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Previous participant: Evie Henderson
"My exchange experience was invaluable. Not only did I spend a week soaking up the 40 year old Cully Jazz Festival, learning and being exposed to many different styles of Jazz and artists but I observed and learnt from an organisation that was in its 40th year and with 50,000+ visitors each year."
From: Manchester Jazz Festival (UK)
To: Cully Jazz Festival (Switzerland)
Dates: 13 - 20 April 2023
My exchange experience was invaluable. Not only did I spend a week soaking up the 40 year old Cully Jazz Festival, learning and being exposed to many different styles of Jazz and artists but I observed and learned from an organisation that was in its 40th year (nearly double the age of The Manchester Jazz Festival) and with 50,000+ visitors each year.
As a result I saw how a well oiled, developed, streamlined and thought out organisation much bigger in size and scale than mjf ran its festival. As their co-director, Jean Yves said 'It took us 40 years to build this'. For the most, I worked very closely with my counterpart, their social media consultant, Luanna, in what felt like a trial run in advance of our festival. She gave me access to their content plans, both pre and post festival, we generated content together allowing me to practise my creation of reels and learning, as someone who has never worked for a festival before mjf, how they put together an exciting digital coverage of the festival. All of which, I have taken back to mjf and implemented into my planning for our festival at the end of May.
But more than that, I worked closely with their Head of Marketing, Marta, who shared their wider comms plan with me. I was able to ask her valuable questions such as how they run their friends scheme and how they successfully organise their marketing content ahead of announcing (this led to her showing me the revolutionary marketing software Air Table). These are all burning questions at mjf, so it was valuable to unpick how another organisation managed to do it so effectively. I was expecting to learn masses specifically relating to social media and I did but I what I didn't account for was to start to unfold the inner workings of what makes a festival run smoothly and efficiently.
Some of the videos done during the festival:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrOCeFIID30/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrD4rJgIw5N/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrBHxBqIh8Y/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
