First a little background about me: I am Arvind Batra. I am from NSIT, passed out in 2k6, worked in Bangalore for a year and currently doing my masters in CS from Georgia Tech. Quite an active volunteer during NSIT, but mostly at college level. I had tried to contribute to SPICMACAY overall Delhi chapter but was not able to do much. Have been inactive after i came out of NSIT but still following the movement passionately. Here I am because of Harsh.
I liked Harsh's post on sustaining chapters and during NSIT, we had some good discussions/experience which i would like to share. Most of the points below are related to sustaining a college level chapter.
1. Continuity howsoever small it may be helps in a long way. In my final year, there were only 3 of us who were active volunteers and it was on to us to organize the fest, mobilize people, plan and execute. There were some juniors (and very very active too) but they wanted someone to initiate the process. The fall semester saw no events as all of us were busy with placements, gre/mba etc. But in spring we made a genuine effort (kicked our asses) to organize a festival. We started by saying we will organize only 2 events and make it a small scale fest. But as we worked on towards it, we got a lot of support (from juniors as well as from faculty of NSIT), and things began to take shape by themselves. So much so that we had 2 rounds of fest one having 2 concerts and one having 3 including a theatre in fest (which is a rarity). And after that, with each year the size of chapter has increased.
Just to clarify: when i write juniors, i am not alluding to any hierarchy in spicmacay. We had a complete flat organization, all being volunteers, but as the tradition of NSIT goes, some people took individual modules to organize while some got the responsibilty at a macroscopic level to oversee that each module in itself is complete and in sync with others.
2. Communication: We had a almost inactive group spicmacay_nsit usually meant for announcements, and we realized that we needed a group to keep a track of day to day activities. It was named spicmacayNsitAtWork and i think we used it very effectively. All discussions, from poster design/making, artist coordination, food, logistics were posted. People were asked to give feedback, both postive and negattive, what they feel and/or suggest alternatives etc. New people find a platform to raise their voice and be heard.
(On a side note, we made it a point that we all will leave this group after we graduate but the group had so much energy that being a part of it was absoluteluy lovely (and nostalgic); i signed off after 15 months and that too with a stone on my heart)
3. New-bees should attend: We tried a lot that people who were associated for the first time must attend all concerts. In terms of organizing, they were given tasks like green room coordination, picking up artists etc so that they got opportunities to interact with artists. I remember some people sleeping on the stage when artist is performing, but those who remained awake had many "aha" moments of their life in those 2 hrs of space/time.
4. One week of semester or one day in every month? We often had the question in front of us - what would make the model more sustainable - one week of fest in one semester or one concert every month. We wanted to ensure that the momentum should always there. We experimented by having two events spaced 1.5 months apart. As expected, it required twice the effort, twice the energy but one good thing that came out of it that we had many people volunteering for second event than the first one. SPICMACAY was always in the air inside college and there were always questions from faculty/students/staff inquiring about future activities.
5. Audience: It is always a heart breaker for organizers when after putting weeks of effort , there are only 20 people in audience. One of the main reasons cited for not organizing concerts is " whats the point, no one turns up". Some learnings of our PR team were:
(a) Local publicity is highly viral. People living closer if informed had a very good turn up rate.
(b)Personal invites to faculty. Having a volunteer go and invite a faculty made a lot of difference. Faculties used to ask questions about the artist, about the art etc and made a point to turn up for atleast one of the concerts. On a sidenote, volunteers got a valid explanantion for bunking classes :), an excuse sympathized by faculty as well.
(c) Give a lot of effort in poster design. A good poster can make a lot of difference. It does not has to be jazzy but it should not be like a classified advertisment of a newspaper. We invested a week in both concerts to make the poster.
(d) Having a dance or folk module in the middle can boost up audience level in pure vocal/instrumental concerts.
6. Don't be an elitist: This is something that i learnt from my juniors. They participated in SPICMACAY with equal fervor as they did in other festivals. They were everywhere and everyone knew them. So associating with SPICMACAY was seen as associating with any other college festival and then some of them were inspired by the movement and decided to stick to it.
I liked Harsh's post on sustaining chapters and during NSIT, we had some good discussions/experience which i would like to share. Most of the points below are related to sustaining a college level chapter.
1. Continuity howsoever small it may be helps in a long way. In my final year, there were only 3 of us who were active volunteers and it was on to us to organize the fest, mobilize people, plan and execute. There were some juniors (and very very active too) but they wanted someone to initiate the process. The fall semester saw no events as all of us were busy with placements, gre/mba etc. But in spring we made a genuine effort (kicked our asses) to organize a festival. We started by saying we will organize only 2 events and make it a small scale fest. But as we worked on towards it, we got a lot of support (from juniors as well as from faculty of NSIT), and things began to take shape by themselves. So much so that we had 2 rounds of fest one having 2 concerts and one having 3 including a theatre in fest (which is a rarity). And after that, with each year the size of chapter has increased.
