When taking your work out of the development phase and into the world—as Next Wave’s Kickstart cohort will very soon be doing—it pays to have a few things in your toolkit.
A pitch pack is one of them.
With the Kickstart program wrapping up in September, we invited Next Wave alumni, producer and ‘art aunty’ Nisha Madhan to share her deep knowledge and experience of getting your work out there.
Joining the Kickstart artists in the recent onine workshop, Nisha shared her insights and hot takes on what a pitch pack is, why you should think about creating one, and how to make it your own. Here’s what she had to say:
Your pitch pack really has the most essential information about you and your work and the practicalities of getting it presented, in a way that sells the work.
The way that I like to think about it is, I wanna get my work on in places, and most of those places are run by people who I have an art crush on.
And so as I do, whenever I have a crush on someone, I will find out everything about what they're interested in and make sure that my values line up with their values, and then I'm gonna make sure that I just accidentally bump into them as much as humanly possible.
So that kinds of lessens this idea that your pitch pack has to be business, business, business.
I seriously think that art is just my excuse to hang out with cool people, and it's my way of roping them into doing things with me so that I'm not alone.
Creating a good pitch pack takes time and practice, but eventually you get to a place where it becomes almost second nature because you know exactly what you're trying to say and who you are saying it for and who you wanna say it to.
Nisha’s practical advice for your pitch pack:
1. Distil your ideas
A lot of people when they're doing an experimental performance, sometimes what happens is you kind of describe it or you describe the concept, but you don't necessarily talk people through in a practical way what it might look like or what a structure to it is.
A lot of experimental work tends to be quite vague, and of course it is because it's an experiment.
I always encourage people to practice using really plain language to talk about what it is. Really set it out, even if it's not quite made yet, just imagine what it might be.
In a way that’s a gift to yourself as well, because you are using that time to distil your intention behind the work.
2. Talk about what you need
I include pages full of all of the practical technical information that someone needs to put it on. I think it's a very important page, because it's about setting up clear expectations and protecting yourself, especially if you are an artist of color or a queer artist, make sure that you are not putting yourself in a situation where a venue is not going to support you.
You have to figure out what your non-negotiables are first and make sure that they're in there. For example, at the moment, wifi is a non-negotiable for me and my collaborator.
Nowadays this page is expanding to not only technical information, but culturally specific and accessibility information too
It's so important because as much as you want to sell the work, you want to sell it to someone who's going to come and meet you where you’re at. If they don't read this page, they're probably not the right partner. It's a really great way of setting up an initial contract with your presenter.
3. Think of pitch packs as an opportunity
I always think of grant applications and things like this as an opportunity to get super clear on why you are doing the work.
In that sense, whether you get the money or not sort of isn't the point because at least you've created a strong foundation for yourself.
If you create a really strong foundation, you can apply that to many different future opportunities, and when its time, the right thing will come through.