Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada

It was a day and a half today…challenging, but also by the end of it rewarding. I was scrabbling to put artists into a schedule for a project I’m working on for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games here in Vancouver and beyond just looking for great talent I was also required to meet a certain mandate for the program because this particular project that I’m working on is funded by the province of British Columbia… In a nutshell I needed to find –

Performers who will help achieve the goal of creating a diverse performance program which is representative, at all levels, of the people of British Columbia.

So… Acts were required to have some connection to the province of British Columbia, be great, ideally help represent the cultural diversity of the province, help build a program of diverse talent, be willing to work for the money in the budget, etc. etc.

Also, because of the political nature and high profile of Olympics I needed to work my correspondence in such a way as to be deemed politically correct and of an appropriate nature for an event associated with the Provincial government.

On top of this there was the additional challenge of not seeing 100% eye to eye with the project manger in charge of the program I’m bringing Street Acts in for. It’s not that we don’t want the same objective – a great program – it’s just that a times our gears don’t seem to mesh 100%. Yes we want the same things, but the ways we get there are different enough that we sometimes take a step back and need to give each other a bit of space… On some levels this is likely a good thing because it ensures that the details get checked and rechecked, but on other levels it ends up feeling a bit clunky.

All of this planning and prep for a Street Program at the Olympics started back in September when I had the first meeting to discuss being involved in the wrangling of acts for the program and as of today I think we’re about 95% there in terms of having all of the elements in place scheduling-wise. There will of course be the challenges associated with executing the schedule as it’s planned, but the big hurdle today was just getting names into the schedule, checking with those names to make sure they were on board for the project, checking with the chain of command above me to make sure they were good with the choices and budget allocation and locking as much down into place while using the proper etiquette and political correctness that such a job requires.

To have made it to the end of the day feels like a success.

For any performer who has not been on the other side of the equation, the booking end of thing, let me just say this. It’s not always about having the best act. Often it’s about meeting a certain criteria that sometimes may seem ridiculous, but is, none the less, in place. If you don’t land a job, it may not have anything to do with your degree of talent, it may have to do with factors beyond your control, heck they may well be beyond the control of the person who’s booking the gig, but they are, none the less, a reality that is being faced. In such situations, it’s best not to take the rejection as a sign that there isn’t any interest in what you have to offer, rather that you weren’t quite the right fit in this particular instance. Enthusiasm, persistence and dedication will serve you well, so just because someone says no once doesn’t necessarily mean the answer will always be no. Stick with it and good things will eventually be the result!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Job Opportunities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.