With a year spent in lockdown, many creative organisations understandably struggled to stay afloat, but at the Artz Centre, we kept our chins up, we took ourselves online; and we promised to keep connecting creatively with our students. In fact, since March 2020, we have produced over 150 videos for YouTube, which in turn have received over 30,000 views. The lockdown may have required us to take our business online, but we successfully managed to take our audiences with us. During this time, we also made our entire back catalogue of 25 show videos available for free, on our Vimeo page.
Our move online also saw the introduction of 3 all-new online competitions for our students. These competitions would allow our students to engage in submitting their own creative content from home. I am of course talking about the phenomenal SING IT, MOVE IT and SAY IT. At first, we couldn’t have possibly foreseen how successful these competitions would become, or how our students would engage. Yet, fast forward one year, and by taking those brave steps in March 2020 to do something different; our students have gone on to create an incredible series of work, which has very much become part of our lockdown legacy.
First up, we had SING IT, running from March 2020, for a total of 12 weeks, with 35 of our students taking to camera to submit musical content for 12 categories. 12 industry professionals supported the work of our singers, from west end performers to professional musicians, and the competition grew from strength to strength.
The series concluded with an electric finale, and throughout the final episodes the public cast over 1130 votes to crown our SING IT winner.
I am of course talking about, the incredible… JAMES JACKSON.
Let’s take a look back at the SING IT experience…
And of course… the extra content, too!