Exhibition related things

This term has aimed itself at the eventual production of a public exhibition.  Now that the opening of the exhibition is iminent I thought it best to talk a little of the trials and tribulations of staging an exhibition. 

Choosing a venue
Firstly there was finding the exhibition. After looking round a number of venues – including pubs, cafe’s and offices we narrowed it down to the bridlesmith cafe, flying horse walk and the victoria centre market.  I investigated the bridlesmith walk. The bridlesmith walk is located very centrally, just off a main shopping street, the units are large and well lit. An ideal place for an exhibition, however after calling twice a day for a week, being stalled each time we had to look at other venues. Perhaps with more time and persistence… Next was the flying horse walk. This was £400 per week, the space was expansive. However along with it being more than we could afford, it was a little out of the way, in a quiet shopping walk. So we probably wouldnt get enough exposure.

Lastly there was the victoria centre market. Fotunately Toby was able to negotiate 2 empty units in the marketplace which Nottingham City Council were quite happy for us to fill for a couple of weeks free of charge, to encourage a flow of people around the market.  The good thing about the market place, in addition to the gratis nature, was the flow of public. The exposure would be excellent as we would get the general public through the market place, many of which would ordinarily not visit a market place.  We have one double unit and a single unit. 
Budget
In an early meeting I volunteered budgeting for the exhibition. Fortunately two of the main expenses we would normally expect to pay were free. These were the venue, which we would of typically paid upto £600 for the two weeks and the flyers. Stef father generously printed us 500 flyers for the exhibition, again saving us around £50.

The initial fund for the budget began at £240 (£20 each) which we would expect to add to later. This mainly covered posters and materials for construction. For example a  drill was needed and wood for brackets to mount prints on. Later we needed to add money for the opening night where we would be providing refreshments for guests.  For this we budgeted £2 per head for 50 guests.  (A cafe located opposite the stalls would provide these refreshments.)  Therefore another £100 would be needed and another £10 from each in the group. 

Out of the original budget, which had a £50 contingency, there is £28 left. Another £10 is needed from each for refreshments, then a more formal budget will be worked out.

Website
I also volunteered to make the website. I wanted this to be as simple as possible, mainly for speed and ease to build. If I had more time I would concentrate on a site  alittle more intricate. The main reason I wanted to do a website was so we could just put a link on flyers and promotional material which would make things neater for designers. Also the website would offer links to Blogs and galleries as well as a little information about the exhibition and exhibitors.

Obviously I didnt want to spend any money on this site, so first things first was to find a website builder/designer. For this www.freewebs.com which offers simple websites in return for advertisements. So I picked a plain design and added information. I included about an extract from the press release as well as 50 words and a picture from each of the exhibitors.  I was also able to include a map on the website so people knew where we were located. 

 

www.photomarkt.tk

One of the drawbacks of the free website design is the address that you get. Unless you paid, the default setting would be www.freewebs.com/photomarkt which obviously doesnt exactly look very professional! So this is where www.dot.tk comes in. It offers a free linking service which means you can type in any address with the suffix .tk an it links to you site with a longer more complicated address. So i set up www.photomarkt.tk which is far snappier.

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