A Unique "Loving Vincent" Showing At SteamPlant Event Center
Terry Deveney, Administrative Coordinator at the SteamPlant Event Center in Salida, CO, told us all about how this event center created an entire evening to channel Vincent van Gogh with a showing of "Loving Vincent."
Swank: Hey Terry, thanks for answering a couple of questions for us today! Let's get started with an easy one. Why did you hold this event?
TD: We are always looking to expand on the events that we hold at the SteamPlant. We felt like movies were a great addition, and since Salida is one of the first designated creative arts districts in Colorado, we have a large artist/gallery population. "Loving Vincent" seemed like the perfect choice.
Swank: What a great fit! How did you come up with the idea for this event?
TD: My sister saw the movie at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and told me about it. I Immediately started researching how we could show it to audiences at the SteamPlant. Sue Ann, one of our resident artists in town, found out about the film event we were planning, and she contacted an artist that worked on the film who happened to live in Colorado Springs named Dena Peterson.
Sue Ann spearheaded bringing Dena in for a reception and a question/answer session the night of the film, and also arranged for her to teach a “Channeling van Gogh” workshop the day after the film screening. This workshop sold out - in fact, we even had a waiting list.
Swank: What advertising or promotional efforts did you use or create to spread the word about your event?
TD: Initially, we created a Facebook event and put it on Eventbrite. We have a local event-based magazine called The Ark Mag that also featured the film and the workshop extensively.
"We measured the event's success based on the tremendous amount of tickets sold, the high amount of community buzz, and the extremely positive feedback we received." Terry Deveney, Administrative Coordinator at the SteamPlant Event Center in Salida, CO
Swank: What challenges or successes did you encounter during the planning and implementation of the event?
TD: A huge success was the overwhelming support from the community, yet that also posed a challenge since everyone wanted to participate. We had a lot of community members who waited until the last minute to buy tickets, so we were over sold the night of the event. This has caused us to re-think how we pre-sell tickets to some of our events.
Overall, we had 213 in attendance for the Saturday night event, which is very high for us, but only 60 for the Sunday matinee since we had a snow storm that day. We measured the event's success based on the tremendous amount of tickets sold, the high amount of community buzz, and the extremely positive feedback we received.
Swank: Wow, that's great! What are your hopes for future events? Do you have any words of advice for anyone looking to start their own movie program?
TD: Well, we are hoping to continue to bring in more films, but that's a challenge at the moment as we do not have digital capabilities. We don't show first run movies yet, but this may change for us in the future. As for words of advice, I think having the addition of the artist was a big draw for the movie event. People we thrilled to be able to ask questions about the creation of the movie. Overall, it was an awesome event!
Want to create your own "Loving Vincent" event? Call us today at 1-800-876-5577 or contact us to see how you can get started!