this is tomorrow · 2007-07-04 22:17

Last week I went to 4 concerts at the newly-reopened Royal Festival Hall, on the south bank in London. It’s been closed for several years, as it was gutted inside and rebuilt to be both more true to the original architect’s vision of the building and create a concert hall that can cope with 21st century demands. I’ve been quite scathing of changes to the periphery – notably the glassboxing and generic commercialisation of the ground floor. Truth be told, the area needed better eating options (however my meals at the new restaurants at the South Bank have ranged from poor to almost passable versions of the standard suburb highstreet chains represented), but what I’m most sold on now is that from the RFH and the raised walkways you don’t see them at all when looking out to the Thames.

One of the things I went to see was This Is Tomorrow, the film and performance by Saint Etienne, current artists-in-residence. It’s great, unabashedly optimistic, and focuses on the site’s past as the Festival of Britain, the present refurb, and the future in the form of the inclusiveness and young vibrancy of the performance.

But something struck hollow, especially about taking the hall into the 21st century. It’s the same venue, made nicer. Has culture changed in 50 years? Have people changed? Should the idea of going to a concert change? (No is a perfectly acceptable answer). I think there are things that a venue can do, especially one partly publicly funded and that should be setting the cultural agenda.

Being an experience designer, I’ve naturally thought about the person’s journey through the experience (you may have to turn up your pretentiousness filter at this point). Here’s some very initial thoughts:

discover the experience
Keeping track of things happening in London is hard, especially as you have to book months in advance. Time Out is a good start – although subscribers are known to experience Time Out syndrome, feeling so guilty at not doing all the things possible that they stop going out at all and certainly stop unwrapping the magazine. With the Internet as well, there’s email newsletters from all the venues, plus aggregators such as Upcoming and weblogs such as Londonist. Often I have to add events to Upcoming myself. If you’re a canny venue, you’d be adding all your events to all the event listing sites. It’s the best free marketing available (often upcoming pages are higher in Google than the venue’s own pages), and making potential customer’s lives easier has to be a good thing.

book the experience
Online booking and selecting your seat is essential (and something the RFH does very well). I’ve also only had excellent experiences with the ticketing and customer service teams, and the returns policy is far better than more commercial venues – I’m travelling at short notice a lot, and I’ve had several tickets for gigs go wasted as they’re non-refundable, and I couldn’t find anyone willing and able to go. Venues are the natural mediators of this, and shouldn’t expect or want secondary markets to solve this problem.

live the experience
Good transport, good food nearby, good and plentiful drinking available. This is the only chink in the RFH refit – whilst there are more satellite bars on the higher floors, they don’t offer a full range of drinks – the ground floor bar remains as packed as ever, and the new team really haven’t got into the swing of things. I was also given a blank look when asking for a Virgin Mary, and when explained, told they don’t do cocktails. It’s a hard problem to solve, but having a full range of drinks in more places would help dramatically.

I’ve had to direct people to the cloakroom in the RFH several times – it’s hidden downstairs, with little signage. It also looks closed until you get up close to it.

Inside the venue – good seating, a good rake (I always end up with a taller person in front), and the most noticeable improvement – cup holders… yes, slightly uncouth, but needed for the contemporary concerts. It stops a lot of beer being spilt. Seat numbering is still terrible in the RFH, far too small and very unclear which way to go.

share the experience
This is the most important change – concerts are filled with people taking photos, videos, calling people and holding up their phone. People want to record what’s going on, and share it with friends.

I’m gutted that the RFH hasn’t been built to webcast each and every concert performed. There was a unique opportunity to properly install equipment to do this, and it’s been missed. Venues have to exist as true members of the Internet, rather than being used as a periphery before and after.

Of course, there are rights and cost issues – webcasting is expensive and the artists could reasonably demand more. There are ways to work up to this – maybe each ticket holder gets a password to the event to send out, or one or two invites to the webcast to share with others. This makes the ticketholder get social value as well as cultural value, and there’s no escaping that it’s not the same as being there; it would act as the best advert and great encouragement to get people out more.

relive the experience
I’d love a recording of the concerts I’ve been to. I accept they’ll be of lower quality that studio recordings or ‘real’ live recordings, but they mean something more to attendees. There have been several plans to make CDs or DVDs available immediately after concerts, but for various reasons, never took off. These days, why bother? The Internet is the rightful place for this, as it would end up here in some form anyway. I know of several popular but “indie” bands that run or allow semi-official bittorrenting of concert material, often with audio feeds direct from the mixing desk. Formalising this, opening it up to a wider audience, and maybe making it part of the deal for which you pay money (rather than an extra) will eventually be expected.

remember the experience
Upcoming keeps a list of events you’ve been to, plus has ways of incorporating photos taken of the event from Flickr (as does last.fm) – however they’re quite hard work for the photographer. Venues should incorporate a trifecta of community – identity, conversation, and interaction – to enable customers to feedback their experience and share what media they’ve got. Maybe the venues themselves should go out and look for pictures and media, invite users in, and celebrate things that have happened more. I’m sure the discussions around This is Tomorrow would have been immensely rewarding, but there’s no centre of gravity for such things – a hole the venue is naturally placed to fill (as well as the artists to some extent).

rewarding the experience
I’m a member of the Southbank – the main benefit being priority booking for concerts, which worked wonderfully for the Meltdown season. Several times, however, I’ve had to hear about concerts via other means, and been too late to get decent seats (actually, I’ve suffered this more at the Barbican). In the opening weekend, I got several free tickets for the lucky dip concerts, and ended up with great seats. That’s a great reward. Less rewarding is the member’s bar, copied from Tate Modern. It’s unclear how it works, with no checks on membership the few times I’ve been (it’s hidden away on the 6th floor). It would be great if it worked, as it does have a good view… but in the summer I prefer the wonderful outdoor balcony on the 5th floor: it’s wrestling with Kew Gardens as my favourite place in London.

I’d love to hear about venues large and small doing things right, and especially those considering their relationship with the Internet or trying to push cultural attendance forward.

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