of benefit to both other folk festivals and to the sides appearing at such festivals.

If you are in a position to promote this approach for a folk festival website and are able to provide details of invited dance sides well in advance of the festival please get in touch – email Brian Kelly on: comms-it@morrisfed.org.uk

About this document

We welcome feedback on this document. In addition we would like to hear from morris, sword and other traditional dance sides who use IT and would be willing to share their experiences. Would you like to contribute a case study?


Status of this Document

Document published: 8 Aug 2024
Updated: 26 Oct 2024

Licence for this Document

This document is available with a Creative Commons Sharealike (CC-BY) licence. In brief, this means you can copy and make changes to this document provided you give acknowledgements to the author/publisher. A suggested wording for acknowledgements is:

This document is based on the "Working With Folk Festivald: Bridport and Swanage Folk Festivals" document by Brian Kelly, Comms and IT volunteer with the Morris Federation.

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