Garsington Opera: The Learning & Participation department’s digital journey
Organisations
Garsington Opera is an annual summer opera festival founded in 1989 and based in Buckinghamshire, United KKingdom. The Opera’s Learning & Participation works with local communities, schools, charities and health organisations to demystify opera and make it accessible to ever-wider audiences.
Project
The 2020 lockdown obliged the company to take its community work online, which led to the creation of the online workshop series Monday Motivation, the digital projects Our Haven, The Selfish Giant, I Look For The Think and finally the YouTube magazine programme GO Create.
Participants
Participants in these projects were varied and included adults and young people in lockdown, people living with the effects of stroke, senior citizens and the Garsington Opera Youth and Adult choirs.
Key persons
Karen Gillingham, Creative Director of Learning & Participation
Judy Knowles, Head of Learning & Participation
Project outcomes
Enabled learning and participation staff to explore new avenues for outreach and to gain confidence and skills in delivering digital activities
Improved the visibility of the Learning and Participation department within the company
Reached over 65,000 people in one live workshop session
Approach
When the UK went into lockdown in March 2020, all in-person education activities had to come to a halt. The Learning and Participation team launched the first Monday Motivation workshop within 10 days, followed by pre-recorded “Design Challenge” videos on Fridays inviting viewers to create small opera sets in their own time. The department worked with members of its Youth and Adult companies to produce short-form video content based on footage created by participants on their own devices following Zoom rehearsals. Finally, the team partnered with the arts rehabilitation charity Rosetta Life and NHS England for I Look For The Think, in which stroke survivors collaborated with community singers and healthcare professionals to create a short opera film based on Beethoven’s Fidelio.
“I normally think about digital as something that needs to be quite polished, with a pilot year and expert input, but given the situation, we thought, let’s just do it,” said Karen Gillingham, L&P Creative Director. Garsington’s relatively small size turned out to be an advantage: “The fact that we're a small organisation means we can react and get decisions made very quickly.”
For the two video projects Our Haven and The Selfish Giant, participants were provided with short step-by-step guides that enabled them to record their contributions, which were then edited together by the Garsington team. The process needed to be adapted for I Look For The Think, which involved stroke survivors and senior citizens. Project staff went to participants’ homes and guided them through the filming process from behind a window.
Results
These experiences enabled the Garsington team to explore new paths for outreach and inclusion. Dalia, a community opera co-created and performed by 180 amateur and professional participants, will feature pre-recorded video clips from Syrian and Palestinian choirs, who will join rehearsals remotely to bring their perspective to the story.
The company recently launched GO Create, a YouTube magazine-style programme that takes young people behind the scenes of the opera to discover stage management, composition, warm-up and dramatic intention, among others. The videos can be viewed individually or used by teachers as part of lesson plans.
Garsington Opera is currently building a new facility for learning and participation work with built in digital resources that is set to open in 2023 and since the pandemic, has taken on a full-time digital manager. “We’ve had several new members come to our Adult Company as a result of the work we produced online, but one really interesting thing about digital work is the visibility it gives education within the organisation itself,” Karen says, “Education work can feel very separated from the rest of the company, but when you start producing online, the people you work with are much more aware of what you’re doing”.
Lessons learned:
Be aware of your target audience: “Monday Motivation was supposed to be for absolutely everybody, which is very hard to achieve. You have to pitch to the youngest and to the oldest participants at the same time, but in the end, we had people of all ages taking part. I would say, keep your target audience in mind but also be open about appealing to different kinds of people.”
Avoid Zoom fatigue: Length needs to be taken into consideration to avoid “zoom fatigue”, or the psychological and physical impact of spending too much time on digital platforms. “It’s a constant challenge - everyone tells you things should be 30 seconds,” Karen says. Pre-recorded “Design Challenge” videos complemented Monday Motivation by inviting viewers to create small opera sets in their own time.