During the process of our project, we came up with an exercise. It can be played either by individuals or in groups.
The aim of the exercise is to consider and to try responding to the following questions:
Whether you are a dance maker, a dance collective or a dance institution (perhaps even an artist or a cultural institution from another artistic discipline) the Roadmap game can help you (in a playful way) to develop your communication plan closely intertwined with your artistic process showing that both entities are connected and that you are indeed communicating your work continously. Furthermore it can easily be developed into a timeline, helping you plan and time your activities throughout your artistic and communication process.
Before you embark on this exercise we propose you define your starting position.
Are you an independent artist?
Or working with an institition?
Is your project small, medium or large scale?
This will help you define what is important to you from the myriad of options/possibilities (and there are even more than we were able to list! Please be free to expand the list of roles as per your own practice and experience).
In doing so, this exercise will help you to better understand how the communication plan you are formulating will contextualise and serve your project and your road to success.
We are suggesting you use a piece of paper, but really you can also decide to use any frame to carry through this exercise! Be innovative and imaginative. Rembember these are suggestions only, be innovative, creative and think outside of the box!
So let's start with a practical example. Some possible tools:
For example, pre-production, production and post-production, or "January-February..." etc.
Place these terms (key words) onto the paper roughly, where you think they should take place within the general production timeline. Some of these may overlap. You don’t have to use all of these terms, and you can use some more than once if you like. You can also add your own. The illustration is just an example of how you can use the paper. If you prefer to arrange the key words differently pleae feel free to do so.
You can use this game to:
If you feel overwhelmed by all the options and channels for communcating your artistic work, please don't forget that this plan simply aims to help you to develop an overview of all the possibilities you can use. It is also likely that you might not have the necessary capacities (time, team members, funds …) to activate all. That's why it is important to choose your priorities - and instead of trying to do everything – it is best to follow your priorities!