Our guest speaker at the AGM was Sam Eccles of PAN (Promoters Arts Network) who gave a fascinating insight into PAN’s coming digital development and its implications for networks in general. Most exciting, to start with, was what Sam described as a ‘Facebook for touring’ – a central database for touring and promotion. This will mean that PAN’s network of 80 promoters in the Highlands can talk to each other and work together to bring a band or show to their area.

Our guest speaker at the AGM was Sam Eccles of PAN (Promoters Arts Network) who gave a fascinating insight into PAN’s coming digital development and its implications for networks in general. Most exciting, to start with, was what Sam described as a ‘Facebook for touring’ – a central database for touring and promotion. This will mean that PAN’s network of 80 promoters in the Highlands can talk to each other and work together to bring a band or show to their area.

The philosophy behind it is for shared knowledge and shared resources. Conversations can happen quickly and easily, and whereas a group might have had a more general tour of Scotland before, here promoters can discuss dates, locations and artists online and allow people to say ‘you’re having so-and-so that week? We’re in the same area and would like them too where we are!’ The new part of their site will be launched soon, and they will be looking for beta testers (both promoters and individuals).

For those involved with other networks and in areas outside of the Highlands, what could this sort of thing mean for us? How can we learn from these ideas?

Sam also talked about other areas PAN is developing itself in, for example a guarantee against loss scheme, which underwrites the risk of promotion. This means that promoters can take a risk on certain acts, or new promoters can spring up in certain areas, without being financially crippled. She also talked about succession planning. There are only 3 promoters covered by PAN under the age of 35. This means that they need more young people involved. To this end, they will be launching a youth promoters scheme for people aged 16-26: seasonally employed, underemployed, and NEETS. They will be giving young people a budget to put their own tour together, and the network as a whole will aim to learn from them: how they market, how they view the product, and how their audiences are different. She noted that in current promotion circles, there’s a tendency for promotion to develop around cliques. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means that audiences are limited by who the promoter is regularly targeting. Promoters should be striving for ever newer and wider audience bases.

The last topic Sam went on to discuss was that of Cultural Tourism, which is something of rising importance for PAN and something very close to my own heart. I myself have a lot of sympathy for tourists, having hosted CouchSurfers in Edinburgh and having spent a year travelling around the world in search of ‘real culture’ (clichéd as it sounds!). However, the problem travellers face the world over is that the ‘culture’ a country tends to market at its visitors is a far cry away from the genuine local culture visitors often came to see. What they get is something carefully processed and packaged, and marketed to be exactly what they expect. In some cases, visitors want exactly this expected processed version of a country, and of course there’s always a market for it. But I’ve seen the joy on a visitor’s face when they accidentally discover a local community ceilidh, or come across a session on the ferry to Orkney. All they want is to experience something that normal people in that place would do. The last thing many travellers, especially young ones, want to feel like is a tourist.

The more we can do to move Scotland away from marketing itself as twee and shortbread, the better. Scotland doesn’t have to be entirely represented by the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. PAN is working to show visitors that they can hike in the Highlands, and then drop in and see a high-quality touring show in a village hall for a fraction of the price they’d pay in the big cities. The digital developments coming to PAN will bring an audience-facing website, showing the public in Scotland and visitors from abroad the amazing range of live arts Scotland has to offer. This is an idea that the TMF is also very keen to build on, and I feel that Sam’s talk has given forum members a lot to consider.

This is a personal view and is not Traditional Music Forum policy.