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School fete
Anonymous Morris took a table at the school Xmas fair.
Too soon to tell if we've recruited anyone from it, but we did talk to a fair number of people.
We used the evil tactic of running a free competition with a tin of sweets as a prize. To win, people had to answer a few multiple choice questions about morris (with the answers conveniently available in our flyer for those who wished to do a little research) and complete a tie-breaker as to why morris dancing is fun.
It proved to be a good way of drawing people into conversation and we got enough entries to fill several sheets of paper.
The winner was delighted with her prize (and was also one of the people who is toying with the idea of trying morris - which may explain why she thought of a good answer to the tie-breaker).
It was good to encounter several people who had seen us dancing around the town and enjoyed our performances.
It was amusing to note that our only entry by an actual morris dancer (one of Bourne River Morris), was one of the ones that guessed morris dancing to be French in origin. Several fell for that one (and one for our outlier of 'Turkish') but most correctly guessed at English.
We had about 90% correct answers on where we hold our practice sessions - but then we did drop pretty heavy hints as to why we'd taken a stand at a fair in this particular school hall. We figured you can't get a more targeted demographic than people who live within walking distance of the school...
Too soon to tell if we've recruited anyone from it, but we did talk to a fair number of people.
We used the evil tactic of running a free competition with a tin of sweets as a prize. To win, people had to answer a few multiple choice questions about morris (with the answers conveniently available in our flyer for those who wished to do a little research) and complete a tie-breaker as to why morris dancing is fun.
It proved to be a good way of drawing people into conversation and we got enough entries to fill several sheets of paper.
The winner was delighted with her prize (and was also one of the people who is toying with the idea of trying morris - which may explain why she thought of a good answer to the tie-breaker).
It was good to encounter several people who had seen us dancing around the town and enjoyed our performances.
It was amusing to note that our only entry by an actual morris dancer (one of Bourne River Morris), was one of the ones that guessed morris dancing to be French in origin. Several fell for that one (and one for our outlier of 'Turkish') but most correctly guessed at English.
We had about 90% correct answers on where we hold our practice sessions - but then we did drop pretty heavy hints as to why we'd taken a stand at a fair in this particular school hall. We figured you can't get a more targeted demographic than people who live within walking distance of the school...
no subject
So why is morris dancing fun?
Re: So why is morris dancing fun?
no subject
Recent successes
1. Posters EVERYWHERE. I put up about 100 in pubs, shops, libraries, etc. Result - 1 new dancer
2. Sent article to local paper about poster campaign. Result - 1 new musician
3. Did a morris workshop for local scout troup. Result - 1 new dancer.
4. (this one last year) Local folk festival - overheard someone compliment our costumes. 5 mins later, we'd got her and three friends doing an impromptu morris dance. Result - 3 new dancers.
The basic rule is to find any way of getting people to actually join in. This means trying to find events where you can run sessions for the public to have a go. They're never going to know they like it unless you get them to try it.
Find a way to target schools.
See here - http://anonymousmorris.co.uk/media.html for our current poster and leaflet. Your leaflet should be interesting and informative. We gave our scout a leaflet to give his parents - that gave them our phone number, etc. and meant they were able to chat to us before he came along.
Also, a good web site will make it more likely that you'll be asked to perform.