The Art of Postering

Another very handy post from Autumn Store Dunc on putting posters up for gigs in Birmingham in which he goes through the methodology (“If you’ve got blu-tac then offer to put it up there and then and save them a bit of time, I say this because there have been times when I’ve handed posters over and they’ve vanished”) and rules of engagement (“please please please never take someone else’s poster down unlss the event has passed”) finishing up with a piece of wishful thinking:

I do wish there was cross-pollination of posters between venues, so that as much information as possible is available to people. I’m partially thinking of that massive wall in the Academy as you go in, that would be a brilliant wall to give over to local promoters and have it filled with posters (for aesthetic reasons as well as local music reasons). After all Academy size bands don’t just pop up over night, they play gigs in local pubs first, put on by local promoters, and watched by local people and supporting this whole system is essential if anyone wants to fill a large venue like The Academy with gig goers.

He then starts to list his current fave places for putting up posters and invites others to help pad it out, specifically for Harborne, Bearwood and the Aston / BCU areas.

The notion of breaking this protectionist attitude that promoters seem to have is a good one. At the end of they day they’re not really in competition with each other and cross-promotion of gigs can only be a good thing as it helps create the impression that there’s lots going on. I particularly love the idea of venues like Barfly and Academy having an all-comers poster wall. Be part of the community, people.

Finally, if I might stick my neck out, it’d be great if what Dunc’s doing could turn into some sort of online community for small promoters in the city to share knowledge. Check out Ning as a possible tool in this regard.