Just to clarify: when i write juniors, i am not alluding to any hierarchy in spicmacay. We had a complete flat organization, all being volunteers, but as the tradition of NSIT goes, some people took individual modules to organize while some got the responsibilty at a macroscopic level to oversee that each module in itself is complete and in sync with others.
2. Communication: We had a almost inactive group spicmacay_nsit usually meant for announcements, and we realized that we needed a group to keep a track of day to day activities. It was named spicmacayNsitAtWork and i think we used it very effectively. All discussions, from poster design/making, artist coordination, food, logistics were posted. People were asked to give feedback, both postive and negattive, what they feel and/or suggest alternatives etc. New people find a platform to raise their voice and be heard.
(On a side note, we made it a point that we all will leave this group after we graduate but the group had so much energy that being a part of it was absoluteluy lovely (and nostalgic); i signed off after 15 months and that too with a stone on my heart)
3. New-bees should attend: We tried a lot that people who were associated for the first time must attend all concerts. In terms of organizing, they were given tasks like green room coordination, picking up artists etc so that they got opportunities to interact with artists. I remember some people sleeping on the stage when artist is performing, but those who remained awake had many "aha" moments of their life in those 2 hrs of space/time.
4. One week of semester or one day in every month? We often had the question in front of us - what would make the model more sustainable - one week of fest in one semester or one concert every month. We wanted to ensure that the momentum should always there. We experimented by having two events spaced 1.5 months apart. As expected, it required twice the effort, twice the energy but one good thing that came out of it that we had many people volunteering for second event than the first one. SPICMACAY was always in the air inside college and there were always questions from faculty/students/staff inquiring about future activities.
5. Audience: It is always a heart breaker for organizers when after putting weeks of effort , there are only 20 people in audience. One of the main reasons cited for not organizing concerts is " whats the point, no one turns up". Some learnings of our PR team were:
(a) Local publicity is highly viral. People living closer if informed had a very good turn up rate.
(b)Personal invites to faculty. Having a volunteer go and invite a faculty made a lot of difference. Faculties used to ask questions about the artist, about the art etc and made a point to turn up for atleast one of the concerts. On a sidenote, volunteers got a valid explanantion for bunking classes :), an excuse sympathized by faculty as well.
(c) Give a lot of effort in poster design. A good poster can make a lot of difference. It does not has to be jazzy but it should not be like a classified advertisment of a newspaper. We invested a week in both concerts to make the poster.
(d) Having a dance or folk module in the middle can boost up audience level in pure vocal/instrumental concerts.
6. Don't be an elitist: This is something that i learnt from my juniors. They participated in SPICMACAY with equal fervor as they did in other festivals. They were everywhere and everyone knew them. So associating with SPICMACAY was seen as associating with any other college festival and then some of them were inspired by the movement and decided to stick to it.
3 comments:
A well written post indeed Arvind!
I agree with the last point (the elitist one!), - come to think of it-
1. I could not identify with SPIC MACAY's objectives when I joined - 2. I did not have any love lost for music or arts
What I liked was the way it worked and seemed something 'fun' and 'noble'.
Of course the first two things have come up as I went along - which is why I continue to run!
a brilliant read..
very reminiscent of all things wonderful about our beautiful chapter..
Many little things came together to make the experience as special as it became.. i'll elaborate in a separate full fledged post, but here are some starters:
1. for any movement to truly grow, it is important that members be allowed to 'find their own meaning'.. this point, highlighted to me by neeraj, was very relevant to our chapter, where one could join solely to be the food coordinator, transport coordinator et al, with no ideological pressures to 'grow up'.. whatever had to be done on that front, would be left to the artiste.. as an old spic saying goes, our job is only to get the volunteer to the event, after that the artiste takes over..
its been an absolute delight, watching this change develop in pple around me, and myself as well..
2. the all consuming flatness that governed our chapter, which batra has mentioned about, was a tremendous factor in inducing that sense of belonging in everyone.. i was rather surprised when in my early days with the delhi chapter, i realized all other chapters were more 'structured'..
tho one cant really debunk structure altogether, I think this point about our chapter is best summed up by this inviting punchline from the 1st spic notice i saw at nsit (joshi i think wrote this):
"Come, join the chaos!"
seriously.. beauuutiful!
Cheers to our lineage..!
waah... wonderful. lots to learn from ur post, arvind.
thanks
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