SO Festival 2020
What did we get up to in 2020?
We moved online with SOfa Fest 2020!
Unfortunately, due to the global pandemic, we had to postpone 2020’s SO Festival. But we decided to move things online and SOfa Fest 2020 was born! Over two weekends in August, SOfa Fest went live with a total of four full days of live streamed content that was created across Greater Lincolnshire and Europe by a huge number of talented creatives.
Thousands of people logged on to view the festival on social media with hugely popular content that appealed to every part of society. There was thought provoking content about life in lockdown, as well as fun gameshows, plays about Lincolnshire’s past, fun content for the little ones and so much more…
The second weekend also saw the content streamed live across Denmark and Sweden in partnership with our long-term partners the PASSAGE Festival. The content was shared across a host of platforms and allowed a diverse programme of content to be streamed to homes in both the UK and Europe.
Our programme consisted of local commissions and contributions were received from a host of local cultural organisations including; Barmpot Theatre, Beyond Boundaries Theatre, The Different Light Collective, Feasible Ferret Theatre, Under The Bed Theatre, Grubby Knees Community Theatre as well as Sinfonia Viva Choir, who performed a fantastic rendition of With A Little Help From My Friends. Some wonderful content for children was provided by Tales From the Heartwood, Rhubarb Theatre and many more. It was great to deliver such a diverse offering – and thankfully thousands of people were able to watch the talent deliver in a big way!
The quality of the submissions was so very high that it quickly became obvious that one weekend (as originally planned) was simply not going to be enough, in order to showcase the diverse nature of the projects the team have been working with, having commissioned them to work as a part of the festival in early June.
The feedback was tremendous with comments and feedback coming in from all over the region. Articles about SOfa Fest appeared in national publications and also on BBC One!
Here are some lovely comments from the creatives who took part:
Memories and Moments
Watch one of our SOfa Fest videos here, SO Many Roads: How will European Street Theatre Festivals look in the future?
The SOcial also went digital AND international!
In 2019, we developed The SOcial, a series of networking events for local creatives to connect, collaborate and create. These meet ups quickly moved online over Zoom and have featured guest speakers including ACE’s CEO Darren Henley and the Digital Culture Network’s Dean Shaw. The SOcial continues to connect a growing number of people through regular sessions.
In 2020, we hosted our first International SOcial connecting Lincolnshire based artists with artists from Denmark and Sweden.
To find out when our next SOcial is, click the button below and check out our events on Facebook.
We created the online community, Lincs Creatives' Hub
A new network for creative and artistic individuals and organisations across Greater Lincolnshire has launched on Facebook. Aimed at professional creatives and artists in Lincolnshire, the hub will be a place to connect, collaborate and create with anyone from the Humber to the Wash. The Lincs Creatives’ Hub is a joint initiative between SO Festival and Barmpot Theatre.
Greater Lincolnshire is a very large rural area and it is easy to become disconnected and distanced from other artists and organisations in the area. The SO Festival team have connected creatives and artists in the area, through ‘The SOcial’ which held its latest gathering last week online. Jens Frimann Hansen, Artistic Director for SO Festival said ‘When, Jane from Barmpot Theatre suggested the online hub at the last ‘The SOcial’, as a place for local professionals to connect digitally, it seemed an easy answer to say yes and getting something happening quickly, during these difficult and isolating times, was important as connection and conversations are more important than ever.’
Jane Crawshaw from Barmpot Theatre says, “I first had the idea for the hub last year, when I struggled for months to find a Lincolnshire based puppet maker. Now I know there are tons of brilliant and talented makers in Lincolnshire, I don’t think we should continue to stay quiet about it, and especially in a crisis such as this pandemic, it’s even more important to come together as a sector and support each other through this time, and come out stronger on the other side.”
If you’re a creative living or working in Lincolnshire and would like to join, click the button below.
We made some new friends
We couldn’t have possibly produced SOfa Fest 2020 all by ourselves! We had a little help from some wonderful individuals and organisations.
We’d like to give a special thanks to Metro Boulot Dodo (MBD), Rural Media and Arts Council England’s Digital Culture Network for assisting us with our very popular Arts Sector Sessions. These folks are all experts at what they do and we are excited to develop more projects with them in the future!
We’d also like to thank Lucy Medlycott for moderating our international webinar, ‘SO Many Roads’ and all of our guest speakers.
We helped our creative community
When COVID 19 hit and the world shut down, SO festival supported Lincolnshire creatives to access emergency funding: 36 individuals or organisations were supported, with 20 being from East Lindsey.
SOfa Fest 2020 exclusively commissioned Lincolnshire creatives, to provide a much-needed income during a period uncertainty. £37,000 was spent on 24 commissions which involved over 80 local creatives.
