The ninth edition of the Seeyousound International Music Film Festival (Turin, 24 February-2 March) played host to the third workshop of the RED: Re-Educating Digitisation project, which is intended to create a model for analysing festival audiences in order to help cultural professionals with the process of audience development. The project is run as an integral part of the MFFN – Music Film Festival Network (a network of festivals focusing on musical topics, of which Seeyousound is the main promoter and which brings together 12 European gatherings), is funded by Erasmus+ and is coordinated by SoundTrack Cologne. We asked the director of the latter festival, Michael P Aust, for a more in-depth explanation of the inner workings of the project, which sees the involvement of seven European organisations: besides Seeyousound and SoundTrack Cologne, they include In-Edit (Barcelona), DokStation (Bucharest), Eventival (Prague), Solverhood (Tallinn) and the Rheinische Fachhochschule university in Cologne.

Cineuropa: What are the challenges for film festivals at the moment, and how did the idea for this project crop up?
Michael P Aust: I think film festivals in general are in an interesting state at the moment, as audiences disappeared from the cinemas and have yet to come back. I don't see going away from cinemas as a regular way to watch movies, so having festivals is a way to bring people back, and music film festivals have the advantage of being attractive to [music] fans. But on the other hand, many of the fans think that these films will end up on Netflix anyway, so they don't bother going. It's very complicated. One part of the work is to develop new audiences for film festivals and also to keep the old audiences coming back, even though it's not as convenient as sitting at home. So RED was born of this idea: it’s about how to know more about your own audience and also to improve the situation for film festivals.

What exactly does the project consist of?
It's more or less a five-part workshop series. The first workshop focuses on all kinds of digital data that you, as a festival, might glean from your homepage, your accreditations, ticket sales and social media, but which you're not really able to explore, because you're not a digital or SEO expert. The second point is to know more about the audiences that already go to your festival. Are they happy with the gathering? What can you improve for them? So we have two workshops focusing on doing research into these audiences, preparing a questionnaire with the right questions and also exploring these data that you've got.

So you can see if something is going wrong and what isn’t working any more: is it necessary to print a brochure? Does anyone actually come because of the brochure? How good is your homepage? When do people stop the buying process? The fourth and fifth parts of the workshop are on non-visitors, as it’s important to understand why people don't come to your event or to your theatre. And then, we have implemented the so-called multiplier events, which will sum up these five workshops and will be repeated at many of the festivals that work together.

What is the difference between the workshops and the multiplier events?
At the workshops, we sit down for three days and work on the data. The one-day version is denser; it’s a quick version of the three-day workshop and also benefits from the recording that we do. We film everything and edit it so that some parts are much faster and better paced. The workshops are reserved for the participants in the programme, but the multiplier events are open to anyone. We had a multiplier event at the Zurich Film Festival, where it was part of the industry programme. [Representatives of] 25 cultural organisations stayed for the whole day, and it was very helpful for everyone.

At the end of the workshops, will the results be published on a platform and be available for everyone to see?
That's one condition of the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme: the content is free for anyone who wants to repeat it, and you don't use any programs that cost money. The content will be ready as soon as all of the workshops are finished.

How has the feedback from the participants been so far?
Half of them are really so clever that they took the knowledge on board and were able to do it all themselves later, even though it’s a complicated programme that we use. The others at least know how to work with it; they know where they could use it to work on their festivals or their communication. So I think it helps everyone, even those who might decide that it's a bit complicated to do themselves – especially the exploitation of the data later, as probably not every festival director will do this himself. But he should know how long it takes, what is important in a questionnaire, and what can come out when the data are there and you can explore the knowledge that’s in them.

When and where are the next workshops being held?
The next workshops will be in Prague, probably at the end of June, then again in Barcelona and in Bucharest, where there will be a multiplier event. We’re also planning a multiplier event at the next Karlovy Vary Film Festival. The end of the project is in September 2024, when all of the information will be available [here] in all of the languages of the partners: Italian, English, Romanian, German, Czech and Spanish.